Doubt has kept me from moving forward, and if I start writing again, this is because the doubt has faded sufficiently. Not completely, however, and I am always ready to reconsider when faced with new information.

Since March 2020, censorship has swept over pretty much the whole world. It was both painful to bear and, for those who took a step back, very instructive:

1. Censorship doesn’t just happen to others, even our democracies have shown their limits in terms of freedom of expression.

In the previous post, the rationale that seemed to justify censorship was to protect social cohesion. Is this the only way? Is it the best? The answer is no to both.

There is a key reason why hate speech was so successful in Myanmar: the population there was not used to/educated about the Internet. And without this education to distance oneself from the information received, the mind is extremely vulnerable.

Censorship is about externalising and centralising our discernment (cf Michel Serres on externalisation). It entrusts it to an intermediary: a social media, a publication, a government. Exempting oneself from the task of discernment is a form of acedia, the famous intellectual laziness referred to in the 7 deadly sins.

Freedom of speech is a political choice, and while I held it as a higher value, some facts brought me to falter. Do you remember the recent issue with the Rohingyas in Myanmar](https://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/monde/asie/ashin-wirathu-moine-bouddhiste-on-l-appelle-le-hitler-birman_1915393.html)?

A bit of background: the country, which had been tightly locked up for decades under military rule, had just opened up to the internet. One of the first players to enter this new territory was Facebook, which offered zero-rating. Thus sponsored, its service was a lightning success in the country.