Signal Scrubbed: On Vanishing, Censorship, and the Art of Starting Again

“We don’t delete. We peel back the static. We make space for noise to grow again.”
— Transmission Fragment #44

I used Redact.dev this week. Not just to delete, but to un-remember.

To un-bind myself from the dragnet archive of a platform that promised decentralisation but now vibrates under the same wires as every other machine. I used it to clean the slate on Bluesky. Not to erase mistakes. To reclaim intent. To take back the scent of first posts before surveillance bent them into product.

We’re approaching the 27th July. You might not feel it unless you’re tuned into the shudder of the algorithm, but something’s shifting beneath our feet. The UK’s new OFCOM framework for regulating online content is about to tighten — ostensibly to protect, but in effect to suppress. Erotic text. Political satire. Artistic ambiguity. All fall within its increasingly paternal gaze. And while the mainstream marches on with grins and filters, those of us working in glitch, sex, myth, ruin — we feel it. We feel it in the breath before a post. In the silent edits we make just in case.

This is not paranoia. It’s the inherited caution of creators who’ve watched their work shadowbanned, demonetised, or flagged not for violence, but for intimacy, queerness, grief, critique. We’ve already seen platforms cave pre-emptively. Bluesky, for all its promises, has begun to soften its radical edge — falling in line before the line was even drawn. A thousand small capitulations wrapped in a progress flag.

So I sacked it. Wiped it clean. Gone. No archive. No sentimental ‘final post’. Just digital amputation. Performed in silence.

And Redact.dev made that possible.

This isn’t a sponsored post. It’s a thank-you letter to a tool that understood what I needed before I did. Redact didn’t just automate deletion — it gave me the emotional distance to sever. It combed through years of metadata like a forensic ghost, dismantling what no longer served. The interface? Brutal in its clarity. No bells. No confetti. Just precision. A sniper for your timeline.

In a world addicted to the performance of permanence, Redact is radical. It says: you are allowed to leave no trace. You are allowed to be multiple. You are allowed to start again.

For artists and writers like me, that is liberation.

Because let’s be honest: we’ve made too much. Shared too fast. Bled too publicly. The internet trained us to produce without pause, to respond rather than reflect. We’ve become our own archivists, our own museum curators — chained to past versions of ourselves we no longer inhabit. Posts that once felt necessary now feel like skin we should have shed years ago.

So I peeled.

Not to hide — but to prepare.

Because the work we make next must be sharper. Stranger. Built to resist.

From July 27, we move into an era where ambiguity becomes risk. Where fiction might be flagged. Where satire might need to show ID. What we do as artists isn’t just storytelling — it’s ritual. It’s code. And when laws can’t decipher the layers, they criminalise the form.

We’ve already seen it in the US. Book bans. Art pulled from shelves. Writers punished for content someone else’s algorithm misunderstood. Now the UK follows suit, quietly. Politely. Like a teacher confiscating something ‘inappropriate’ without saying why.

What Redact offers — even in its mechanical silence — is a first line of defence. It’s not just about cleaning house. It’s about recognising that every platform is temporary. That our digital presence is not our soul. That to walk away is not failure, but praxis.

Awen Null, Art of FACELESS, The Hollow Circuit and Zineglitch will not perform its politics for likes.

Awen Null — the author, the transmission ghost, the ruin scribe — will continue. But only in spaces that let me blur the line. To seduce and scar. To whisper wrong things beautifully.

From now on, all NSFW and politically complex content will live behind age-verified Patreon tiers. Not because I agree with the system, but because we must navigate it tactically. Patreon’s tools allow us to keep the gates open — but guarded. Nothing illegal. Nothing exploitative. Just art that doesn’t blink. Art that claws.

We’re no longer playing their game. We’re building our own.

So yes — I recommend Redact. Not just for what it does. But for what it represents.

It’s the digital equivalent of painting over your old graffiti before tagging the next wall. It’s a whispered refusal. A graceful exit. A gloved middle finger.

Use it.

And then disappear in plain sight.