this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
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Enough Musk Spam
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I think you need to reread Orwell. And I'm not talking about 1984. Much of what Orwell wrote and was concerned about was the watering down and softening of language. And don't knee-jerk think of just the popular surface-level image of 1984. We're not talking government censorship or surveillance here. We're talking about the long-term watering down of the language to strip it of its impact and power.
I get that what you're saying is technically true, but we don't need our language to be perfectly technically accurate, if the cost is taking away all the power of the words.
"Child Sexual Abuse Material." Really? You just turned a 2 syllable label into a 10 syllable label. And you robbed the words of all their emotional impact and power.
"Child porn." I instantly know exactly what that is. That has a very clear and specific meaning that anyone can understand in an instant. Everyone has seen porn and calls it as such. Append the word -child in front of that, and healthy people will feel an instant sense of revulsion in their stomach. "Child porn" is a label with POWER.
"Child Sexual Abuse Material." What the fuck does that even mean? That could mean child porn. That could mean objects or tools used in the making of child porn. That could mean a newspaper article describing child porn. A book to train therapist on the effects of child abuse is, quite literally, "child sexual abuse material." All of these things are material relating to child sexual abuse. By trying to make the label as bland and inoffensive as possible, you've taken all the gravity from it.
CSAM and bloated labels like it really get under my skin. It's what Orwell warned us about.
And really, I think such things represent everything wrong with modern liberalism. A lot of liberal groups make the terrible mistake of focusing more on precise, perfectly non-offensive labeling than effective communication.
It's child porn. "Child sexual abuse material" is too weak and generic a word to be effective. Read your Orwell. He warned us about this.
I've seen this argument a bunch, and I've gotta say it's really weird to me.
I don't know of a single person who would hear "child sexual abuse" and think it's somehow harmless.
I don't know of a single person who would hear "child porn" and think it's somehow harmless.
If you're used to hearing "child porn" and someone says "child sexual abuse material" you wouldn't think it's CP, since then they'd just say CP. It must be some kind of sexual abuse that is not as bad as CP, since they would call it that otherwise.
It's even worse since "Child sexual abuse material" is so fucking long noone bothers to write it all, they just say CSAM, which has no meaning. If you don't know what CSAM means, you won't be shocked at all about the news. Meanwhile CP is most oftenly written as "child porn", mostly using CP when "child porn" was already said. CP is a non-confusing name that everyone is familiar with, that is much more descriptive, and should generate hatred in the mind of any healthy person.
The only reason CSAM is used is because of American puritanism doesn't let you say "porn", which permeates to every enterprise setting. So you can't call your software "child porn detection software" (think of the children!) you have to call it "CSAM detection software". Pair that with the obnoxious need of some people to come up with new names for everything and call you *-ist for using the "old" name. And suddenly headlines are filled with random 4 letter acronyms without meaning instead of using the appropriate words.
Irrelevant. The problem is emotional impact, not the literal meaning of the words.
Read Orwell's Politics and the English Language. I'm basically cribbing from him.
The point is not that anyone would think the label is describing something harmless. The point is that it strips words of their power. Orwell extended this to say that clear language produces clear thinking.
"Child sexual abuse material" vs "child porn."
"Age-restricted workforce implementation" vs "child labor."
"Involuntary sexual intercourse" vs "rape."
"Intentional cessation of third-party biological functions" vs "murder."
"The Twentieth Century European Jewry Demographic Crisis" vs "The Holocaust."
I can read the first version of each of those and understand their literal meaning just fine. But every syllable you add strips the power from the words. And much is lost as a consequence.
The point of communication is not only to impart the literal meaning of the words. It's also to communicate emotional impact. "CSAM" and "child porn" share the same literal meaning, but their emotional definition is entirely different. They describe the same thing, but they are not the same word.
I don't know anyone who would be confused by what "child porn" means. I think all this speech purity stuff distracts from the real harms going on. We don't need more "um akchually" energy injected into every political issue.