I recently spoke with a friend’s father about my plans to read Fahrenheit 451, and I was surprised to hear him respond that he didn’t think the book was relevant any more. I hadn’t read the book yet, and wanted to avoid spoilers, so I didn’t press him for more details. Having now read the book, I have to disagree; even if censorship is not one of the many problems Americans are currently facing, I don’t think that makes the dangers of censorship irrelevant. However, I do find it interesting to think about how he might have reached the conclusion that censorship concerns have been superseded.
Today, rather than facts and ideas being censored by the US government, they are more often buried under an overwhelming glut of disinformation. The truth may be freely available and easily accessible, but if it never surfaces in one’s social media echo-chamber, it may never be seen. We seem to have entered a Disinformation Age, in which fake news propagates freely online, while generative ML models threaten to further flood our information channels with dubious material. A large swath of the public perception is being influenced by the disinformation, sowing confusion and redirecting discontent that might otherwise have been directed at people in power. The goals of censorship are being achieved without burning a single book!
What action can we take to see through the smoke and mirrors? The most obvious is to critically engage with all sources of information, confronting and fact-checking each new perspective. Even assuming this level of rigor were sustainable, it only helps the one; the situation of the general public is unchanged.
For a broader solution, can we fight fire with fire? Is removal (aka censorship) of the disinformation a valid approach? For truly bad faith content, like AI generated disinformation, I find this acceptable (though likely impossible to enact, given the challenges of identifying AI generated content). But the waters are further muddied by the people who have come to believe the disinformation. If we censor their “truth”, we stand to create or continue a cycle of politicized censorship. You can’t kill an idea (even the bad ones), and certainly not by trying to sweep it under the rug. The only way people will change their minds is if they do it themselves, perhaps with the aid of (keyword) friendly and respectful debate.
In the end, no matter what someone believes, we’re all just people trying to do what we think is best with the information we have. We can’t just amputate chunks of society we disagree with through censorship and repression; we must either change their minds, or coexist with them.