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The problem is that this administration and their ilk have incompetently misinterpreted 'censorship' to mean 'not letting random strangers use your private property to publish things you don't want them to.'

The only way "an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship in the United States" would be if they were an employee of the US government and they somehow violated US law to enact censorship.

To review: censorship is when the government doesn't allow you to say things with your printing press. Censorship is not when private parties don't let you use their printing press.



From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censor#dictionary...

> censor (verb): to examine in order to suppress (see suppress sense 2) or delete anything considered objectionable.

> also: to suppress or delete as objectionable

Government censorship is a very notable class of censorship, but the word has a broader meaning.


In the context of the Constitution, government censorship is the only thing that the United States cares about.

If we valued banning all censorship we'd make laws banning that. We don't: we value private property and free speech instead. Taking the rights of private parties to control what they publish tramples both of those rights. It's not complicated: you have a right to own your 'press' and do whatever you want with it. You don't have a right to someone else's press.


Censorship is free speech?


No they are saying choosing what to publish or not is part of private property rights.


If I was on a telephone call which selectively declined to transmit certain words or topics to the receiving party, I would consider that a form of censorship, even if it wasn't the government doing it.


Just use a different system that didn't do that, it's your choice.


To that extent, government censorship isn't really censorship either then? You can just move to a different country that doesn't censor you.


> You can just move to a different country that doesn't censor you.

The 'Network State' fascist bros (Balaji Srinivasan, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, et al) are the powers behind the throne of the current regime. They want to dismantle the United States and create modern-day fiefdoms where your corporate overlords dictate your rights. They are serious about doing it.

"You can vote with your feet and leave our fiefdom if you don't like the lack of rights" is literally their stance.


In the past, when "private property" was literally property, a whole town owned by a company (used to be very common), American courts decided that the company owning the town couldn't restrict free speech in that town.

These days the "property" in question is just a fancy telecom system. And it's already an established principle in America that the phone company doesn't cut off your line just because you're talking some political smack.


When that "private property" is a larger business than many countries and can literally sway elections then yes we should not treat it the same as your personal blog.




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