Well that's just great
When I first created this site, I added a forum for discussion. I didn't put in any censorship parameters because at the time, it was really just limited to me, my friends, and their friends. Then I forgot about it. Apparently, it turned into a giant repository for porn links. I have removed it, since that is not at all what I'd like to be associated with. I'm also planning to change over to blog software with which I can better monitor comments so this doesn't happen again (I found out because this blog was comment-spammed this morning). So if you see a few changes in the next few weeks, that's why.
In light of all this, I'd like to ask your opinion. Is censorship always bad? I don't like the idea of censoring people from communicating, but I realize that I am limiting people to "relevant topics" by ridding my site of spamvertising content. So is it bad?
Thanks!
Labels: advertising, censorship, internet
3 Comments:
I don't think it's necessarily censoship that you're doing here(you're not taking away the freedom of people to spam) but you are filtering content just on your site for personal protection and relevance. For those reasons you are more than right to do so.
Well, I'd think of what you're doing as 'editing' rather than 'censoring.' This blog is ultimately a publication for which you are responsible (quite literally if the blog legislation you discussed below is passed). So, I have no trouble with you removing comments that you feel are irrelevant to the topic you've presented. This sort of filtering helps maintain the flow of information.
If you were the government, then I might have a problem. The First Amendment makes a good case for that not being ok. Though if some government site were comment spammed, I'd have trouble saying that they shouldn't be allowed to clean it up. Of course, I'd want them to take appropriate action to make sure that the comments they're deleting are purely commercial in nature, but I'm not even sure they'd be obligated to. The Amendment allows freedom of speech but doesn't require the government to provide a forum for it. Regardless, the First Amendment only applices to the government, so you're certainly in the clear from a legal standpoint.
So from a private sector perspective, I see no reason to allow businesses to advertise freely. Your blog asks for 'comments,' and porn ads are not comments. Remove them without guilt. Had your forum turned into a place where people carried on legitimate discussions about porn, then I bet you'd given the decision more thought. Though I'd still support you axing it since it's not something with which you want to be associated.
You also asked about cases in which censorship might not be bad. The most obvious example here is military censorship. Hiding your actions from the enemy is, of course, necessary during war. Knowing your views about war and violence, I suspect that this argument might not hold water for you, but it's probably the one most people would cite and the Supreme Court has supported that saying:
"The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.''
I don't think it's censorship either. It's not relevant, most importantly, you can make the case that spam actually threatens legitimate free speech on the internet: "...it is wrong because it threatens free speech on the Internet by making users unwilling or unable to participate, cutting off their access to specific areas or driving them off the Internet altogether" (Mark Roberts)
Spam definitely affects how I use a comment site or bulletin board. I'm afraid they'll grab my name or site and bug me, and plus it's just tacky and bothersome.
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