Every moral panic leaves a fossil record.
When a society is confronted with a new medium it does not yet understand, the reaction rarely remains confined to outraged newspaper editorials or worried PTA meetings. The fear calcifies, becoming legislation, industry regulation, and algorithmic censorship.
Today, as lawmakers rush to draft sweeping bills aimed at curbing the influence of social media, algorithms, and artificial intelligence on the youth, we are told we are facing an unprecedented crisis.
We’re not. We’re running the same script we’ve run for a century.
A moral panic follows a predictable pattern that begins with a new technology or medium democratizes access to information or entertainment, bypassing traditional gatekeepers. Followed by a narrative emerges that this unmediated access is corrupting the youth, driving them toward violence, promiscuity, or moral decay. What comes next is empirical evidence being entirely replaced by vivid, terrifying anecdotes. Once the hammer finally falls: broad, vaguely worded legislation or severe industry crackdowns in the name of “protecting the children.”
If you stop to observe the collateral damage, a very true and unique tragedy can be found. When broad censorship laws are drafted in a state of hysteria, marginalized creators are always hit hardest.
The great comic book panic of the 1950s comes to mind.
Psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s book Seduction of the Innocent convinced Congress that Batman and Tales from the Crypt were causing juvenile delinquency. The resulting Senate hearings birthed the Comics Code Authority. While the mainstream publishers of superhero comics easily adapted to the sanitized rules, the Code effectively obliterated the thriving, subversive genres of horror, true crime, and romance comics, wiping out hundreds of independent publishers and freezing the medium’s maturation for decades. Queer creators, women, and artists of color who relied on these fringe genres found their livelihoods erased overnight.
The same pattern repeated in the 1980s with the advent of the VCR.
In the United Kingdom, the press whipped the public into a frenzy over “video nasties.” Uncut, direct-to-video horror films that children were supposedly watching in unregulated living rooms. The resulting Video Recordings Act of 1984 mandated strict government classification for all video releases. The law was wielded as a bluntly, aggressively targeting independent, foreign, and queer cinema while giving major Hollywood studios a pass.
We saw it again with the PMRC’s war on rock and rap lyrics in the 1990s, and the congressional hearings over Mortal Kombat and Doom, which birthed the ESRB.
But the panic and hysteria always fade. The dust settles, and a generation of minds supposedly decaying eventually grows up to become functional adults as the targeted medium becomes recognized as a legitimate art form.
The infrastructure of censorship remains permanently on the books, and the laws drafted in terror outlive the terror itself. When we view today’s fights over digital regulation through this historical lens, the stakes shift from legislating a novel emergency to participating in a century-old tradition of institutional overreaction that forges permanent cages for trapping temporary fears.
Be part of the discussion
We’re hosting Drawing the Line: Online Harm, Queer Expression, and Platform Governance in Asia-Pacific live at APrIGF in Kathmandu, Nepal on October 6!
Governments and platforms are rolling out new “online harms” rules, but these broad strokes are heavily impacting LGBTIQ+ communities, sex workers, and fandom creators. How do we protect real victims without falling into the trap of regulatory overreach and censorship?
Join an international lineup of digital rights advocates, legal scholars, and queer policy experts.
- Dr. K S Park: Professor of Law at Korea University Law School and co-founder/director of digital rights organization Open Net Korea. Provides extensive expertise on internet law and digital rights advocacy.
- Jeremy Malcolm: Lawyer and Trust & Safety consultant representing the Center for Online Safety and Liberty (COSL). Specializes in harm reduction and the unintended consequences of overbroad safety legislation.
- Mish Pony: Representative of Scarlett Alliance and Flat Out. Focuses on how digital regulation, censorship, and content moderation directly impact sex workers and marginalized communities.
- Shambhawi Paudel: Research Associate at ILGA Asia. Explores the intersection of platform governance and LGBTQ+ rights, focusing on the regional impact of “online harm” frameworks on queer expression.
We’ll introduce the Drawing the Line Watchlist, examine the future of platform governance and freedom of expression, and discuss what it takes to build a rights-respecting future for online safety.
🗓️ October 6, 2026
⏲ 10:15 NPT
⏲ 4:30 UTC
⏲ 14:30 AEST
⏲ 0:30 EST (Oct 7)
Free to attend in person and stream remotely ⤵