This is something I’ve noticed on The Hard R, all over the rest of the internet, and in real life. More and more people seem to just assume that some form of expression they don’t like is illegal, or punishable by authority figures in some way.
Porn is obviously a big one. A lot of porn is controversial, but not illegal. Incest, bestiality, lolis, etc have been removed from almost all mainstream sites. Now people just assume it’s illegal to have or to look at it, but it isn’t in most of the free world.
I’ve also seen a LOT of people make various assumptions about what sort of speech must constitute hate speech, with the assumption that it’s actually required to be removed from anywhere on the internet or any public place.
It’s not even just expression though. Modify your car. Dig in your yard. Touch your own house’s plumbing or gas. Mow your lawn. Decide NOT to mow your lawn. Root/Jailbreak your phone. Access Youtube without ads through a third party app using the official API. “Are you allowed to do that?”
People seem increasingly willing to subject themselves to unofficial authority like websites, software/consumer agreements (which might not have much legal teeth beyond the option to deny service), Home Owners Associations, etc, and act like they have no idea they can just… leave. They think it’s the immutable law of the land.
I have definitely noticed that. I imagine that a large part of it is due to manipulation by various companies. Like if you look up loli on The Hard R search you’ll get something saying what you want to find is illegal. Other websites offering similar fixed results containing the misinformation they so often claim to be harmful, I guess it’s fine when they do it, though. 🤔
I imagine a decent chunk of people find these pieces of misinformation and don’t desire to look further since they don’t like that thing. Or they’re too scared to look for more information on the topic and just take the fearmongering as fact. And there’s definitely people who just assume anything they don’t like should (and therefore must) be illegal, so they go around acting like they’ve spent years in law school specializing in that very specific topic, despite having no idea what they’re talking about and are just talking about how they think things should work.
A friend of mine looked it up on a porn website because he didn’t know what the word was (but knew what hentai was) and he received a similar message. We joke that he’s probably on a list somewhere now, but it does kinda concern me that it’s being presented as illegal when that’s not always the case.
I personally think it’s about shaping the narrative. They want to tell you what you can and cannot do, even if what they are saying is outright lies. It’s not misinformation when they do it.