The Forbidden Internet

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Sometimes we look back and remember how things were better before. It's a false memory, of course, because the world has actually become a better place. But there are things we could learn from the way things were traditionally; in other words, cave into peer pressure from dead people.

In the days of Pluto being a planet and people not putting weird sheet in coffee, there were newspapers, TV and radio representing media, and phones and letters representing communication between people. The privacy of communication and the right to say things were generally respected: phone companies wouldn't butt into your right to express opinions and wouldn't have to carry responsibility for your speech, either. Media channels could choose which ads and stories they would publish, but they also assumed responsibility for everything they aired or printed. Pretty simple and fair, isn't it?

Power in oversensitive hands

A muscular man without a shirt lifting a kettle ball in front of a red log house.

These days giant media corporations use bots to monitor your private messages, filter triggering or otherwise unwanted content (even if it's entirely legal and doesn't hurt anyone) but wash their hands off the case when they let actual plans to commit crime go unchecked. Sounds like having the cake and eating it, too! Too bad for the rest of us, though.

Take the picture above, for example. A sight to behold, isn't it? But if we 'shopped female nipples on Fruity Rudy - or his nipples on a female, we forgot which way the forbidden thing is - we'd be kicked in the nuts by certain companies for violating their precious little policies.

Play along

Where is this rabbithole heading? Bear with us, just take one more step and you'll be close. Keep going! The game is what it is: certain words have to be behind so many clicks to protect the feelings of corporate snowflakes. We'll play along for now, but when we achieve Total World Domination, things are going to change.

Varusteleka boxes on a conveyor belt with different colored warning stickers on them.
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