Slashdot Mirror
Survey Reveals Americans Support Blog Censorship
renai42 writes "A new survey has revealed that Americans overwhelmingly support strong censorship for blogs, even though a substantial amount have never actually been to one. Eighty percent of the 2,500 respondents did not believe that bloggers should be allowed to publish home addresses and other personal information about private citizens. However, more than one-third of respondents had never heard of blogs before participating in the survey, and only around 30 percent of participants had actually visited a blog themselves."
I don't think it has nearly as much to do with the fact that the
respondents have never been to a blog, but more to do with the fact
that the question is worded such that they are bound to answer in a
given way. Mark Blumenthal points out:
"The error is the incorrect belief that there is a "right" or
"unbiased" way to ask a question about any given public issue. There
is no such thing. Everyone who works within the polling field is well
aware that small changes in wording can affect the ways in which
respondents answer questions. This approach leads us into tortuous
discussions of question wording on which reasonable people can
differ. Further, as you have pointed out many times in the past,
random variation in the construction of the sample or in response
rates can skew the results of any single poll away from the true
distribution of opinions in the population."
Given the question in the survey: "[do you] believe that bloggers
should be allowed to publish home addresses and other personal
information about private citizens?" Of course they are going to say
no. They would say so regardless if it were bloggers, firemen or
priests. It's like asking if you think children should have enough to
eat, everyone is going to say yes, even if it is attached to some dumb
bill raising taxes on golf balls.
What should we do then? Mark Blumenthal goes on to say, "The answer is
NOT to find a single poll with the "best" wording and point to its
results as the final word on the subject. Instead, we should look at
ALL of the polls conducted on the issue by various different polling
organizations. Each scientifically fielded poll presents us with
useful information. By comparing the different responses to multiple
polls -- each with different wording -- we end up with a far more
nuanced picture of where public opinion stands on a particular issue."
Makes sense to me.
--greg Vulcan quiescent... Q: What machine shutdown with this message?
It's pro-personal privacy. It wouldn't matter if you replaced "blog" with "Tv news" or "newspaper" or "radio" people would still say they don't want their addressed published in the media.
Just because someone hasn't heard of or visited a "blog" doesn't mean they can't be of the opinion that "home addresses and other personal information about private citizens" shouldn't be posted online, whether it's on a "blog" or what we colloquially call a "web page".
More from the survey:
Fifty-two percent of those surveyed said bloggers should have the same rights as traditional journalists, while 27 percent did not express an opinion.
[...] most respondents classed bloggers in the same category as journalists when it came to free speech [...]
[...] most people used blogs to obtain information about politics or current events.
This isn't about "blogging". The personal information bit was about what usually constitutes harassment, that just happens to come in the form of a blog.
God I love these misleading, scare-tactic titles. "AMERICANS SUPPORT BLOG CENSORSHIP", which of course brings to mind nasty, ignorant, redneck religious right wanting to censor Common Dreams and DailyKos. No, morons. They do not believe that bloggers should be allowed to publish home addresses and other personal information about private citizens. All of a sudden that equates to wholesale BLOG CENSORSHIP? And yes, I realize that any censorship - even of that information - is still censorship, but let's get a freakin' grip, here, before people start talking about the "good little sheeple doing what Monkey Boy Bush tells them" etc., ok?
Survey says: highschoolers across the country think NEWSPAPERS should be censored. I'd be astounded, frankly, if these same people a few years later decided to support freedom of speech on all mediums.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
I'm in favor of my home address being posted on the Internet.
Man, Slashdotters will do ANYTHING to try and meet a female, won't they?
Of course not.
People are willing to censor blogs? Does this surprise anyone?
I saw an article (sorry, no reference) where the researchers took a poll to see if people thought certain things should be allowed. They rewrote the Bill of Rights to they'd be unrecognizable to the casual reader, and they asked people if each amendment should be allowed. For each amendment in the Bill of Rights, many (if not most) thought that the right need not be constitutionally protected.
It's not that people agreed strongly with the idea of preventing the government from forcing the quartering of soldiers. It's that most people are so ignorant that they don't know why we have certain protections in place in the Constitution. Freedom of speech? Naw, the government should be able to censor. Freedom of the press? Naw, the press should be required to get government approval for items published. The results were amazing and disturbing!
The point is too many people in America are so comfortable that they take their rights for granted. When people spend more time worrying if a certain entertainer is wearing slutty clothes than they did considering whether the government had given enough (or even correct) justification about going to war and killing hundreds of thousands of people, you know that a country has its priorities screwed up.
It's sad but patriots have died to protect these freedoms and most people don't give a damn. But that's why we have our Constitution: to protect the public from its own shortsightedness.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
I detect a bit of bias on the part of the submitter. Who cares if one third of the respondents hadn't visited a blog? They still wouldn't want their addresses or phone numbers published on the Internet. Who would? Would the submitter? I think this is an attempt to stir up the masses with references to "censorship."
It could be argued that publishing such information is a violation of a person's privacy. Free speech extends so far that it does not violate the rights of another person.
The article title is very misleading - from the summary:
Eighty percent of the 2,500 respondents did not believe that bloggers should be allowed to publish home addresses and other personal information about private citizens.
Banning people from publishing the personal details of others is perfectly fair. This is nothing to do with 'unsuitable' content. While the article goes into more detail this appears to be more about privacy than regular censorship based on mature content. This just appears to be slashdot trying to kick off a load of censorship arguments and get more ad hits.
Notice how the poll questions are essentially asking the poll respondents about PRIVACY issues (bloggers spilling PERSONAL data online about politicians, judges, and celebrities). But this article is trying to sell those results as evidence that the public supports cracking down on political blogs using campaign finance laws.
You have here a first rate example of the economic elite using mass media propaganda.
They have been doing this for over 100 years here in America.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
This isn't about unsuitable content or privacy, it's a poll with questions designed to stir up trouble. Addresses are public information. You may not like someone posting your address on their blog, but you can't stop them, or anyone else, from figuring out what your public address is. If it's information that is private, sure this is an issue of privacy, but that's not what the article says, it says "home addresses", starting us off right away with the main bit of personal info being totally public.
The problems occur when you have sites/blogs that are encouraging others to commit violence/etc. against the people they're posting about, but current laws cover this. I remember an anti-abortion website getting in trouble because the courts found they were actively encouraging people to kill the doctors they provided info about on their site.
The solution to bad polls like this is easy. If the pollers refuse to ask more straight forward questions, post their home addresses on your blog.
The solution is to publish the exact wording of the actual questions. (also might be good to publish the exact method of choosing the pool of questionees)
But the exact wording of the questions would, to a certain degree, "open-source" opinion polling.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I must disagree with your arguments. You speak from the position of enlightened hopefullness - you hope anonymous bureaucrats won't take things too far, since you would not yourself (you feel). This is the sort of cowed, wishful thinking that got us the Department of Homeland Security.
This is, at heart, a question of scale. In how many cases is the release of "private" information by bloggers 1) possible, 2) not remediable under existing laws? Answer: damn little. Potential for rediculous escalation and abuse of power? Certain.
Let consider some examples: some disgruntled employee goes and whines in his blog about his boss, and publishes his home address on the page, with the implication that someone should go and egg the boss's house. Ok. How many people will seriously do that just because they read that on the web? Maybe a few - but they would be looking for trouble in any event, and this is simply a different focal point. Vandalism is an offence. If they get caught, there will be some legal trouble, and the boss has to garden hose his house for a bit. Case settled.
Another, more serious case: someone with access to medical records finds info on a person they don't like and publish it. Now it's on the web, i.e. for everyone to see. This is serious. Serious enough that the offended person can have recourse to full strength of laws about privacy and god knows what else (IANAL). The person is sued, fired from his condifential job, and probably become unemployable. Troubling for the victim - yes. But if they take action within the civil, personal scope, ultimately self-correcting. It's true that the person who would think of violating their professional ethics to this extent is already highly unbalanced, should not have been employed there, and the Internet facilitates (but by no means is the sole cause/avenue) for such behaviour. However, that's the reality of the changing world - more info available nearly-instantly to everyone.
Now your solution. "'checked' censorship". Checked by whom?! "Who watches the watchers" isn't a new question - it's as old as sin. The Romans even knew about it. As you have pointed out, the censorship is difficult. Read: unenforceable. How in the world are you going to do this: hire more federal employees to check every online forum and post? Have the Department of Online Blogging? Only blogs hosted by the Feds are legal? Signing up to their account? What are you talking about? This is about as rational as Argentina requiring IP records for 10 years on all connections. It's beyond delusional.
The most disturbing thing is that people are in favor of government supervision in things that they don't even know about. This is "Big Daddy White Father Knows Best" attitude at it's finest. This is what the pioneer descendants of Lewis and Clark have turned into? A country of savage surviving badasses that hacked and slashed their way across the country, worked, sweated and died as rugged individualists, *this* is what they've become? A people in favor of having some pencil-neck bureaucrat in a Washington Office Ok-ing the publication of even the garbage that they post online? What next? The Office of Bathroom Permission? Yes, Citizen 8849393, you may visit the bathroom now. Citizen 4921993 - you have made 3 unauthorized bathroom visits in the last 2 days. How about you explain that behavior?
Oh my country! What have you done to yourself!