Ever since a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on the 12^th August 2017, news developments have continued at a torrid pace. The Daily Stormer promoted the rally on their website and had to be shut down by Go Daddy. "We have informed The Daily Stormer that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another provider, as they have violated our terms of service," said corporate communication representative Dan Race. "If no action is taken after 24 hours, we will cancel the service."

The following Monday, The Daily Stormer registered its domain with Google. But within hours, Google cancelled that registration. "We are cancelling The Daily Stormer’s registration with Google Domains for violating our terms of service," Google said in a statement. Google also shut down the publication's YouTube channel.

Lux Alptraum, a sex writer and educator wrote about how censorship has defined the internet whether we realize it or not. For those who work in sex-related fields, censorship and barriers to entry are the norms rather than highly publicized exceptions. Without enforcing an outright ban on sexual content, web services, search engines, and social media platforms have all targeted the providers of sexual content with varying degrees of subtlety. She outlined this issue in The Lux Letter, her weekly newsletter about sex in the media.

Sargon of Akkad, a Youtuber whose real name is Carl Benjamin, recently targeted feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian at her VidCon panel. Benjamin sat with several friends in the front row of Sarkeesian’s “Women Online” panel at a convention center in Anaheim, California. After spotting him in the audience, Sarkeesian proceeded to call Benjamin a “s**thead” and a “garbage human,” claiming that he and other critics constantly make videos at her expense and say it over and over again.

Following the incident, the rival factions quickly began to wage war online over what actually occurred at the event, with Sarkeesian’s supporters dismissing Benjamin as a “harasser,” while her critics called for VidCon officials to condemn the panellist’s behaviour for breaking their official code of conduct.

The American President declared, “Racism is evil,” adding that “those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the K.K.K., neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.” #twerking is a banned hashtag on Instagram, while the tag #KKK has been used nearly 1 million times. It’s misleading for web platforms to imply they have to ‘look into’ solutions for addressing the problem of online harassment when they already have the tools at their disposal for excluding participants they deem objectionable. “For example, sex workers will often see their personal PayPal accounts shut down even if they’re not using them for sex work”, says Alptraum.

There are more instances of disapproval. Patreon is a membership platform that provides business tools for creators to run a subscription content service, as well as ways for artists to build relationships. Its quite difficult to locate a sex educator’s Patreon page through a simple name-based search, while hate groups sometimes rise to the surface of search results with remarkable ease. Alptraum has even tried and tested it. She invites readers to try it for themselves on the search tool on Patreon’s site. Search for Erika Moen, creator of sex education comics, even using her exact name; then try Sargon of Akkad with even a typo or two.