Posts by Sledge Hammer

Algospeak, a new problem for the community

Many of you have seen common words such as “death”, “drugs”, “hell” and other words being censored without a reason which is weird indeed since they are not offensive, so, how did this ridiculous issue appeared? everything starts from back in 2017 when This term wasn’t present, major brends like Disney, Coca Cola and others pulled their ads from youtube after their commercials appeared next to extremist content, as a result youtube’s administration panicked and deployed aggressive automated filters, after this reckless decision, creators talking about sensitive social issues, mental health, or even complex war history found their videos demonetized, after this scandal, content creators had to be more creative in order to avoid issues and that’s how Algospeak was born. 3 years later, when Tik Tok became one of the most popular platforms, it included even more aggressive AI moderation, it’s bots are notoriously awful at distinguishing between news about a tragedy and promotion of self harm, because of that, users realized that if they typed “Death,” the post might be hidden. So, “unalive” was born. It went viral, and people started using it even when they didn’t need to. Soon platforms like Facebook and Instagram followed the same path as well, they wouldn’t tell you if you were being censored, they would just stop showing your posts to people, result was a mix of madness and paranoia, people started censoring everything, even harmless words like “life”, “job”, “pandemic” and etc. The term “Algospeak” was born in 2022 thanks to author Taylor Lorenz to describe the altering of language. Don’t let a bot become your editor, when we censor words like “life” and “death,” we sanitize the truth and disrespect the subjects of our stories. our advice is simple: Be brave enough to use the dictionary. If your platform can’t handle the truth, find a better platform.

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Twitter, the most toxic platform

Today Twitter (aka X) is the most toxic platform on the internet, but why? everything started from the beginning. Twitter was created in 2006 by Noah Glass, Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone. Back then Noah Glass ran a podcasting platform called Odeo with his friend Evan Williams as a CEO, company was on the verge of shutting down so they needed an idea, after spending a night hanging out with Evan Williams, Noah decided to create Twitter, after gaining a huge user base, Noah considered breaking away from Odeo and making Twitter his own business, some time later without warning, Evan betrayed Noah by saying that he was fired, everything what Noah built was taken away from him, some time later Noah spent a night out with Jack Dorsey and told him what happened, Jack comforted him, however, few days later, Jack became the CEO. Before Noah was fired, Jack secretly met with Evan, Jack demanded Noah’s removal from the company, Jack’s reason for this was not explained, however, we can only assume that he wanted power and money because while Noah was the CEO, he was second in command, when Noah was fired, he received everything. This story tells us that Twitter was toxic from day 1 and that it was built on betrayal, however, it’s users aren’t different either, users can start arguments due to the most ridiculous reasons, whether it could be a meme, video game or other people’s opinions, however, one of the few biggest issues is misinformation, hate speech and propaganda. Twitter is a perfect platform for Misinformation since it can be shared by anyone in a matter of minutes, the most famous example is COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation post where small group of individuals claimed that COVID-19 vaccines caused infertility and that it was more dangerous than the virus itself. In 2022 Twitter was bought by Elon Musk, Twitter was rebranded to X on July 23, 2023, and its domain name changed from twitter.com to x.com on May 17, 2024, new features were added such as long-form texts, audio-video calls, monetization options, AI and etc. However, despite the changes, the toxicity didn’t stopped, Political propaganda, Hate Speech, misinformation and many other issues are still relevant due to the poor moderation. If you will ever decide to create an account, please consider that whatever you will post, it will be viewed by a lot of people so make sure that you will choose your words carefully. Thanks for reading this article.

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Silencing the Survivors: Why Roblox Banned Schlep to Protect Its Image

Roblox experienced a major scandal in August 2025 when they have banned famous youtuber called Schlep, according to Roblox, he was banned because the platform alleged that his vigilante group moved users off site for sexual conversations and normalized unsafe behavior. Roblox stated that they are protecting children while in reality they are refusing to ban child predators. In the past Schlep was a target of grooming himself since one of the developers of the platform groomed him while he was only 12 years old, although his mother reported the abuse, Roblox took no action, thanks to Schlep’s effort, at least 6 child predators was arrested. Due to the controversy, many US states have filed a lawsuit against Roblox. Roblox’s CEO David Baszucki and the company’s leadership team took a stance against vigilante groups who are focused on hunting child predators which is in fact an awful decision since some children is being exposed to explicit or harmful content. After Roblox banned schlep, the controversy caused an immediate backlash, the result was Roblox losing 12.7 billion dollars in market value since investors were not happy with the company’s decisions. As of March 2026, the legal pressure is mounting with over 800 victims represented in a massive consolidated lawsuit. Between the threat of a A$49.5 million fine from Australia and the growing outcry from parents worldwide, Robloxs leadership is finally being forced to answer for prioritizing corporate profits over the lives of children. Thanks for reading this article.

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Safety or Censorship? The Reality of the UKs Online Safety Act

UK’s child safety act which was accepted last year became incredibly frustrating for not only UK’s citizens, but to other internet users as well, a good example is the attempt to restrict access to VPNs for anyone under 18, they have been trying to enforce stricter ID and age verifications, which is a real issue since such sensitive data could be a perfect target for cyberattacks. Although UK calls it “safety”, in reality it’s a censorship, a perfect example is that The Online Safety Act gives Ofcom an opportunity to monitor as many websites on the internet as possible. This act is requiring platforms to enforce strict age verification, this obviously includes adult websites, social media platforms, video games and etc. If you want to bypass age and ID verifications on social media platforms and video games, use browser called Tor along with it’s bridges which hides your IP address, if necessary, create a new account while the browser is still active. Do not use bypass tools since most of them contain malware capable of stealing your precious data. Thanks for reading our article.

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