"Can I say P**** on Broadcast Television?"

The United States Censorship entity is supposedly the FCC:

-Federal law prohibits obscene, indecent and profane content from being broadcast on the radio or TV.

-Obscene material is not protected under the 1st amendment...

-hmm...not sure if net neutrality non-censorship was a good idea or terrible idea for a sovereign national identity of non-dehumanized non-sexually perverted youth...

In this day and age, the applications which target and pander to our youth must have clear guidelines established with community-backed investment for a healthier society in order to protect the highly impressionable stages of adolescent development. Censorship laws which were setforth to protect our progeny in previous generations pre-dating the digital age are now obsolete due to the inability to provide federal mandate through legislation and enforced filtration of their main source of entertainment, the INTERNET. 

The elite leadership class dropped the ball when it comes to the protection of this next generation because the “censorship” entity we entrusted to protect our youth failed to stay ahead of the curve.  They did not even try to create legislation which protects our youth from obscene, indecent, and profane content within the digital space and actually enforced the opposite, allowing materials and ideas that would seem out of touch from mainstream concepts of morality to run rampant, unchecked, and prefered (FCC, 2022).

This to me raises questions, one in particular being: if a website platform sets forth guidelines within their safety policy which bans certain materials from being uploaded; however, does not set in place any aggressive content-filtering machine learning algorithms, could said platform be held liable if minors or consumer behavior are “affected” by violent, pornographic, or otherwise obscene material seen on their platform?

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network states Child sexual abuse is any interaction between a child and an adult (or another child) in which the child is used for the sexual stimulation of the perpetrator or an observer. Sexual abuse can include both touching and non-touching behaviors (Peterson, 2018). Non-touching behaviors can include voyeurism (trying to look at a child’s naked body), exhibitionism, or exposing the child to pornography. Children of all ages, races, ethnicities, and economic backgrounds may experience sexual abuse. Child sexual abuse affects both girls and boys in all kinds of neighborhoods and communities. Again, fun fact, knowing this could a parent sue a platform if their child viewed and was emotionally or psychologically damaged by the viewing of content which is supposedly filtered.

-Other things to consider: negligence, criminal negligence, contributing to the delinquency of a minor...

Many feel censorship of the digital space will deal a blow to freedom; however, this space is not only traversed by fully-developed adults.  Freedom was lost in the digital age already due to the fact that physical privacy and security laws did not carry over to the digital world (e.g. physical mail laws and digital communications).  Yet they don’t want to put in place laws that will protect the future of our species.  This leads to the question: “How are we to set in place laws to protect the fragile and impressionable minds of today’s youth without interrupting the free-flow of the social consciousness”? This also raises the question how are we to protect the American cultural identity and American values (do we even have a cultural identity or values not separated by race as AMERICANS??) in the global digital space or is it time to start making steps towards globalization so that national laws cannot be circumvented by serving up or storing data in places outside of national jurisdiction with regard to data sovereignty?

In closing, the turn of the decade was a trivial point from a historical perspective. As battling ideologies provided societal growth the moral decay was apparent in digital monoliths that began to realize their true monetary dominance sweeping not only the American landscape but the international community. In opinion, this moral decay was fueled by corporate advertising algorithms on pseudo-broadcasting platforms with disregard to national identity and impurities of thought and mind began to ebb at the social consciouness. Lastly, in question, "Can I say P**** on Broadcast Television"? If not, from a contextual concept, then why the moral lag without societal backlash in streamed and mainstream content...?

~Aaron X.

References

FCC (2022, August 8). The FCC and Speech. Retrieved April, 2024 https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/fcc-and-speech

Peterson, S. (2018, May 25). Sexual Abuse. Retrieved October 22, 2020, from https://www.nctsn.org/what-is-child-trauma/trauma-types/sexual-abuse

Sharma, I., & Zhou, S. (n.d.). Obscenity and the First Amendment. Retrieved September 17, 2020, from https://courses2.cit.cornell.edu/sociallaw/ student_projects/ObscenityFirstAmendment.htm

Nixon's statement on the Commission on Pornography and Obscenity: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=2759