alt Hacker NewsNo doubt the platforms are a problem too, but I was referring to the creatives themselves. Just a few examples I can remember.
In 2020 dozens of Hachette employees walked out over the publisher’s decision to publish Woody Allen’s memoir. Hachette cancelled the book.
Tina Fey asked NBC to remove 30 Rock episodes from all distribution.
Bill Lawrence (creator of Scrubs), asked to have episodes removed.
John Ridley (Oscar winning screen writer) asked HBO to remove Gone with the Wind.
Neil Young threatened to leave Spotify if they didn’t remove Joe Rogan.
The 2020 “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign which included Sacha Baron Cohen, Katy Perry, Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Judd Apatow, Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman, Jamie Foxx, Michael B. Jordan, Mark Ruffalo, Rosario Dawson, and MANY more, demanded platforms and distributors and channels remove content ranging from political ads to discussions of COVID.
I just asked ChatGPT and got about 10,000 examples of famous creatives demanding censorship. It didn’t used to be this way.
> Unless you mean that there is less slurs and jokes against minorities, which is an improvement tbh.
Censorship is bad unless I agree with it. Then it’s good. Stunning levels of thought and reason.
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TV self-censored for years. Elvis was unfit for family viewing. Punks wouldn’t share stages with racists and ejected National Front supporters from gigs. Rock against Racism was founded partly in response to Eric Clapton’s pro-Enoch Powell racist remarks. Dead Kennedeys were not exactly coy about where they drew the line.
If you want medical analogies for COVID, AIDS disinformation is perfect. ACT UP and similar AIDS movements would have laughed you out of creative spaces for bringing misinformation about how AIDS was spread.
If you have ChatGPT tokens going spare, you can ask it for a balanced view of historical artistic deplatforming and self-censoring. I asked mine and, in classic one-liner machine-slop dunk, it said…
“The argument sounds like it is being made by someone under 40 who believes they’re living through a unique historical decline but refuses to read a book, or someone over 40 who missed the world around them. Ask them which they are.”
> I just asked ChatGPT and got about 10,000 examples of famous creatives demanding censorship.
Cool, I asked my computer mommy and got about 200,000 examples of creatives demanding less censorship
Bill Lawrence removed episodes because he and the cast hated that for years after they'd see people at halloween dressing as the characters in blackface, and realised that people were taking the wrong message from the episodes they'd made which were meant to mock the idea of people thinking it was OK to do blackface.
That isn't self-censorship, it's accepting that your work didn't read the way you wanted it to and deciding it's not worth having it out there under your name any more.
Freedom of speech also includes the freedom not to speak, and people should be allowed to say "I don't like this work of mine any more, I'm not continuing to publish it". If you advocate for enforced speech, you are the censor, just using a different tool.