Curiosity Café: Censorship

We will be hosting our next Curiosity Café on Tuesday, May 19th from 6:00-8:30 pm at the Madison Avenue Pub (14 Madison Ave, Toronto, ON M5R 2S1). Come and hang out with us, grab food, and read through our handout from 6-6:30. Our structured discussion will run from 6:30-8:30pm with a 10 minute break in the middle.

The word “censorship” is typically associated with overt exercises of government power, like book burnings, national firewalls, and arrests, which are often defended in the name of protecting public morals (whatever those may be). Today, however, obstacles to the circulation of content and ideas often come in the form of subtler “indirect” restrictions, dictated not by the state but by private platforms and market pressures. In 2022, Disney quietly withheld LGBTQ titles from its streaming catalogue in the Gulf states, with no announcement and no legal obligation to do so. On YouTube, journalists and content creators have described having to alter war coverage or avoid it altogether because the platform’s advertising system can make such reporting financially unsustainable. A 2024 investigation by The Markup found that, on Instagram, non-graphic images of war were being quietly demoted and users denied any right to appeal (the platform attributed these occurrences to a bug). In each case, no law was passed, no speech or content formally prohibited. Yet critics have argued that these de facto restrictions amounted to censorship by other means.

Were they right? At our upcoming Curiosity Café, moderated by Yiming Jia and Adrian Ma, we will explore the nature and implications of what we might call “soft” censorship, asking questions such as:

• Is censorship still possible in the absence of a formal prohibition? 
• Are the standards of what is and is not acceptable for public consumption being increasingly dictated by private companies? If so, who gets to challenge them?
• What is the relationship between censorship and public morals? Where do the morals that censorship ostensibly protects come from?
• Is discomfort a legitimate reason to restrict the circulation of speech? Or is discomfort sometimes exactly the point?
• Censorship sends a message about what is acceptable and what isn't. To what extent are these messages internalized over time? 

Join us on Tuesday, May 19th, for a public and moral exploration of these questions and many others!

*hey community! Sophia here, Director of Community Programming. We ask that you consider that our ideal recommended amount for a ticket is now $15, and as you choose what to donate within the bounds of your own financial means, we ask that you keep in mind that your donation will go directly towards compensating those involved in making Curiosity Cafés happen so that we can keep doing this for you.

Please note that we also still have 5 free tickets available for our attendees. If paying anything at all is not financially feasible for you, or our ticketing system presents some other barrier for you, please contact our Director of Community Programming at [email protected]. These tickets will be first come, first served, no questions asked! You can expect to hear back from her within 72 hours.

For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to join us at our Curiosity Cafés and are wondering what they’re all about: every two weeks, we invite members of our community to come out to the Madison Avenue Pub to engage in a collaborative exploration of our chosen topic. Through these events, we aim to build our community of people who like to think deeply about life’s big questions, and provide each other with some philosophical tools to dig deeper into whatever it is we are most curious about.

Some accessibility-related information* about our event and the venue:

• This event involves a verbal discussion, with a handout to guide the discussion
• There will be a large-print version of the handout available
• We ask the staff at the Maddy to turn off the speakers playing music in the room we are in. Unless we end up in their “VIP” room upstairs (very unlikely!), this keeps background noise to a minimum.
• There will be earplugs available to tamper background noise
• There are about five steps up to the entrance of the Madison, and another to get in the door. In order to get upstairs, where we sometimes hold our events, there is another set of stairs that are quite steep. While we hope to be in the downstairs room, we cannot guarantee this until closer to the event date.
• There are two single stall bathrooms located downstairs that we will have access to. The other bathrooms, located on the main and upper floor, are gendered.
• Should you be accompanied by a support person, please contact us in advance so that we can add them to our guest list. Their ticket will be included, for free, as part of your pay-what-you-can ticket.

*We recognize that this list provides a far-from comprehensive picture of accessibility-related concerns you might have. Please feel free to contact our team at [email protected], or the Madison Avenue Pub (416-927-1722) with any other questions or concerns you might have.

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