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Trump's Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship on May 28, 2020

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Trump's Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship on May 28, 2020

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Sec. 2.  Protections Against Online Censorship.  (a)  It is the policy of the United States to foster clear ground rules promoting free and open debate on the internet.  Prominent among the ground rules governing that debate is the immunity from liability created by section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act (section 230(c)).  47 U.S.C. 230(c).

Sec. 3.  Protecting Federal Taxpayer Dollars from Financing Online Platforms That Restrict Free Speech.  (a)  The head of each executive department and agency (agency) shall review its agency’s Federal spending on advertising and marketing paid to online platforms.  Such review shall include the amount of money spent, the online platforms that receive Federal dollars, and the statutory authorities available to restrict their receipt of advertising dollars.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/

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Censorship is something that takes place in every country all around the world. Not all countries share the same forms of censorship or the same amounts of censorship, but in one way or another, all societies are affected by it. In a general sense censorship is the supervision and control of the information and ideas that are circulated among the people within a society.
https://sites.psu.edu/worldwidewomen/censorship-effects-on-society/

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Major Censorship in Authoritarian Countries

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Major Censorship in Authoritarian Countries

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Under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to seek and receive news and express opinions. These 10 countries flout the international standard by banning or severely restricting independent media and intimidating journalists into silence with imprisonment, digital and physical surveillance, and other forms of harassment. Self-censorship is pervasive.

In the top three countries–Eritrea, North Korea, and Turkmenistan–the media serves as a mouthpiece of the state, and any independent journalism is conducted from exile. The few foreign journalists permitted to enter are closely monitored.

Other countries on the list use a combination of blunt tactics like harassment and arbitrary detention as well as sophisticated surveillance and targeted hacking to silence the independent press. Saudi Arabia, China, Vietnam, and Iran are especially adept at practicing these two brands of censorship: jailing and harassing journalists and their families, while also engaging in digital monitoring and censorship of the internet and social media.
https://cpj.org/reports/2019/09/10-most-censored-eritrea-north-korea-turkmenistan-journalist/

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List of Most Censored Countries (Most to Least)

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List of Most Censored Countries (Most to Least)

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Eritrea
North Korea
Turkmenistan
Saudi Arabia
China
Vietnam
Iran
Equatorial Guinea
Belarus
Cuba

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Solution - Transparency and Freedom of Speech Rights

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Solution - Transparency and Freedom of Speech Rights

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By advocating for repercussions for social media platforms that practice censorship, we are merely treating the symptom of a much more fundamental problem, i.e., government intervention. Rather, we should be advocating for the splintering of all governmental partnerships with firms such as Facebook, among others. It is these economic interventions that fundamentally stymie voluntary freedom of association and replace it with militant, state-enforced censorship.

Those who are truly against censorship will let the market gradually filter it out. One has to support the property rights, and consequently, free speech of his political enemies in order to uphold that of his. Thus we must advocate for a system in which the state doesn’t take sides, nor try to fix the consequences of interventionism through further intervention.

Just as in the physical realm, individuals on the internet associate with whom they have shared interests. Market mechanisms have allowed for the exercising of this freedom of association, and state intervention only blurs the lines. Let the “safe space junkies” and the “rugged individualists” go their separate ways.
https://fee.org/articles/the-solution-to-social-media-censorship-is-simple/

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Media companies are supposed to serve the public interest. Sometimes that's at odds with the conglomerate owners who control traditional media voices.

Such was the case when The New York Times reported that executives from MSNBC owner General Electric and Fox News Channel owner News Corporation decided it wasn't in their corporate interests to allow on-air hosts Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly to trade on-air attacks. While the jabs seemed mostly personal, there was news that came out of them.

The Times reported that O'Reilly uncovered that General Electric was doing business in Iran. Although legal, GE later said it had stopped. A cease-fire between the hosts probably wouldn't have produced that information, which was newsworthy despite the apparent motivation for getting it.

In another example, cable TV giant Comcast faced a unique charge of censorship. Shortly after the Federal Communications Commission approved its takeover of NBC Universal, Comcast hired FCC commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, who had voted for the merger.

While some had already publicly denounced the move as a conflict of interest, a single tweet is what unleashed Comcast's wrath. A worker at a summer film camp for teenage girls questioned the hiring through Twitter and Comcast responded by yanking $18,000 in funding for the camp.

The company later apologized and offered to restore its contribution. Camp officials say they want to be able to speak freely without being hushed by corporations.
https://www.thoughtco.com/how-media-censorship-affects-the-news-you-see-2315162

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The U.S. military, intelligence, and diplomatic operations function with a certain amount of secrecy. That confidentiality is regularly challenged by whistleblowers, anti-government groups or others who want to lift the lid on various aspects of the U.S. government.

In 1971, The New York Times published what are commonly called the Pentagon Papers, secret Defense Department documents detailing the problems of American involvement in the Vietnam War in ways the media had never reported. The Richard Nixon administration went to court in a failed attempt to keep the leaked documents from being published.

Decades later, WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange came under fire for posting more than a quarter-million secret U.S. documents, many involving national security. When The New York Times published these U.S. State Department papers, the U.S. Air Force responded by blocking the newspaper's website from its computers.
https://www.thoughtco.com/how-media-censorship-affects-the-news-you-see-2315162
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https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2010/06/11/why-classified-secrets-should-be-kept-from-the-public

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In most instances, it does not. So a choice has to be made on how to describe the details of a crime in a way that helps the audience understand its atrocity without offending readers or viewers, especially children.

It's a fine line. In the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, the way he killed more than a dozen people was considered so sick that the graphic details were part of the story.

That was also true when news editors were faced with the sexual details of President Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky and the accusations of sexual harassment Anita Hill made about then-U.S. Supreme Court justice nominee Clarence Thomas. Words that no editor had ever thought of printing or a newscaster had ever considered uttering were necessary to explain the story.

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This is probably the least controversial form of media censorship. For instance, when a minor commits a crime, their identity is concealed to protect them from future harm—so they aren't turned down from getting a college education or a job, for instance. That changes if a minor is charged as an adult, as in the case of violent crime.
Most media outlets also conceal the identity of rape victims, so those people don't have to endure public humiliation. That was not the case for a brief period in 1991 at NBC News when it decided to identify the woman accusing William Kennedy Smith (part of the powerful Kennedy clan) of raping her. After much public backlash, NBC later reverted to the common practice of secrecy.
Journalists also protect their anonymous sources from having their identity exposed for fear of retaliation. This is especially important when informants are individuals highly placed in governments or corporations who have direct access to important information.
https://www.thoughtco.com/how-media-censorship-affects-the-news-you-see-2315162

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Illustrating this point is a curious fact: Censorship is flourishing in the information age. In theory, new technologies make it more difficult, and ultimately impossible, for governments to control the flow of information. Some have argued that the birth of the internet foreshadowed the death of censorship. In 1993, John Gilmore, an internet pioneer, told Time, “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
Governments went from spectators in the digital revolution to sophisticated early adopters of advanced technologies that allowed them to monitor journalists, and direct the flow of information.
Today, many governments are routing around the liberating effects of the internet. Like entrepreneurs, they are relying on innovation and imitation. In countries such as Hungary, Ecuador, Turkey, and Kenya, officials are mimicking autocracies like Russia, Iran, or China by redacting critical news and building state media brands. They are also creating more subtle tools to complement the blunt instruments of attacking journalists.
https://archives.cjr.org/cover_story/21st_century_censorship.php

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Earliest Cases of Censorship in History - Ancient China

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Earliest Cases of Censorship in History - Ancient China

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Whether or not the typical Chinese government was indeed oppressive, effective control of information was lodged in the authorities, since access to the evidently vital public archives of earlier administrations was limited to a relative few. In addition, decisive control of what was thought, and how, depended in large part on a determination of what the authoritative texts were—something that has been critical in the West, as well, in the establishment of useful canons, both sacred and secular. Thus, Richard McKeon has suggested, “Censorship may be the enforcement of judgments based on power, passion, corruption, or prejudice—political, popular, elite, or sectarian. It may also be based on scholarship and the use of critical methods in the interest of advancing a taste for literature, art, learning, and science.”

https://thegreatchinesefirewall.weebly.com/history-of-censorship-in-china.html
https://www.britannica.com/topic/censorship/History-of-censorship

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Earliest Cases of Censorship in History - Ancient Greece

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Earliest Cases of Censorship in History - Ancient Greece

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The scope of a city-state’s concern was exhibited in the provisions it made for the establishment and promotion of religious worship. That “the gods of the city” were to be respected by every citizen was usually taken for granted. Presiding over religious observances was generally regarded as a privilege of citizenship: thus, in some cities it was an office in which the elderly in good standing could be expected to serve. A refusal to conform, at least outwardly, to the recognized worship of the community subjected one to hardships. And there could be difficulties, backed up by legal sanctions, for those who spoke improperly about such matters. The force of religious opinions could be seen not only in prosecutions for refusals to acknowledge the gods of the city but perhaps even more in the frequent unwillingness of a city (no matter what its obvious political or military interests) to conduct public business at a time when the religious calendar, auspices, or other such signs forbade civic activities. Indicative of respect for the proprieties was the secrecy with which the religious mysteries, such as those into which many Greek and Roman men were initiated, were evidently practiced—so much so that there does not seem to be any record from antiquity of precisely what constituted the various mysteries. Respect for the proprieties may be seen as well in the outrage provoked in Sparta by a poem by Archilochus (7th century BCE) in which he celebrated his lifesaving cowardice.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/censorship/History-of-censorship

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Among the heirs of Greece and Rome and of Israel were the Christians of varying professions. Perhaps the most dramatic form of censorship in Christendom was that displayed in the development by the Roman Catholic Church of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a list of proscribed books, the origins of which go back (in a primitive form) to the 5th century CE and which continued to have official sanction well into the 20th century. The most spectacular instance of the silencing of a thinker of note may well have been the restrictions placed upon Galileo in 1633.

It is difficult to distinguish religious and nonreligious elements in some of the more celebrated controversies of the medieval Christian world, just as it is today among Islamic peoples. The persecutions of witches—which ranged across much of Europe from the 14th to the 18th century and cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives—can be understood as due to various political, social, and psychic disturbances as well as to strictly religious differences.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/censorship/Medieval-Christendom

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Censorship has followed the free expressions of men and women like a shadow throughout history. In ancient societies, for example China, censorship was considered a legitimate instrument for regulating the moral and political life of the population. The origin of the term censor can be traced to the office of censor established in Rome i 443 BC. In Rome, as in the ancient Greek communities, the ideal of good governance included shaping the character of the people. Hence censorship was regarded as an honourable task. In China, the first censorship law was introduced in 300 AD.
https://fee.org/articles/the-solution-to-social-media-censorship-is-simple/