The Negative Consequences Of Internet Censorship

When it comes to internet censorship, there are mainly two points of view; those who believe in limitless internet freedom, whether it is freedom of accessing or sharing the internet contents, and those who prefer regulations imposed by the government for the sake of safety. Earlier in the human history, before the invention of the internet, both aforementioned ideologies were implied to other parts of the society, and the results are clear. Records are evident of what happened when people were given absolute freedom, without the fear of legal sanction, and how were the results different when borders were drawn to that freedom, preserving human rights? The internet is a part of the society and like all other parts, should be regulated by government …show more content…
Pornography is the depiction of human body and physical relationships in a fierce and violent way, to which unregulated internet can be a platform of growth. Cathleen A. Cleaver argues that “there are an estimated seventy two thousand pornographic sites on the World Wide Web alone, with approximately thirty-nine new explicit sex sites every day”(Cleaver,2011, p. ). If government does not play its role in regulating and censoring these websites, porn will be easily accessible on the internet, and even children can see those nude pictures and sexual scenes. This way children will get a totally wrong image of human dignity and equality, which eventually results in disrespecting women and devaluing relationships. We cannot afford to let our future generations think this way, and thus we should agree to the duty/right of the government in censoring sites like …show more content…
Julian York in an article, describing the reason for this censorship states that governments are afraid that people might discover something undesirable about their government and end up in conflict and protests against them .(2013, p. 3). It is true that responsible authorities display internet contents through “fractured lenses” (York, 2013, p.1) especially in the context of politics. But this doesn’t mean that they are putting us in darkness. We already have access to whatever we need to know. To the absurdity of this claim, if we were to know all political issues and interfere in each and every task of the government, why wouldn’t we be our own leaders and decide for our political issues ourselves instead of voting for the government authorities in elections, and choosing them as our political