Let’s Reverse Our “Silencing Culture”

by Mar 16, 20244 comments

It’s surprising how many ways our society has invented to control free speech. There are strong protections for free speech, but they are no match for the endless ways we can all be silenced.

For those like me who are professional authors, there are Internet firms who function as aggregators. If you upload your manuscript to them, they will digitally format it for you and then distribute it to forty-plus online services such as Spotify, iTunes, Kobo, Barnes and Noble and others.

This seemed like a good idea so I uploaded my manuscript to the Internet site, and it was immediately rejected by Apple, Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble, Bibliotheca, BorrowBox, Everand, Gardners, Hoopla, Kobo, Odilo, OverDrive, Palace Marketplace, Smashwords, Tolino and Vivlio—all websites that sell digital books. The reason I was given was that they objected to the references I made to a company who is also in the business of digital books—Amazon Inc. They asked me to rewrite my manuscript, so it did not refer to any company in the same business as theirs. Interestingly, they all had the same rule!

The origin of the word competition is the Latin, competere, which means “to strive together”. We have since made it mean almost the opposite—an expression of separateness, polarization, vilification, aggression and a violation of free speech.

This kind of paranoia represents the very worst of our competitive urges. It is behavior that doesn’t fit with my own values and so I have declined the opportunity to publish with this organization, thus establishing a self-imposed limitation on distribution of my latest book.

How are you censored and how do you rise above these efforts to silence you? Share your examples of others attempting to silence you and how you pushed back.