AOL Censors

[Justice]

LAST EDITED ON Mar-22-01 AT 11:03PM (EST)[p]Several escorts have had their AOL accounts cancelled because their screen names or profiles were deemed to be to risque. Check out the article on the subject from this week's Village Voice. Its fascinating and more than a little frightening!

 

 

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0112/ferrandino.shtml

[Guest EvilSwine]

Yeah...AOL is just an example of how we're sanitizing everything and bringing it all down to the lowest common denominator to make everything "safe". I still keep them as a deductible backup in case my primary internet provider fails, but don't really use them for much else. My first experience with their ilk was my first online service after I got my first computer. I had Prodigy and tried to post a message using the word "cum" in the sense of "cum laude", but their censoring software bounced it and wouldn't allow the post.

 

I'm afraid we're going to just see more and more of this kind of thing as government and big business try to protect us from ourselves and any personal responsibility whatsoever.

[Michael]

For more examples of this kind of lunacy check out the Digital Freedom Network's "censorship contest" at:

 

http://dfn.org/focus/censor/contest.htm

 

You can also check out the now infamous story about how AOL decided that an entire English town was obscene in Volume 18, Issue 7 of the Risks Digest, available at lots of places on the internet, including:

 

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/18.07.html#subj3.1

[Guest bigjake80]

LAST EDITED ON Mar-24-01 AT 02:36PM (EST)[p]In case you are interested, there is a way to manipulate your profile. you can not only change colors, fonts, etc, but you can mask cuss words (or words that only seem like cuss words, like "cum). the way to mask the cuss word is to place <u >

between the word. Like cum would be c<u >um what this does is place what looks like a space in the word to the filter, but doesnt show up in the profile when it is viewed, Try f<u >uck or sh<u >it and it actually works. The only things you have to worry about is being reported by a parent or evil person looking to fu<u >ck you over. You can also put this in a web address to keep AOL from placing the space in it automatically. Check out this link http://members.aol.com/widfara4/list.htm for more info or my profile at sthrncmft on aol to see what I have done.