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A petition for censorship
I believe that the various organisations that regularly offer to sign online petitions are a typical exploitation of the participatory dynamics enabled by digital technology: they regularly bring issues to the attention of the greatest audience, often acting as an early-warning system and helping place citizen pressure on politicians or companies that “act badly”.
This morning, I received an email from one of these organisations, whose purpose is to denounce the YouTube dissemination of climate-sceptic videos, and “worse”, profit-making from the fact that these videos are viewed millions of times. The purpose of the petition I was asked to sign was to put pressure on YouTube to ban these videos.
And here I wonder: in the name of a “truth” that a majority of facts and scientists seem to agree on (and which I have no reason to doubt), can we justify a ban? This is of course already the case, at least in France, on a whole range of other subjects (especially historical), but reading this petition, the questions that arise are :
- To what extent and in the name of what can we ban the expression of an idea?
- Under what conditions does the ban become counterproductive?
- Is there no better way to combat an idea than to ban its expression?
I will not sign this petition, even though I have already signed a number of similar petitions on the issue.
And to close my mumble I will quote Voltaire:
I don’t agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for you to have the right to say it.