Tyler Cowen, on Marginal Revolution, linked to this very interesting interview with Eric Nelson, executive editor of Broadside Books, an imprint of HarperCollins which publishes “conservative” books (perhaps more “right wingers’” book). The whole interview is well worth reading but this quote strikes me as a perfect assessment of the intellectual world we live in:
The overall culture has changed to be pro-censorship, with the belief that by limiting our ability to discuss some ideas, it will make those ideas disappear or lose value among the public—which is delusional, and that has been proven over and over.
Also, there are more truly awful people that have carved out a big audience for themselves than before. These people are famous enough now to have a platform, and so their books look worth doing, financially, but 10 years ago these people would have been taking out ads in the back of the Weekly World News to get people to order their pamphlets on various snake oils.
READER COMMENTS
nobody.really
Jul 15 2021 at 2:03pm
Perhaps this has been proven over and over; no citation is offered.
What has DEFINIETLY been proven over and over is that lies spread faster than the truth. See “The spread of true and false news online” by Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral, Science 09 Mar 2018: Vol. 359, Issue 6380, pp. 1146-1151. From the abstract:
“We investigated the differential diffusion of all of the verified true and false news stories distributed on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. The data comprise ~126,000 stories tweeted by ~3 million people more than 4.5 million times. We classified news as true or false using information from six independent fact-checking organizations that exhibited 95 to 98% agreement on the classifications. Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information [including stories about politics, terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, and financial matters].”
In short, censorship may not be perfect—but neither is the marketplace of ideas.
KevinDC
Jul 15 2021 at 3:30pm
It seems a bit odd to suggest that if Alberto is going to quote a comment in an interview linked to by Tyler Cowen of someone else being interviewed by Slate magazine, then Alberto also needs to furnish citations in support of whatever comment is quoted. Still, here’s just one recent citation that could be made:
If you do just a bit of googling for research measuring the Streisand Effect, it seems to indeed have been demonstrated over and over. Unfortunately, as you correctly note, fake news spreads dishearteningly fast. But attempts to suppress/censor fake news only seems to make it spread even faster.
And if I can toss in just a couple of completely unscientific, personal, and cherry picked anecdotes, I had literally never heard of either Ben Shapiro or that Milo fellow, until after major attempts were made to deplatform them. Mulling it over for a bit, almost every member of the “alt-right” or IDW or whatever operating today, I had only ever heard of because a large pro-censorship crowd was loudly screaming “stop listening to this person!!!” while shining a gigantic spotlight on them. Weirdly, that always seemed to be followed by the person in question having their public profile significantly elevated.
nobody.really
Jul 16 2021 at 12:27pm
I was just being flippant–but your comments prompt some reflection.
Censorship doesn’t just exist to keep ideas from being expressed; it also exists as a strategy to publicize opposition to the ideas being expressed. If, as research suggests, it is hard to stop ideas from spreading, perhaps the best an opponent can hope for is to ensure that each time someone searches for that idea, they also find out that the idea is contested. So when a publisher declines to publish
That said….
2. How WOULD a person the effectiveness of censorship as a strategy for limiting the spread of an idea? For what it’s worth, my history prof said that there are some heresies that the Catholic Church suppressed so successfully that all we know about them is what the Catholic records tell us.
In analyzing the strategy, we face a clear selection bias: By definition, any effort to censor an idea/person that we’ve heard about is likely an effort that failed–precisely because we heard about it. It’s the ones that we DIDN’T hear about that succeeded–and by definition, we won’t be able to account for those in the data. I’m reminded of the story about St. Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland–and the proof of the story’s accuracy is the absence of snakes in Ireland. (Or the story about the guy trying to get hired as a lumberjack: “I gained a lot of experience logging the Sahara Forest.” But isn’t the Sahara a desert? “Well, sure–NOW it is….”)
Informal censorship is all around us. Every letter that ISN’T published in the paper and every caller who is NOT permitted to speak on the radio call-in show is, in effect, censored. This type of censorship is even employed by government agents. When the judge excludes the opportunity to introduce some evidence into the trial, the attorney has been censored. Every student raising a hand who is NOT called on by the public school teacher has been censored.
People accept this type of censorship because it ALSO serves the function of allocating scarce resources–yet I suspect people wielding this power also actively seek to suppress certain types of speech. The teacher who knows that a given student is going to start proselytizing about her faith, or make a sexist joke, is likely going to look for some other student to call on.
How would we measure the prevalence and effectiveness of this type of censorship? This poses a problem for experimental design: observe the dog that didn’t bark, and count the lack of barks.
KevinDC
Jul 16 2021 at 2:25pm
Hey nobody –
I feel like there might be some editing issues with your comment – there’s an item 2 but not item 1, for example, and some sentences like “How WOULD a person the effectiveness of censorship as a strategy for limiting the spread of an idea?” seem to be, well, confusing to interpret. So just a few comments based on the bits I’m able to work with.
You say:
This could very well be true for all I know – I’m no history expert. But I’m not sure what the relevant implications are for the modern day – the Catholic Church, for all its might, is no match for an era of Twitter etc where information can be propagated at the speed of light. And the argument here was explicitly being made about the situation we face today, hence the comment about how “10 years ago these people would have been taking out ads in the back of the Weekly World News to get people to order their pamphlets on various snake oils.”
Regardless, assuming that’s true of the Catholic Church, I’m pretty sure you’d agree that their allegedly successful censorship in the past is a bad thing, not a good one. I doubt many people, even modern devout Catholics, are expressing gratitude for all the good censorship work the Catholic Church was responsible for in the past.
This seems in tension with what your history prof suggested about the Catholic Church. After all, if, as you say, by definition, the successful attempts at censorship are the ones we don’t hear about, then we wouldn’t have heard about the Catholic Church’s past successful censorship. It seems to me you’re trying to make your argument stronger by adding in “by definition” modifiers that aren’t actually justified. All your “by definition” modifiers seem to do is craft a theory which says “The only possible forms of evidence related to my theory that can be seen are evidence that disconfirm the theory, since by definition all the evidence that supports my theory is invisible.” Seems a bit Carl-Sagan-dragon-in-my-garage for me.
This just seems to be an instance of equivocation over how to define “censorship.” If you want to argue that, say, someone’s call not going through to to a radio talk show is a more sensible definition of “censorship”, you’re free to make that argument, but that’s clearly not how the term is being defined in the current context, so it doesn’t have any implications for the argument under discussion without committing a fallacy of equivocation.
One last bit – you suggest there’s a goal “to publicize opposition to the ideas being expressed.” There’s two different ways to interpret that phrase – putting forth opposition to an idea someone has expressed (aka, open debate and free discourse), or putting forth opposition to someone being able to express an idea in the first place (aka, censorship, in the way it was defined above). If the goal is to make sure that people “find out that the idea is contested,” the best way to achieve that is to contest the idea, not attempt to silence it. Probably one of the most common and rhetorically effective recruitment lines that conspiracy theorists use is “I’m telling you the hidden truth that they don’t want you to know, and they want to silence me because they know what I’m saying is true so they can’t allow it to be heard.” This line is only strengthened when the pro-censorship crowd is saying “Silence this point of view from being spoken – we won’t say anything to demonstrate what’s wrong with it, or contest it in anyway, we just insist that it not be heard.” This is the lifeblood of conspiracy theorists. It seems to me that we probably shouldn’t be actively seeking to reinforce that.
Phil H
Jul 17 2021 at 8:16am
Just my usual weary note to say: no, this is nonsense.
“The overall culture has changed to be pro-censorship”
This very handwavy claim can’t be proven one way or another, of course, but anyone who thinks for a moment about what the past was actually like will realise that there have always been cultural gatekeepers. One of the classic examples was the slogan “all the news that’s fit to print” – a clear reflection of the view that some things ought to be talked about in the public media, and other things ought not to be. The idea that censoriousness is new is just bizarre.
Thomas Strenge
Jul 18 2021 at 7:28pm
Fully agree. FDR’s wheel chair and JFK’s infidelities once were off limits. Can’t say that for today. I think the more disturbing aspect is that people don’t care when it’s their guy. I listened the other day to a comedy piece on NPR about Hunter Biden art selling for 500k. Any thinking person knows that is an influence peddling scheme. Majority of NPR listeners, presumably Democrat, don’t care. At least he’s not Don Jr!
Mark Z
Jul 18 2021 at 10:20pm
“All news that’s fit to print” refers to pertinence, no? I’d argue that a newspaper refusing to publish a piece detailing what kind of shoes various senators are wearing because they don’t think it’s relevant isn’t ‘censorious’ in the same way that a publisher refusing to publish books its owners/employees disagree with is. ‘Censoriousness’ mainly refers to censorship based on viewpoint. And “the overall culture has changed to be pro-censorship” likely depends on what the point of comparison is. Compared to 20 years ago? 50? 5? I think compared to 5-10 years ago, that statement is true. It’s a hard thing to quantify, but you’re ad hoc dismissal of it is itself pretty unconvincing. The author isn’t saying censoriousness is new, but you do seem to be saying that there’s some historical law that censoriousness is always and forever declining, and any claim that it’s gotten worse in the last n years can be dismissed, which I find pretty bizarre.
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