Talk:Censorship in the European Union

This page was proposed for deletion by Bon courage (talk · contribs) on 29 March 2025.

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Any secondary sources?

Wikipedia article must be based on secondary sources, yet this article seems to be based on primary/opinion pieces. If there is no decent basis for the article it needs to be deleted. Bon courage (talk) 14:42, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't there many academic/news sources here? Even the NYT article [1] you removed [2] as an op ed isn't one, it's a feature journalism article.

I can get behind removing the US government criticism for example, but I don't understand the objection [3] to a study by a reputable U.S. university (Vanderbilt) which is relevant to the question of whether the DSA causes legal content to be removed. JSwift49 15:08, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That would belong in the DSA article. For "censorship" we need WP:SECONDARY sources considering arguments that EU regulation does/not amount to censorship, not the primary sources advancing that argument in the first place. From a quick search, it seems most of the WP:BESTSOURCES academic content on these EU regulations frame them in terms of disinformation, not censorship. If so, the censorship framing would seem problematically POV. What is more, a WP:POVFORK of the articles on the regulations themselves needs to be avoided. Bon courage (talk) 15:38, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Re. Vanderbilt study I think it's relevant to the question of censorship since it relates to how EU laws apparently caused legal content to be removed.

~~I take your point but censorship is defined as the suppression of speech for any reason, even if benign.~~ This article is thus consistent with other Wikipedia articles in the series like Censorship in Australia, Censorship in France or Censorship in Germany. JSwift49 16:16, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's a crass definition, and applying it to sources not mentioning censorship is of course OR. We need secondary sources directly addressing the censorship question in those terms to satisfy WP:V and ensure WP:DUE weight. Bon courage (talk) 16:44, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have looked at multiple definitions of censorship and have found nothing to suggest that "censorship" excludes the suppression of speech considered harmful.

[4] Cambridge: the action of preventing part or the whole of a book, movie, work of art, document, or other kind of communication from being seen or made available to the public, because it is considered to be offensive or harmful, or because it contains information that someone wishes to keep secret, often for political reasons
or a system in which an authority limits the ideas that people are allowed to express and prevents books, movies, works of art, documents, or other kinds of communication from being seen or made available to the public, because they include or support certain ideas

[5] Oxford: The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.

[6] to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable or to suppress or delete as objectionable (this is for the verb 'to censor' as the noun definition is based on the verb)

[7] Britannica: the changing or the suppression or prohibition of speech or writing that is deemed subversive of the common good.

If you want to make the case more broadly that "censorship" is not the same as "suppression of speech", maybe there should be a discussion about that on the Censorship article, but as it stands it looks to me like simply a case of synonyms. JSwift49 17:09, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The point is sources need to be discussing, in terms, censorship, rather than Wikipedia editors reckoning they can do some analysis and spot it for themsleves (WP:OR). That is why WP:V says what it says. Wikipedia editors are notoriously clueless about censorship, thinking removal of copyright-infringing material or removal of stuff from private platforms for editorial reasons are "censorship". Bon courage (talk) 17:19, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's a fair point re. copyright, I hadn't thought of that.

I'll revise my statement, the definitions of "censorship" in my opinion clearly include government actions that suppress political speech, speech which content is considered harmful, etc. So I'm viewing it more as a substitution of phrases than a synthesis of ideas violating WP:OR. (There are several academic articles that use the term censorship, while others don't, but that's beside the point).

If there is an broader objection to the use of "Censorship" in the title, a different title (albeit inconsistent with "Censorship in xyz" country articles) could be "Restrictions on speech in the European Union". JSwift49 18:16, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Other stuff exists. Isn't this about how (per sources) the EU is responding to online disinformation? The early version of this article with the Musk/Zuckerberg stuff looked like it had been written by a stooge. Bon courage (talk) 19:02, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]