The bans abroad applied only to the actual contents of the Poem of Despair. Blocking the contents would prevent it from spreading like wildfire online.
The journalists' reports had not mentioned the text of the Poem of Despair. They had merely expressed support for the public marches.
Ke Meng recommended stepping up enforcement and forbidding this kind of encouragement.
Without harsh penalties, how could they silence those lunatics spreading despair?
The relevant departments held a meeting and agreed that stronger measures were indeed necessary.
"We've already started overstepping our authority, so we might as well go further. For the sake of all humanity, it doesn't matter how bad our reputation gets..." After concluding its meeting, the Investigation Bureau Information Department sent the Network Divine Beast a recommendation: step up enforcement.
Ten minutes later, Ke Meng searched for that news article again and found that it had been blocked. He could no longer read or view it.
He searched for other similar reports, but their pages were all gone and could no longer be found.
Ke Meng then browsed overseas independent media communities. Comments encouraging people to embrace pessimism and descend into despair had vanished.
"My comment's gone?"
"What the hell? Can't win the argument, so you just ban us?"
"My life really is meaningless." After he refreshed ten seconds later, that comment vanished too.
The Network Divine Beast had far too much information to process. Some comments required it to determine whether they encouraged pessimism, so it could not delete them instantly.
After browsing for a while, Ke Meng found that some users had already realized their comments were being censored. They could no longer post their mournful thoughts about the world.
Then all sorts of sarcastic comments appeared. Instead of discussing pessimism or despair, they leaned hard into sarcasm,