I actually don't think this is so deep- you couldn't curse on broadcast TV and basically because Instagram is an ad platform you aren't supposed to say "bad" things on there either.
There's been endless debates here about moderation vs. censorship- on the spectrum of Hackernews to 4chan. Calling the Hackernews moderation rules "censorship" would also not be reasonable- nor do people want to visit 4chan because it's "free speech".
I think it's actually a really nice workaround that human language and english is flexible enough that we can still say exactly what we mean in a different way and everyone knows what we are talking about.
I fundamentally don't think the platforms want to get rid of the engagement these topics bring, (the last round of criticism being that they want divisive topics on the platform) and if and when they do it won't look like changing "kill" to "unalive"- the algorithm will simply be directed to silence the topic. Many such examples in China. We should be angry about the censorship we don't see and can't detect as easily instead.
There's been endless debates here about moderation vs. censorship- on the spectrum of Hackernews to 4chan. Calling the Hackernews moderation rules "censorship" would also not be reasonable- nor do people want to visit 4chan because it's "free speech".
I think it's actually a really nice workaround that human language and english is flexible enough that we can still say exactly what we mean in a different way and everyone knows what we are talking about.
I fundamentally don't think the platforms want to get rid of the engagement these topics bring, (the last round of criticism being that they want divisive topics on the platform) and if and when they do it won't look like changing "kill" to "unalive"- the algorithm will simply be directed to silence the topic. Many such examples in China. We should be angry about the censorship we don't see and can't detect as easily instead.