Pros and Cons of Censorship Review
Government

Pros and Cons of Censorship

With the increased use of internet technology, censorship is not only being practiced in print media, television, and speech but also in cyberspace. Censorship is the control of information viewed by the public. Government, private organizations, and various institutions enforce communication decency of the information shared to the public.

Pros:

1. Reduces hate speech in society: Some people use words that are meant to diminish others and shut down their efforts thus affecting them. Censorship will help reduce the malicious spread of hate speech and its impact on society.

2. Protect children from unhealthy content: Controlling what information is streamed through the media or TV channels helps protect children from unhealthy influences.

3. Minimize risks in national security: Censorship prevents some people from gaining access to certain types of information which when known will be a threat to national security. Confidential military information should be kept secret and in the hands of a few people.
4. Prevents airing too much violent
information which pollutes individual minds: Censorship limits exposure to too many vulgar and violent TV shows or movies which can impact the minds of people, especially the young generation, and make promote violence. Censorship will limit such exposures and increase the morals within the society.

5. Prevent access to copyrighted information: Censorship prevents attempts to access sensitive information by a certain group of people in order to control the narrative. Some sites can use censorship to prevent access to certain sites.

6. Censorship can curb conflict: The internet is littered with speeches, images, and videos that can be offensive to anyone. Censorship can do a lot in reducing the number of offensive content. The lesser the offensive contents, the more the society will remain in peace.

7. Censorship protects creative inventors and innovators: With censorship, innovators and inventors in our societies will be protected. This is part of the copyright law and it protects and affirms the first person as the true owner of the idea. Plagiarism can be very painful; hence, the need for proper protection. Imagine spending years to put together content, then on posting it, another person picks it up and takes credit for it. This can be very debilitating, especially for small-scale businesses.

8. Censorship can boost people’s knowledge: People tend to memorize what they read or hear on media platforms. And they can learn new words, tenses, ideas, and developments from there. With censorship, media contents will be authentic and with good grammatical constructions. Items that could spread falsity, tension, or negativity will be removed.

9. Censorship can prevent identity theft: A plethora of identity theft cases are reported yearly. When there is uncontrolled information circulation on the internet or any public space, then it is likely for people to become victims of identity theft. With free information flying everywhere, they may not even realize it until a crime is executed. Kids are vulnerable to identity theft and could become prime targets of dubious people. Censorship provides protection, as it stops uncontrolled access to people’s personal information.

10 Censorship is essential in creating a rating system: Censorship may piss us off at some points, but it also brings some positives in the rating system of contents. The rating system is very prevalent in entertainment content such as music, movies, etc. With proper censorship, every content will be rated. These ratings allow us to know beforehand whether particular content is appropriate for us to peruse or not. For example, Parents will know the music or video contents that are ideal for their kids to watch or read.

Cons:

1. Limits people from accessing career opportunities: We are in a world of censorship such that everything you do is always controlled or there is someone in charge. For example, all the food you eat is always approved for human consumption. Therefore, there is always someone who instructs how things are supposed to be done thus limiting your actions.

2. Limits one’s freedom of expression: In censorship, you can’t post anything you want without the risk of facing some legal actions. Posting some obscene information can get you arrested.

3. Affects the economy at all levels: When censorship blocks some content because it doesn’t meet decency standards, or it’s deemed offensive, then it affects the economic opportunities in the country. Some businesses will not advertise their product since their advertisement will be offensive to some people.

4. Expensive practice: It’s very expensive to monitor what kind of information is distributed to the public. Shutting down internet connections and the use of firewalls to prevent specific content from being viewed by the public can cost more than $ 100 million for a single country.

5. Reduce the overall intelligence of the public: Controlling what information is distributed to the public prevents them from discovering the truth of any event happening. This makes people term the little information communicated as fake news.

6. It is a form of dictatorship: Community leaders, politicians, and other leaders can use censorship to wreak havoc and control people. By limiting the kind of information victims can have access to, the leaders can manipulate their prey to see things through their eyes. More so, censorship is a tool that can be used to dictate what the leaders want and how it should be done.

7. It leads to abuse of the citizen: It is very difficult to control the spread of information. This is the reason why there are loopholes even in the midst of proper censorship. Let’s take the internet as an example; there are millions of new websites proliferating daily in cyberspace. While striving to censor the internet, cybercrime officials dig deep into research and analysis. They may be confused because of the advancement in hacking and artificial intelligence. In the end, they may abuse or accuse the wrong people.

8. It blocks people from having knowledge of the latest innovations: The internet is a hub of innovations as new ideas are posted daily. If censorship is put in place, people will remain in ignorance. They will not be aware of recent developments and technological advancements. Individuals can learn new things on the internet; I mean things that can not be found in books. If they are. not allowed access to this information, then they will be bereft of development.

9. It proliferates ignorance: Ignorant people are easily controlled and kept in oblivion as per the things happening around them. Unknowingly, they may be victims of injustice and corruption if strict censorship is put in place. They can continue living in ignorance and exploitation if there is censoring of information about corruption and injustice.

10 Censorship promotes personal gains: The people in charge of censoring information can use it to their individual advantage by approving the publication of information about their personal goals. They can use it to maim their adversaries. For instance, if the government is in charge of censoring the media, they can use it for their personal gain by allowing only the campaign or advertisements of organizations, groups, companies that are supportive and loyal to them.

Conclusion: Censoring is important in every society, but it comes with lots of pros and cons. It can lead to massive developments and progress, but can also be very problematic.