[bkfunk]

If Random House declines to publish your book because they don’t think it will sell, is that censorship?

If I run a sci-fi bookstore, and I choose not to stock your book about political philosophy, is that censorship?

If it write an article that reviews your book (wherein, necessarily, I pick and choose what parts of your book I talk about, and also paraphrase [is that the same as “manipulating information”]), is that censorship?

When there is simply too much information for any person to consume, and even too much to be able to _evaluate whether To consume_, what does _not having censorship_ look like?

[Frost1x]

>If Random House declines to publish your book because they don’t think it will sell, is that censorship?

Yes. You're being censored in this case by the will of markets or perception of the will of markets (consumers at large), less so by the store owner due to systemic constraints they must operate in. Markets indirectly represent the will of mass consumers. There's a reason we have minority protections in government and chose a republic structure over pure democracy, to prevent oppression of the voices of the few by the masses.

>If I run a sci-fi bookstore, and I choose not to stock your book about political philosophy, is that censorship?

If you intentionally chose to ommit the book and it wasn't due to chance omission, perhaps because you hate the author, then yes, it's censorship.

>If it write an article that reviews your book (wherein, necessarily, I pick and choose what parts of your book I talk about, and also paraphrase [is that the same as “manipulating information”]), is that censorship?

It depends on how you choose that information and present it. Is it a representative sample of the book or are you intentionally cherry picking pieces of information, especially out of context, to represent a preconceived opinion you want to portray and not an actual summary? If so, the yes, it's censorship. If not, then no, it's not censorship.

I agree there are logistical constraints that makes reductionism a requirement. The key differences in all of these cases is intent. It's difficult to prove but the question isn't if you had to reduce information for logistic purposes but how and why you chose what to reduce. Did you reduce information for your advantage? Then chances are, it's censorship.

[jeremyjh]

>>If I run a sci-fi bookstore, and I choose not to stock your book about political philosophy, is that censorship?

>If you intentionally chose to ommit the book and it wasn't due to chance omission, perhaps because you hate the author, then yes, it's censorship.

They already told you, the reason the book is not published is because it is off-topic. The bookstore sells Sci-Fi books, and they choose not to sell other genres.

If that is censorship then this definition of censorship isn't useful for any discussion we're having right now.

[Frost1x]

Fair enough, I skimmed quickly and assumed (as you clearly noticed), so in that context it's not censorship.

[TheCoelacanth]

The way you're defining censorship, it's literally impossible to run a bookstore without censoring. You can't carry every book, you have to pick and choose which ones are worth promoting to your customers. If you carry a random selection of books, then your store will be filled with dreck that no one wants to read and you will go out of business.

[Frost1x]

Well, that's sort of an underlying problem with markets in general though, now isn't it? The mass of consumers create momentum that shift what is and isn't viable. It happens in all sorts of products, phones for example shifted to non-removable batteries.

Regardless to your personal stance on this issue, the mass of consumers were fine with it and therefore demand has dictated largely what's reasonably available to your average citizen--phones with difficult to swap batteries. There are still some options but they're scarce and require tradeoffs from most flagship phones.

That's with something less (yet increasingly) significant as a smart phone. When your product is information such as books, or education, such as in universities, suddenly you have markets and the masses dictating what's available and indirectly censoring content. Heck, it happens in science all the time these days. There are dominant groups and names in fields who hold significant sway, they often influence funding agencies and ultimately influence where scientists can viably perform research (unless they can self fund their work).

But yes, markets can and do censor based on demand. I don't blame a small bookstore owner in this context for censoring, it's a systemic issue they have little power over. As you point out they have to pick and choose based on demand signal, they're running a business after all, yet if the only source of the information can be obtained through bookstores, suddenly markets are indirectly dictating to bookstores who indirectly dictate to consumers what information is available.

Sometimes we want this effect, we want markets to help us pressure and bubble up certain products or solutions to the top, other times we might not want this to be the case (as in free speech and flow of information).

[Analemma_]

You're welcome to define censorship that broadly, if you wish, but if you do that it loses most of its negative connotation and becomes no big deal. If I take your definition of censorship, then censorship is fine and I have no issue with it. Which is a problem if that attitude meanders back to the actually bad kinds.