censorship

Hugo nominees mysteriously declared ineligible

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary News and tagged censorship China conventions fandom science fiction on by

The detailed statistics for the 2023 Hugo Awards voting are finally out, and they’ve triggered a controversy. A number of nominees were declared ineligible without explanation.

Kevin Standlee, who has played important roles in running many fan conventions, noted:

An overwhelming majority of the members of WSFS who voted on the site of the 2023 Worldcon (at the 2021 Worldcon in DC) selected Chengdu, China as the host of the 2023 Worldcon. That meant that the members of WSFS who expressed an opinion accepted that the convention would be held under Chinese legal conditions. Furthermore, those people (including me) who suggested that there might be election irregularities were overridden, shouted down, fired from their convention positions, and told that they were evil and probably racist for even suggesting such a thing.

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The Substack controversy

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged censorship Internet Substack on by

A lot of people have lately been complaining that Substack has only narrow restrictions on the content it allows. Some aren’t just complaining but are leaving the platform. The issue is “racist or bigoted speech”, and in some cases, “explicitly Nazi” material.

It wouldn’t bother me if Substack had somewhat broader restrictions on content, but it’s a dangerous path to go down, and I’m sure they know it. Deciding whether something violates content restrictions is often tricky, and sites with lots of user-generated content rely on software and people under time pressure to decide. They generate a lot of false positives. On pre-Musk Twitter, I was suspended for making a joke about the health hazards of Krispy Kreme, for recommending a sharp blade to separate uncut book pages, and for objecting to an endorsement of mass murder. The innocent were punished more severely than the guilty, since reinstatement required admitting to a violation of the rules.
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Cancel culture goes mainstream

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged censorship education liberty on by

“One down. Two to go. This forced resignation of the president of @Penn is the bare minimum of what is required.”

That’s the kind of language you might expect from the Minister of Truth in a socialist dictatorship. It’s from Elise Stefanik, a Congresswoman from New York. The offense for which Stefanik and many others are seeking to remove three university presidents is the failure to regard advocacy of genocide unconditionally as harassment.
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A legal threat against news organizations

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged censorship Hamas Iowa liberty on by

According to a Des Moines Register article, fourteen state attorneys general have accused the New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN, and Reuters of serious crimes. The accusations appear highly dubious. The claim is that these news organizations have paid freelance reporters who have ties to Hamas and have thereby committed the crime of “material support for terrorism.”

A Fox News article corroborates the main points and adds some details. I don’t consider Fox News a very reliable source, but when a news outlet makes the people it generally supports look bad, it’s more credible, and the Fox News article has a bit more nuance than the Register article.
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