> As a professional developer, as an API user, as a grown man who knows how these things work, I should have the option to turn the safety filters off. Not "dial down", but "off".
> Google image search lets me turn the porn filter off.
Google images let you turn the porn filter down, not off. It's not going to readily show you child porn. Actually, the whole internet has this filter, including "unfiltered" sites like 4chan. The darkweb exists, sure, but this isn't a model any company in their right mind will surface to users.
Isn't it a bit weird to call 4chan "the dark web" on a technical website?
I don't follow how many killers posted their manifesto on reddit, etc, but it's a platform and as such can be abused like any other platform.
I think the point can be made that Reddit has worse content than 4chan, and often with worse life consequences as there is no anonymity.
It's in any case quite a stretch to lump it into dark web, as if you could buy weapons on the site.
Anyway, I think you have a point in that you can disable Google's porn filter, but you cannot disable Google's wrongthink filters. Google search is manually tweaked to redirect many types of queries to their opposite, safe alternative (like searching for Alex Jones will only give you 'why is alex jones such a bad person', and not act as a search engine, which would be neutral).
Things have changed gradually and there hasn't been so much pushback on this, unfortunately.
I'm not equating 4chan and the darkweb, I'm contrasting the two.
I firmly believe most people who push for "unfiltered" models are looking for 4chan-equivalent filtering. Filtered for safety, but subtly.
I suspect that true uncensored models, like the darkweb, are not useful for most people. I further suspect the applications they are useful for are not something most people want to publicly associate with (to put it lightly).
Oh I'm sorry I see that I did misread your argument, and I fully agree with it.
Free speech generally means "free speech with the boundaries of our current legal framework" more or less, for most of its advocates.
Note that ITA I'm not advocating for "no" safety filters but a better implementation.
> Google image search lets me turn the porn filter off.
Google images let you turn the porn filter down, not off. It's not going to readily show you child porn. Actually, the whole internet has this filter, including "unfiltered" sites like 4chan. The darkweb exists, sure, but this isn't a model any company in their right mind will surface to users.