Aasof’s Reflections

The defunct My Telegraph site would arbitrarily imposes automated censorship by deleting expletives, which seems like a neat solution but it completely disregards the context. I was recently unable to call King Charles II ‘a bastard’, an expletive that I had cause to believe was an apt description of his vindictive pursuit of the ‘regicides’. By way of a response to this – unwarranted – moderation I posted Everything in moderation? which was replete with ‘bastards’. While the gratuitous use of obscenities is forbidden by The Telegaph, the presumption being that profanities are forbidden, gratuitousness is dependent on context.

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