[watwut]

> Americans today are afraid of talking clearly about general strikes, protesting, rape, sexual violence, censorship

Americans are talking about protesting, rape, sexual violence, censorship all the time ... and I mean literally all sides - liberals, conservatives, leftists, feminists, MAGA ...

[embedding-shape]

Using what words specifically? Besides HN, even people commenting on reddit tends to self-censor words like "r@pe" just because they've realized they get penalized if they talk about things too clearly, on other platforms. Same with general strikes, censorship and more, even on platforms where you don't get downranked automatically just because you used specific terms, people have now started self-censor in those ways.

[applfanboysbgon]

> "r@pe"

Whenever you see something like this, it's because the platform has some kind of automoderation policy that is liable to delete/shadowban content containing the word. Typing that, then, is not self-censorship; it's the exact opposite, the defiance of external censorshop.

[bcraven]

I hear this argument, but can't believe the content filters are so crap they can't detect simple letter replacements like that.

[astura]

>people commenting on reddit tends to self-censor words like "r@pe"

That's just because reddit is almost entirely children and bots/shills. Yes, a platform full of children is going to be childish.

[AlexeyBelov]

Average Reddit user is in their late 20s or early 30s.

[embedding-shape]

I'm not talking specifically about reddit...

[JumpCrisscross]

> I'm not talking specifically about reddit

Using the example of someone typing “r@pe” to get around auto moderation is a pretty specific complaint, and not really an example of self censorship since that person clearly still got to say whatever they wanted to say.

At least online, there is a decent argument to be made that a good cohort of people have significantly lost the ability to self moderate.