# We must protect children from the fuck word
#rant #politics

Age restriction has always been a terrible thing, but in the past it didn't have very sharp teeth when it came to digital content. Everyone underage learned you can just lie. In fact, standard operating procedure when you were young and minded your elders was to ask your parents' permission to lie. Everyone knew it was a stupid, pointless thing, but it was just a button you had to press, like hitting OK on a Windows popup. It was a minor annoyance.

In the fascist hellscape of 2026, we no longer have the privilege to be merely annoyed by these ridiculous, censorial age gates. Governments around the world have been feverishly passing laws to sharpen their fangs. People under a certain age are now legally barred from visiting social websites in entire countries. Porn is effectively illegal in about half of the United States, a country that was previously best in class when it came to free speech, thanks to invasive laws that demand proof of identity. Pending efforts like [[KOSA|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_Online_Safety_Act]] promise to end open discourse online and censor anything that would cause the [[PMRC|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center]] to clutch their pearls, like mentioning gay people exist. Anyone who thinks any of this has anything to do with protecting children is an utter fuckwit. (The clue is that the legislation claims to protect children. That's literally the only info you need.)

Private industry has followed in kind. In fact, for a while, the tip of the puritan spear was directed right at them, since there were still things like the first amendment to hinder their efforts in the legal realm; Mastercard, PayPal, and other fintech companies especially like to wield their influence to fuck over people whose work is too sexy to be shown at a PTA meeting. YouTube is no exception. Sometime in the last few years, they replaced their age gate with one that can't be bypassed without a login, which effectively bans me and every other Legal Adult™ who refuses to log into their panopticon from viewing videos arbitrarily selected for censorship.

YouTube music videos used to only be censored if they were too queer or contained nudity: one of the first times I remember hitting the agewall was for the utterly harmless, inoffensive, nudity-free "Adam and Steve" by Dorian Electra, presumably banned for hurting the feelings of Christian homophobes. I couldn't find this anywhere else on the internet, and it's great, so I jumped through the hoops and got the damn cookies. Google made me verify my age.
- https://archive.org/details/dorian-electra-adam-steve
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mViZtUHqDg8

The plague is spreading. YouTube now forces you to verify your age *just to listen to songs that use the word fuck*. Here are some examples I've encountered:
- "Fucking Boyfriend" by The Bird and the Bee
	- Original audio, censored: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb7V6c0MNbI
	- Mutilated audio, uncensored: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCa93QZ0Yg4
- "I Don't Fuck With You" by Big Sean
	- Original music video, censored: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZaJYDPY-YQ
	- Original lyric video, censored: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR_X6PrASho
	- Mutilated audio, uncensored (third-party upload): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrwRoOwQ-TM
- "Fuck Tha Police" by NWA[^fags]
	- Original music video, censored: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WbQeDj74kc
	- Original audio, censored: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADdpLv3RDhA
- "Fuck You" by CeeLo Green
	- Original audio, censored: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcU544XGyS4

Songs with the word fuck get censored, no matter how it's used, but conspicuously not the same song without the word. However, this valiant effort to save children from a dangerous word they've never heard before in their life is not total:
- "Fuck Tha Police" by NWA
	- Original audio, third-party upload: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxaSqKelRro
- "Fuck You" by CeeLo Green
	- Original music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc0mxOXbWIU
- "Gang Control" by Leftover Crack
	- Original audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txxsCtckJ-M
- "The President" by King Missile
	- Original audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=996Zl5Ssyag

Presumably the more times a video is reported by volunteer Stasi agents, the more likely it is to get censored. This is a longstanding problem across the web. But I suspect there's something more sinister happening: many music labels release both "explicit" and "clean" versions of songs, especially "major" labels. I think the songs marked "explicit" are always censored now. This might explain why the official "Fuck You" audio is censored, but not the music video: the music video doesn't say "explicit" anywhere, but the audio prominently has a "parental advisory" on its thumbnail. It might also explain why a relatively obscure artist like The Bird and the Bee got censored — the label is Universal, notorious mainstream scumbags — and why some popular songs like "Gang Control" fly under the radar (punk bands don't do that shit).

This is obviously a relatively minor part of the tidal wave of censorship we're facing, but it's quite the reality check. We're really at the point where you have to provide identification to hear the fuck word.


[^fags]: I suppose this could also have been banned for other naughty words, but we can safely rule out "fags" as one that Google would have a problem with.