Are we playing "what censorship is OK censorship" now? Who determines that "pretty clear difference?" Isn't the point of being against censorship is that nothing is above the interests of public scrutiny? Partial censorship seems fundamentally contradictory in terms of the underlying moral justification.
>Are we playing "what censorship is OK censorship" now?
Yes, obviously. Nobody is forced to have an absolutist position on censorship just like it's mostly silly to have an absolutist position on anything else.
>Who determines that "pretty clear difference?"
In this case Google, which is a private business. In other cases the government, or the courts. Depends on the issue at hand.
There's nothing contradictory about partial censorship in the same way there's nothing contradictory about having a speed limit.
And it even varies by culture. US media reporting on crimes in Germany tend to get confused (to the point that at least once they suspected some public cover up attempt) that they won't get the names of arrested suspects - that's part of our approach to privacy here, while apparently having the names out is considered a mechanism against misconduct by the police in the US (at least that's how it was explained to me when I asked why the names are always public).
I can follow both arguments but there's only room for implementing one in any given society. Societies overlapping like they do now (thanks to globalization and, to no small part, the internet) doesn't make that easier.
I mean going by a lot of American's perception, only the US way is the correct way, so it must mean that Germany is doing some form of cover up! To make things even better, Germany should ditch its civil law for common law! /s
Deleting spam is universally agreed upon as OK censorship. I think it's viewed as OK because everyone can see that many conversation forums can't even work if they're flooded with spam.
And to head off the "no, deleting spam is clearly distinct from censorship," imagine you write a book, so we're dealing purely with ideas.
Obviously, for anyone to read it, you have to promote it. If you post it in too many places or are too "hypey", you'll quickly get banned as spamming. You got censored, there's no way around it.
So we've always been in the "what censorship is OK" realm.
If you interpret freedom of speech as freedom of opinion, the sentence fragment "communist bandit" is a statement of opinion that should unequivocally be protected, whereas that isn't quite as clear cut for the name as such of a specific person. (Note that I think that the prohibition on the name is at this point completely moot anyway)
