What do people think about censorship

Join the campaign. On a blog or website » Paste the following code into a blog post or your website's template to show your support for free expression:. Facebook needs to be reined in. Lawmakers and everyday users are mad, having heard former Facebook employee Frances Haugen explain how Facebook valued growth and engagement over everything else, even health and safety.

We need This post is the first of two analyzing the risks of approving dangerous and disproportionate surveillance obligations in the Brazilian Fake News bill.

You can read our second article here. We get a lot of requests for help here at EFF, with our tireless intake coordinator being the first point of contact for many. Instead, users just need an answer to a simple question: what does this company With great influence comes great responsibility. Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms make many questionable, confounding, and often downright incorrect decisions affecting speakers of all political stripes.

For many years, Palestinian rights defenders have championed the cause of Palestinians in the occupied territories, who are denied access to PayPal, while Israeli settlers have full access to PayPal products. A recent campaign , led by Palestinian digital rights group 7amleh , calls on PayPal to adhere to its EFF filed an amicus brief in the U.

But these private censorship campaigns are best countered by groups and individuals speaking out and organizing in defense of the threatened expression.

American society has always been deeply ambivalent about these questions. On the one hand, our history is filled with examples of overt government censorship, from the Comstock Law to the Communications Decency Act.

On the other hand, the commitment to freedom of imagination and expression is deeply embedded in our national psyche, buttressed by the First Amendment, and supported by a long line of Supreme Court decisions. The Supreme Court has interpreted the First Amendment's protection of artistic expression very broadly.

It extends not only to books, theatrical works and paintings, but also to posters, television, music videos and comic books -- whatever the human creative impulse produces.

Two fundamental principles come into play whenever a court must decide a case involving freedom of expression. The first is "content neutrality"-- the government cannot limit expression just because any listener, or even the majority of a community, is offended by its content.

In the context of art and entertainment, this means tolerating some works that we might find offensive, insulting, outrageous -- or just plain bad. The second principle is that expression may be restricted only if it will clearly cause direct and imminent harm to an important societal interest. The classic example is falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater and causing a stampede. Even then, the speech may be silenced or punished only if there is no other way to avert the harm.

Many examples come to mind. A painting of the classical statue of Venus de Milo was removed from a store because the managers of the shopping mall found its semi-nudity "too shocking. A museum director was charged with a crime for including sexually explicit photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe in an art exhibit. American law is, on the whole, the most speech-protective in the world -- but sexual expression is treated as a second-class citizen. No causal link between exposure to sexually explicit material and anti-social or violent behavior has ever been scientifically established, in spite of many efforts to do so.

Rather, the Supreme Court has allowed censorship of sexual speech on moral grounds -- a remnant of our nation's Puritan heritage. This does not mean that all sexual expression can be censored, however.

Only a narrow range of "obscene" material can be suppressed; a term like "pornography" has no legal meaning. Nevertheless, even the relatively narrow obscenity exception serves as a vehicle for abuse by government authorities as well as pressure groups who want to impose their personal moral views on other people.

Justice John Marshall Harlan's line, "one man's vulgarity is another's lyric," sums up the impossibility of developing a definition of obscenity that isn't hopelessly vague and subjective.

And Justice Potter Stewart's famous assurance, "I know it when I see it," is of small comfort to artists, writers, movie directors and lyricists who must navigate the murky waters of obscenity law trying to figure out what police, prosecutors, judges and juries will think. A similar pattern is present when asked about this type of labeling for ordinary users.

The confidence gap between Republicans and Democrats remains present even among those who approve of this type of flagging. Americans by and large believe social media companies are censoring political viewpoints they find objectionable. Republicans — but not Democrats — are divided along ideological lines on the issue. While these overall views about censorship are on par with those in , there has been a slight uptick in the share of Republicans who think censorship is likely the norm on social media.

Views among moderate and liberal Republicans, as well as Democrats across the ideological spectrum, have not significantly changed since The share who say major technology companies equally support the views of conservatives and liberals has slightly decreased since , while the other two sentiments are statistically unchanged.

Public attitudes on this issue are highly partisan. There are also large differences when accounting for political ideology. Say "Alexa, enable the Pew Research Center flash briefing". It organizes the public into nine distinct groups, based on an analysis of their attitudes and values.

Even in a polarized era, the survey reveals deep divisions in both partisan coalitions. Pew Research Center now uses as the last birth year for Millennials in our work. President Michael Dimock explains why.

The vast majority of U. Use this tool to compare the groups on some key topics and their demographics.