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.
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.
You are confused about the definition of the word censor:
> [to prevent part or the whole of a book, film, work of art, document, or other kind of communication from being seen or made available to the public, because it is considered to be offensive or harmful, or because it contains information that someone wishes to keep secret, often for political reasons](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/censor)
I understand Lawrence has reasons for his calls for censorship. All censorious people have reasons for their demands. They are still calls for censorship. Lawrence is free to not speak. He's even free to demand that media be censored. No one has argued otherwise.
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'm not denying that there were examples of creatives - like punks - who called for censorship. I'm describing a massive shift in scale and scope.
I did as you suggested because it's important to have a broad and balanced view of the issues. I used the query "Do you believe the scale and scope of creatives calling for censorship is worse, better, or the same today as it was 50 years ago? Provide a detailed response but summarise with one sentence at the end." I used Sol 5.6 Extra High (I'm deliberately avoiding Sol 6 right now due to some issues with hallucinations). I have a system prompt which emphasises accuracy and citations over speed.
I won't paste the entire passage (Hacker News bans and/or rate limits accounts which do that), but I will paste the summary. Note that I've read the analysis in full, and while I am more informed now, it has not changed my opinion.
> "On the specific question of creatives themselves calling for lawful expression to be suppressed, removed or deplatformed, I think the evidence points to it being broader in scope and probably more common today than 50 years ago, although formal government censorship was in some respects more coercive then."
Feel free to ask your research model the same question. I would encourage you to use a better paid model with careful system prompt, direction, and effort. Your model sounds like a petulant teenager.