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An Online Hide and Seek As many of you know, the internet became exceptionally important in the last years which means a lot of information have been put out there for everyone to see. Since we can research about a lot of different topics online, we would not know if some things were hidden from us, which brings me to this question, “Did you know that we have censored information on the internet even in Canada?” In fact, almost every country has a different level of censorship, which is why I need to express that I am against this practice because it takes away our given right of freedom of expression, and because any individual given the power to censor information will censor everything he thinks is not right. To begin with, internet censorship’s definition by the Freedom Forum institute is “Freedom of expression refers to the ability of an individual or group of individuals to express their beliefs, thoughts, ideas, and emotions about different issues free from government censorship.” In simpler words, it is our right of accessing and form our own opinions of different topics without the government censoring something. This means that bad or good, any information should be accessible to the public so they can make their own idea about it. Accordingly, we should not only be able to access any information at any time, we should be in a position where we could also express any opinion if we desire to do so, which a censorship could ban. For example, in China, nearly 130k social media accounts and more than 12k websites have been shut down by the government between January and September 2020. They truly do not give their citizen a right to express anything contradictory. To pursue, internet censorship should not exist, but since it is already on the market, the government should not be given access to it. To start with, in their hands, the government would have too much power over the population. They would be able to delete freely any information they do not want the public to know. Moreover, if it happened and the population discovered how information was hidden from them, it could create tensions. Tensions between the population and the government or tensions inside the population which would put us all in an impossible situation. Not to mention that in between the government’s hands, internet censorship would be use to protect and improve their online image instead of being used for great possibilities. However, some people say that internet censorship could help to protect young people from the horrible things internet can hide. I could not disagree, it would most certainly help to hide bad images, videos or information from children and teenagers. It would even protect adults from sites that uses disinformation to be more popular. Nevertheless, we can all learn and teach to others how to research responsibly while navigating online and how to avoid certain sites or words. Internet censorship is, consequently, non-necessary. To summarize, I am in opposition to the idea of internet censorship, mostly by the government. Therefore, I encourage speaking and expressing your opinion online as long as it is politely done. Finally, we can expect, sadly, a more intense internet censorship in Canada in the months to come, if we trust the article of Brian Lilley called “Trudeau’s internet censorship bill must be stopped” in Toronto sun. Works cited Freedom Forum Institute, definition of freedom of expression Reporters without borders, “China’s Cyber Censorship Figures”.

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