Soft Censorship Is Detrimental To Free Speech And Progress 软性审查不利于言论自由和进步

Ask most people in developed nations and they would tend to say that they are pro-freedom of speech. However, in reality, all human beings have their own biases and beliefs. We are raised with certain thoughts and beliefs from family, friends or society at large.

So as long as any discussion does not contradict what the people stand for, governments and population in general would would be fine. Challenge any en-grained practices and one would get immediately put down.

Very recently within Malaysia, the citizens experienced this with the sudden proposed Fake News Act being passed. This is did not come out of the blue. In fact the government had been receiving much negative news from news agencies abroad and through social media public and private message groups within the country.

The election was a few weeks away and to avoid losing, the government took drastic measures to block free speech; especially ones that would portray it in negative light. Fortunately for the country, the incumbent coalition-party lost anyway. Once again speech is somewhat freer and open political discussion is permitted.

This however is not unique to Malaysia. It is obvious that the more open a country thinks it is, the more subtle the censorship. Countries like the US and UK currently practice a form of soft-censorship on certain topics. Topics related to religion, immigration and race comes up, one can be assured that all major social media platforms are watching each and every user.

The moment any user posts something that is mildly seen to be as offensive, the post is immediately flagged, demonetized, blocked and in the worse cases the users completely banned. Neither youtube or Facebook wants to face the general public and be answerable for defending free speech. So they would rather err on the side of being overly cautious. In effect, even if free speech is permitted as a right of the citizens, in practice there is limited open discussion on these topics.

In fact, any society that closes itself off from open discussions is essentially shooting itself in the foot. All ideas no matter how good have a limited lifespan, much like fresh produce. Holding on to pass ideas beyond expiry is akin to consuming food pass expiry. In addition, using only one idea limits growth. In practice, various ideas need to be amalgamated to produce sustainable positive growth.

Open discussions always bring in fresh ideas, thoughts and often challenges existing beliefs. This can be thought of as positive disruption from within. Closing a society off from open debates severely restricts the growth of the society. Eventually such societies reach a certain size and is overrun by much more progressive ones.

As such, it makes complete rational sense to not only permit but encourage and even promote free speech, even if such speech may not be easily excepted by the public. This includes proving equal opportunities and incentives to all content equally with very few exceptions. e.g. the the content incites directly encouraging violence towards others.

Only when we can sit down and respectfully talk to someone who completely challenges our beliefs can we consider ourselves as truly mature beings.

询问发达国家的大多数人，他们倾向于说他们是赞成言论自由的。但是，实际上，所有的人都有自己的偏见和信仰。我们从小就有来自家庭、朋友或整个社会的某些思想和信仰。

因此只要任何讨论都不与人民的主张相违背，政府和人民就会很好。挑战任何根深蒂固的做法，一个人会立即倒台。

就在最近，马来西亚的公民经历了通过突然提出的“假新闻法案”。这并不是突如其来的。事实上，政府从国外的新闻机构以及通过国内的社会媒体、公共和私人信息团体收到了许多负面消息。

距离选举还有几周的时间，为了避免失败，政府采取了严厉的措施来阻止言论自由，特别是那些负面的言论自由。对这个国家来说幸运的是，执政的联合政府还是失败了。再一次，言论更加自由，公开的政治讨论也被允许。

然而，这并不是马来西亚独有的情况。很明显，一个国家越开放，审查制度就越微妙。像美国和英国这样的国家目前在某些话题上实行软性审查。有关宗教、移民和种族的话题出现了，可以肯定的是，所有主要的社交媒体平台都在关注每一个用户。

当任何用户发布轻微被认为具有冒犯性的内容时，该帖子会立即被标记，非授权，被封锁，更糟糕的情况是，用户将被完全禁止。
youtube或Facebook都不想面对普通大众，也不愿为捍卫言论自由负责。所以他们宁愿谨小慎微。实际上，即使允许言论自由作为公民的权利，对这些话题的公开讨论也是有限的。

事实上，任何一个不参与公开讨论的社会，本质上都是自鸣得意。所有的想法，无论有多好，都有一个有限的寿命，就像新鲜的农产品。坚持在过期后传递思想就像消费过期食物一样。此外，只使用一个想法就会限制增长。在实践中，需要合并各种想法，以实现可持续的积极增长。

公开讨论总是会带来新的想法，思想，并且经常挑战现有的信仰。这可以被认为是积极的。
封闭社会，使社会远离公开辩论，严重制约着社会的发展。最终，这些社会达到一定的规模，并被更进步的社会所超越。

因此，不仅允许、鼓励甚至促进言论自由是完全合理的，即使这类言论不容易受到公众的排斥。这包括对所有内容提供平等的机会和激励，只有极少数例外，例如，内容直接煽动对他人的暴力行为。

只有当我们可以坐下来并且尊重地与一个完全挑战我们信仰的人交谈时，我们才会认为自己是真正成熟的生命个体。