[In-person] Curiosity Café – Censorship

The word “censorship” is typically associated with overt exercises of government power, like book burnings, national firewalls, and arrests, which are often defended in the name of protecting public morals (whatever those may be). Today, however, obstacles to the circulation of content and ideas often come in the form of subtler “indirect” restrictions, dictated not by the state but by private platforms and market pressures. In 2022, Disney quietly withheld LGBTQ titles from its streaming catalogue in the Gulf states, with no announcement and no legal obligation to do so. On YouTube, journalists and content creators have described having to alter war coverage or avoid it altogether because the platform’s advertising system can make such reporting financially unsustainable. A 2024 investigation by The Markup found that, on Instagram, non-graphic images of war were being quietly demoted and users denied any right to appeal (the platform attributed these occurrences to a bug). In each case, no law was passed, no speech or content formally prohibited. Yet critics have argued that these de facto restrictions amounted to censorship by other means.

Were they right? At our upcoming Curiosity Café, moderated by Yiming Jia and Adrian Ma, we will explore the nature and implications of what we might call “soft” censorship, asking questions such as:

Is censorship still possible in the absence of aformalprohibition? Are the standards of what is and is not acceptable for public consumption being increasingly dictated by private companies? If so, who gets to challenge them?
What is the relationship between censorship and public morals? Where do the morals that censorship ostensibly protects come from? Is d