We're not prying the millions of teens off the sites they use.

The better alternative than screaming and preaching shit nobody wants to hear is to provide better alternatives. In time, topics like rape and murder and suicide are going to become almost a mystique, a forbidden world of knowledge. With sites like 4Chan finally dying, there's a real vacuum out there for a place "kids can sneak off to" and learn the truth.

Or even better, talk to them personally. Make sure the people in your lives, particularly younger ones, know they can talk about rape, death, sex and other "taboo" topics without being yelled at, shot down or reacted-to in a negative way. I promise, people of all ages are desperate to connect with others in an honest, non-judgemental way.

It would serve us better to just stop using the internet ourselves and devote more of that time to helping people in person. I taught and coached boys and young men for a long time, I made a huge difference. It's not even hard to do, it just takes patience and a calm demeanor and you can move mountains.

Because platforms cater to advertisers who cater to the broadest possible audience. Meaning they don't take stances on any issues, they just use the broadest, safest possible forms of language and principles.

If you take any kind of active stance about anything there are going to be "ridiculous puritans" somewhere, in some context who are going to be offended. And once you decide that you're going to piss off some group of people, you have to then apply your principles consistently or you're going to make even more public backlash and controversy.

Platforms that are courting advertisers are going to try to make their platform as universally uncontroversial as possible rather than invite brands in who have to either align with the existing values of the platform or invite brands in who will have to then take a stance in any capacity.

As a result, we have the largest gathering places for people's minds, completely disconnected from reality by presenting people a neutered, safe version of the world without any possible way for people to see something that bothers them, because it's far easier to sell products when people are thinking about the product, not your company's stance on something. This is what's turned our social media and the internet broadly into a marketing tool. This is why the internet is dead. This is why kids don't even say the word "dead" anymore because they're used to abiding by the brand's safe version of reality.

I mean, is this really hard to understand?