A leopard never changes its spots

Since the internet first appeared, it was considered that there would be put no more boundaries to
information sharing. Mostly, people from countries which passed through totalitarism, like
Roumania, believed internet to be the end of censorship. Moreover, internet is still seen
nowadays as a gate of free speech as in comunist countries like North Korea only 4% of
population has access to it.(USA TODAY paragraph 1) Although, a hidden censorship is
practised in democratic states. It is a paradox that the more the freedom of expression is talked
about, the easier the censorship is accepted as a given fact. This essay will try to explore some of
the means of censorship in our days.

Firstly, the myth of internet as a free speech locus should be broken because some cases of
banned information could be acknowledged. For example, Facebook was accused of removing a
post of a Pullizer- winner article written in the French newspaper Le monde. It was a photo of
a mammogram attached to an article about breast cancer and the criteria invoked is believed to
be the nudity as Facebook has some antecedents of the same kind as The Guardian is reporting.
(Hern) Of course, the pudicity, a constant characteristic of people even now, could be considered
as a social cause and, consequently, there are many ways of banning nudity: film and
photography blur, age recommendations, removing photos and even texts about it.

Secondly, as it can be seen in the introduction (the example of North Korea), there are still
governs who take under their control the flow of information available on the internet. From the
top ten internet censured countries: North Korea, Burma, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, Syria,
Tunisia, Vietnam and Turkmenistan (USA TODAY), the case of China seems to present the most
radical implication of the government because they search the web and delete contents that are
against the communist party. It is not simple interdiction, but flirtation and changing information
in accord with the party's views.

Thirdly, the Age of Internet has its specific expression of free speech that is blogging.
Apparently, everyone has the right to write everything on a blog, but it is really so? Erick
Ringmar explore this question in his manifesto. He writes about the influence of the power and
about the problems that are faced by a honest blogger who writes about less comfortable
subjects. Comfortable for whom?

In a democracy you can offend all you like as long as you dont say anything that has an impact
on corporate profits. In this way, the market becomes a threat to freedom. The market is today the
only authority that never needs to justify its power over us.(Ringmar, 133)

Some bloggers are threaten of losing their jobs if they continue blogging and this happens in
democratic countries. One possible solution for them would be anonymity, but readers don't
usually trust such sources. In other words, a conclusion of his book would be that no matter the
power, it won't let anyone speak bad about it.

Altogether, one can see that censorship is still an active presence in our democratic societies. The
truth is that almost everything is moved on the internet and so the censorship. My opinion is that
old customs don't fade away easily and censorship is a very old one, from the Plato's Republic to
the burning of the books of the Alexandria library this action of humans has embraced different
forms and so does today.
Bibliography
(electronic sources):
1. Top 10-censured countries. USA TODAY, Accessed on the 2nd of November 2016,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/02/05/top-ten-internet-censors/5222385/
2. Hern, Alex. Facebook censors Le Monde's mammogram screening photo, The
Guardian, Technology, Accessed on the 3rd of November 2016,
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/12/facebook-censors-le-monde-mammogram-
screening-photo-breast-anti-nipple-policy
3. Erik Ringmar, A blogger manifesto's. Free speech and censorship in the Age of internet,
pdf format, London and New York, Anthem Press, 2007