I had naively assumed when I wrote the first in this series that the YouTube videos in the Google News feed would be mostly from middle or centrist news outlets. That was wrong, so I wanted to see who was the most popular. I wish I hadn't. Then I read the comments section, and that went poorly, too.

https://jessk.org/blog/how-youtube-feeds-the-anti-trans-machine

#disinformation #misinformation #moralpanic #hate #antitrans

From an early 20th-century home medical guide which I discovered in a hotel library a few years ago — note the shifting attribution from masturbation to syphilitic causes

#HistoryOfMedicine #MedicalHistory #HistoryOfTheBody #Sexuality #MoralPanic #CulturalHistory

This is so goddamn stupid that it's hilarious.

Hey, boomers-at-heart in Boston police and city hall – the St. Patrick's parade has never been orderly and sober, *especially* back when you were young 35 years ago.

You're just looking for something to have a moral panic about. Go after drunk drivers, and help anybody who overindulged. Otherwise, chill out

#boston #massachusetts #stpatricksday #drinking #moralpanic #bostonweekend

Human Problems: It’s Not Always The Technology’s Fault

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/10/human-problems-its-not-always-the-technologys-fault/

@AlainVagner

I've been watching this on Github (as one does) because it's a replay of the very old #A11y #MoralPanic that hit #Mastodon right around the time I first got on -- and that has resurfaced regularly since

Now it's reached #Github

It's always cast in the same light, ultimately:

"You have to do what I want because *I'm* looking out for other people that you don't even care about so you're a poopy-head!!!""

It's grown (once again) to be extremely tedious

Current offering, by actually pulling the comment out into a text editor:

14 lines, 365 words, for a count of 2,117 characters

Boooring...

„Ausserdem glaube ich, dass viele Menschen unterschätzen, was es bedeuten würde, eine #Altersgrenze ab 16 einzuführen. Dann müssen sich nämlich alle im Netz ausweisen, um ihr Alter nachzuweisen, nicht nur Kinder oder Jugendliche. Die Plattformbetreiber müssen ja irgendwie erfahren, ob ein Nutzer volljährig ist. Und es bedarf schon eines grossen Optimismus im Hinblick auf die Stabilität unserer freiheitlich-demokratischen Grundordnung, wenn wir dem Staat so viel Macht geben. Kommt eine Art Ausweispflicht, kann er jede Diskussion namentlich zuordnen. Wenn autoritäre Parteien an die Macht kommen sollten, hätten sie damit ein ideales Werkzeug, um die Presse- und Meinungsfreiheit auszuhebeln.“

https://www.nzz.ch/international/sind-soziale-netzwerke-eine-gefahr-fuer-die-demokratie-herr-hoffmann-das-kann-man-auf-keinen-fall-so-pauschal-sagen-ld.1925133 ($)

#MoralPanic #SocialMediaVerbot