Recently there have been some discussions about the political stances of the Lemmy developers and site admins. To clear up some misconceptions: Lemmy is run by a team of people with different ideologies, including anti-capitalist, communist, anarchist, and others. While @dessalines and I are communists, we take decisions collectively, and don’t demand that anyone adopt our views or convert to our ideologies. We wouldn’t devote so much time to building a federated site otherwise.

What’s important to us is that you follow the site rules and Code of Conduct. Meaning primarily, no-bigotry, and being respectful towards others. As long as that is the case, we can get along perfectly fine.

In general we are open for constructive feedback, so please contact any member of the admin team if you have an idea how to improve Lemmy.

Slur Filter

We also noticed a consistent criticism of the built-in slur filter in Lemmy. Not so much on lemmy.ml itself, but whenever Lemmy is recommended elsewhere, a few usual suspects keep bringing it up. To these people we say the following: we are using the slur filter as a tool to keep a friendly atmosphere, and prevent racists, sexists and other bigots from using Lemmy. Its existence alone has lead many of them to not make an account, or run an instance: a clear net positive.

You can see for yourself the words which are blocked (content warning, link here). Note that it doesn’t include any simple swear words, but only slurs which are used to insult and attack other people. If you want to use any of these words, then please stay on one of the many platforms that permit them. Lemmy is not for you, and we don’t want you here.

We are fully aware that the slur filter is not perfect. It is made for American English, and can give false positives in other languages or dialects. We are totally willing to fix such problems on a case by case basis, simply open an issue in our repo with a description of the problem.

  • @SloppilyFloss@lemmy.ml
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    3 years ago

    And developed by people who hate the fact that you’re alive!

    A comment about Lemmy I saw on Reddit. The slur filter really pulls its weight and keeps the bigots out, it was a great idea.

    • DessalinesM
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      Every time we get recommendations to remove the filter I think of this. These bigots end up staying on reddit, or moving to other bigoted platforms, and avoid lemmy, making our lives a LOT easier :smiling face: . I could care less about “growth” if that growth means an influx of disgusting racists. I’d much rather have a smaller, positive community that defends members of targeted communities.

      • @AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml
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        3 years ago

        I keep saying this: the very existence of the slur filter, even though it’s actually trivial to remove or modify, acts like an alt-right/MAGA/bigot/freeze-peach repellent even though it’s trivial to remove or modify. Just look at the types of people on /r/RedditAlternatives who say they’ll never go to Lemmy because of this, and what their priorities on platforms they’re actually interested in are. To me, that’s half the battle.

      • @Kroktann@lemmy.ml
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        203 years ago

        I could care less about “growth” if that growth means an influx of disgusting racists. I’d much rather have a smaller, positive community that defends members of targeted communities.

        You have no idea how good it is to see this attitude from the central developers of the platform. How much better wouldn’t the world be if more people were thinking like this? Kudos to you all!

      • @MiscreantMuse@lemmy.ml
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        153 years ago

        I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this stance!

        I think the slur filter is a brilliant idea, especially given the type of person it seems to bother most, and this site feels a lot less toxic than other online communities, probably as a direct result.

      • @xe8@lemmy.ml
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        73 years ago

        Federated social media platforms may always be smaller than the for-profit platforms which use all kinds of tricks to turn people into commodities: tracking users, using targeted advertising, having psychologists on the development team to “gamify” everything, incentivizing people to turn themselves into “content creators” and “influencers”, create and exploit addictive behaviour by having infinite scrolling pages and adjusting content based on “engagement” data.

        So Lemmy won’t make you rich - but I think you’re ok with that.

        • @DrivingForce@lemmy.ml
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          33 years ago

          From my understanding it is hardcoded into the source code. Not sure how hard it would be to remove if you ran the site yourself.

    • @Deadnaut@lemmy.ml
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      93 years ago

      I’m a fan of the current approach, especially if it allows the devs to focus their resources elsewhere. Can always be revisited later.

  • @MadestMadness@lemmy.ml
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    363 years ago

    Seeing the pile of comments on here, I just wanna go out of my way to say I think the slur filter is a great idea. Fascists will appropriate any leeway they’re given regardless of the ideological motivations under which said leeway is provided

    • @AlmaemberTheGreat@lemmy.ml
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      133 years ago

      It is but hardcoding it isn’t. First of all the server admin should be able to change the regex (preferably without editing the source code) to fit the community’s need.

  • IngrownMink4
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    303 years ago

    We also noticed a consistent criticism of the built-in slur filter in Lemmy.

    • The funniest and most ironic thing about this is that the same people who criticize the filter are the first to insult you… These people already have a home. That home is called Reddit. And even if they’re more fascist, they’d better use Gab. But no, this social network better not be corrupted. Lemmy is a very healthy social network. People are friendly, curious and intelligent. It sounds a bit cliché, but it’s the truth. I like to make comments and posts here. I feel more free to express myself, unlike in Reddit. I just hope the core developers continue to moderate as well as ever, without giving in to pressure from those troublesome users. Keep it up 💪🏽💖
    • @roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml
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      -93 years ago

      You have obnoxious people on all sides of the debate, including people who avoid listening to foreign ideas by labeling the other sides.

      To be honest, nobody knows how the culture would be different under a different sweet of rules, especially the people who act most confident about it.

      • @levity@lemmy.ml
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        23 years ago

        Social games, that is, sets of rules, are studied under many different disciplines. Things have been tried. Experiments have occurred, papers written. We know some stuff about how different kinds of rulesets work. Sorry if you dont like the fact that others have studied and tested things, but that does not mean you get to deny their knowledge.

  • RoAe
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    253 years ago

    Although I’m more right-leaning than left, I personally think it’s great that the people leading lemmy are communists, anarchists, etc. I think it helps provide a counter-balance to the more right leaning groups trying to avoid mainstream social media.

    I like the idea of a slur filter as a moderation tool for any instance I am a part of, but I feel like it goes against the whole purpose of federated social media. Isn’t the point of federated stuff that you are free of centralized control, with the freedom to pick an instance which suits your desires? It seems wrong to impose any moderation, no matter how justified, on an entire federated platform.

    Generally though, I love this platform! Thanks so much for all your hard work!

    • @marmulak@lemmy.ml
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      223 years ago

      I think it helps provide a counter-balance to the more right leaning groups trying to avoid mainstream social media.

      I think this point is important regardless of political spectrum. Lots of really nasty people have migrated to alternative platforms so that they can be nasty, but I’m glad Lemmy makes it clear enough that it’s not one of their nasty spaces.

      • @roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml
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        -23 years ago

        Ideological freedom encourages nasty people. And restrictions encourage thoughtless people.

        You can go on notabug and ignore the crazy psychos and chat with the creative people.

        You can go on reddit and find endless people with no independent thought, repeating things and not listening to reach other.

        Lemmy is in the middle. But IMO that’s not an objective good thing, it’s a preference.

    • Maya
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      183 years ago

      So as @PP44 is saying, it’s open source. The devs work to make sure that anyone can set it up straightforwardly to run with their own modifications, not just the main version – and that means modifying the slur filter is also supposed to be straightforward, even though it’s not encouraged. There isn’t actual moderation on the whole platform per se, since two instances can federate even if one has no slur filter. There are lots of “points” to federated stuff, though, so the existence of a slur filter works well to help keep Lemmy from attracting the cesspool-types while still enjoying those other benefits.

      • @AlmaemberTheGreat@lemmy.ml
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        23 years ago

        It should be in a config file IMO, so communities can add/remove things based on their needs. There might be a community consisting of black people, for example, who would want to jokingly use the n-word between themselves. Hardcoding it into the code makes it harder to change it for legitimate use-cases. Putting it into a separate file could also help people to customize Lemmy for their language (there are languages where offensive words in English are just ordinary words).

        Not everyone is tech-savvy enough to find the regex in the code and patch it out, and that could make a lot of people’s life a lot harder

    • @PP44@lemmy.ml
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      103 years ago

      I’m clearly “left-leaning”, so I might be biased, but I don’t agree with your criticism toward the slur filter : the project is open source, and as such people wanting to use these slur can work they way to another version. The devs explain here a clear intention to make this change difficult enough to prevent at least partially the migration of some communities they don’t want to support and/or give a platform to. I think that’s an honest way to do things ?

      It also open up the debate on free speech and how saying some things actively attacks fundamental rights of others. In those cases, defending free speech as a “right” becomes irrelevant since both sides of the debate can use this logic to defend opposing actions. Trying to be short here, hope you understand what I mean !

        • @PP44@lemmy.ml
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          93 years ago

          I quite agree with you that moderation is hardly a machine job, and not saying it is the perfect solution. It sure as it’s drawback. I am just arguing that the benefits outweigh them. I would prefer to be in a world where there are not needed, be as of the world today, I admit I prefer having this filter rather than not having it, mostly because of the systemic effects I explained.

          I agree that the relevance of he content of the filter can be discussed too, and that banning some words can make it difficult to discuss certain topics. But I think some words are almost always meant to harm, and can be easily replace by more positive or neutral term.

          As a direct example : I can talk in this post about homosexuality, and I can event paraphrase to talk about the way some f word is used as a slur for it and how I think allowing it here isn’t a good idea in my opinion. See, I can talk about it, be respectful about it. I just prevent to call you a [insert here whatever banned slur] pretending to use my free speech.

            • @PP44@lemmy.ml
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              3 years ago

              As often in cool debate, I think in the end we mostly agree. I especially agree with you on the point that reclaiming a word is a valid way of using some slur, and that it should not be to a privileged group to choose when a word is ok or not. On this point I have to point out that this is still the case with manual moderation, if most moderator are privileged. So I agree that diversity should be push in all places of power, and all decision are better made (and more legitimate) with a diversity in the group that make them.

              But on the automated part, I really think the psychological aspect is strong and should be questioned. You talk about “human interaction” but this definition is really hard non only to define, but also to defend as an efficient way of reaching you goals. I am quite sure that when the devs made their filter, there was quite a lot of human interaction and debate around it, and the simple fact the put one show that they interacted with other people around them. And is a “manual” moderation a human interaction when you don’t see or know the person, don’t know their culture, the context, their tone, etc. Moderation will never be perfect, will always involve bad decisions, errors. When errors are mades “directly” by humans, compassion and empathy help us to try and understand before judging (but judging nonetheless in the end don’t get me wrong). Why is it so different when an automated system (created by an imperfect human) ? Why is an automated error worse than a human one if the consequences are the same ?

              Long story short, I don’t like thinking along great principles like “automated moderation is dangerous”, but rather try analyze the situation and think : would this place be better if there was not this automated moderation ? I agree that this is a wide and difficult debate one what is “better” of course, but the focus should always be this one : how to make things better.

              Thank you so much for your answer, i’m not used to debate online because I didn’t feel at ease anywhere else before, but I love it and it is thanks to people like you and all the other interesting answers I get that I can enjoy that and think about it so much ! Thank you thank you <3 !!

              (edit : typo)

              • @nutomic@lemmy.mlOPM
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                3 years ago

                Thanks for your comment, I’m really happy to read something like this. I’m glad that people can really get along here :)

                • @PP44@lemmy.ml
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                  23 years ago

                  a white admin would probably think twice before getting involved in internal matters over there.

                  Yes, at least a sensible one ! But the term you used is great : “thinking twice”. I really do think that the admins though twice before choosing this filter. This is a human choice, just made with automated tools. As in your example, the moderation will be questioned in either case, and that’s great ! I’m here for it. And i promote a way of organizing the critique against moderation around the question “what are the concrete consequences of either choices”, kind of an utilitarian point of view I have to admit. I think that initializing this new platform with a quite strong political stance on these issue will help this place have a positive impact. It is “hardcoded” yes, but in an open source project. If the platform grows, forks will appear for sure, especially if strong opinion arises on this kind of “hardcoded” issues. So I think about it more as a launch measure than a definitive stance.

                  lack of context and empathy

                  1. That does not make the errors worse, that makes them more probable. The same error made by an automated system isn’t worse than a human one.
                  2. No perfect system, not perfect context or empathy. You go to a physical event, the are rules, laws that are arbitrary to some extend. you’ve got physical moderation that will make mistakes. You go online, manual moderation job is harder because you lack more of the context/empathy, but I think you are still relevant. You go system wise, automated moderation is even harder and will make more errors for sure, but it is not a definitive reason against it. Is online moderation worse than physical meeting ? Yes. Should we prevent it and organize physical court for every moderation case online ? No, even if the decision would be better for sure. Because moderation would be less efficient as a whole, and that is what matter. In the same way, is automated moderation worse than manual ? Yes. Should we prevent it and only accept manual one ? The “better decision” argument is not enough to defend the “no”.

                  Are you by any chance too young (…) ?

                  I’m too young yes, just missed it ! (I’m born in 1994). (I am very social AFK, but never used Facebook/Twitter/… so I’m not as used to online interaction, that I think have specific codes.) But things go back and forth, let’s hope projects like Lemmy are the sign of a new era of progress !

          • @roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml
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            33 years ago

            That’s the defence of the “slur filter” that everyone can agree on. It’s harmless because it does almost nothing. It has no real benefit or cost.

            The people who say it deters fascists - it just doesn’t hold water.#

            • @PP44@lemmy.ml
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              43 years ago

              I don’t know, if I believe some comments around here, there are clearly some of them that explicitly explain they would not come here because they feel “hated”, in public, so clearly to deter anyone close to them to come here for these reason. If so, it means it has some positive effect, and it seems plausible to me.

              • @roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml
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                3 years ago

                I don’t understand a lot of your message.

                But if i get the gist, that might not be so positive. People who feel hated, isolated, afraid to express themselves in public, they are the people we should welcome.

                It sounds like they are teenagers who are just figuring out their views. They all have strange and offensive ideas at times, but with help most people figure out a sensible worldview in the end.

                • @nutomic@lemmy.mlOPM
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                  As long as they can stop themselves from insulting or attacking other people, they can come to Lemmy with no problem.

                • @PP44@lemmy.ml
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                  33 years ago

                  Sorry, it was not clear at all ! I was talking about fascist publicly denouncing lemmy as a platform suppressing their free speech, and that, as such, it should be avoided.

      • RoAe
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        Perhaps I was a bit too harsh on the filter. After all, you’re right that someone could just modify the code. Even so, it doesn’t really seem like it lines up with the philosophy of federated platforms. It makes it more difficult to customize moderation on the instance level. I also feel like the problem of platforming nasty people could be solved by moderation on the instance level and blocking instances which don’t have adequate moderation. That’s what it’s going to need to be in the end anyway if Lemmy grows enough and people customize the code.

        It does bring up the free speech debate, but I find those usually aren’t very productive in these sorts of contexts. It’s not really a legal question since the government isn’t involved, and they usually just end up being each side stating their presuppositions.

        It’s not terribly important in this case anyways, I just thought I’d share my thoughts on it.

        • @PP44@lemmy.ml
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          83 years ago

          I mostly agree. And I agree that if the platform really grows, it will come down to per instance moderation and instance admins choosing wisely the instances they choose to federate with. But I think the choice is to make sure to give a head start to the people they want to welcome here. With the recent events in the US, imagine lemmy being the next tool used by “some people” the devs wich didn’t come. Then the platform as a whole would be much less attractive to some other people the devs are more interested in helping and interacting with.

          So I think we agree, on the long term, if Lemmy grow, someone will come up with a modified version without thoses filter. It will just take more time. Meanwhile, Lemmur gets to be at peace as much as it can ?

          Thanks for your answer !

  • @someone@lemmy.ml
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    243 years ago

    I find it quite sad that people are bothered by the political views of others enough to ignore the good things they do for the community. Even if the misconceptions about the political stance of Lemmy devs were to be true I wouldn’t care as Lemmy as a piece of software is good, and admins are quite polite on general discussions. I don’t remember even one political post made by any of them.

    • @PP44@lemmy.ml
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      3 years ago

      I agree with you for the most part but like to discuss detail, no need to answer me if you don’t want to i’m being picky !

      If I have to be honest, political view of the devs do matter to me. I’m glad I’m close to their ideas, because I clearly would not want to use something not only made by fascists, but at a stage where their control a flagship instance as important as this one is. I would be afraid of direct censorship of course, but also of the general spirit driving the project. So I think it is in fact an important question. I just happen to be cool with the situation here because I think I will agree with the vast majority of the important decision.

      (edit : typo)

  • @zeroaesthetic@lemmy.ml
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    223 years ago

    I didn’t even notice there was a slur filter. It seems to me that if you’re not an asshole, it doesn’t affect you one way or the other.

    • @xarvos@lemmy.ml
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      93 years ago

      It does: there are languages other than English, as suggested in the original post itself.

  • nBee
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    223 years ago

    Lemmy is run by a team of people with different ideologies, including anti-capitalist, communist, anarchist, and others.

    ❤️❤️❤️

  • @linkert@lemmy.ml
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    173 years ago

    No need for slurs in discussions. There are better ways to express anger , disgust or other “hot” emotions.

    • @glennsl@lemmy.ml
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      3 years ago

      What if the intent is not to express “hot” emotions? What if I just want to point someone to a book that happens to use a slur in its title? Or even just a URL to said book (or are URLs with slurs allowed?) Or quote a scottish person?

      You assume intent, completely disregarding context. That’s a general problem with superficial slur filters.

  • Skull
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    173 years ago

    I’m brand new to Lemmy but overall so far I think you all are doing great. I appreciate the diversity in the political views of the team too. I find Lemmy much more usable than other sites too in how it’s not as overfilled with garbage like a lot of digital media has become. Overall great app, no complaints from me and thank you for running Lemmy.

  • @glennsl@lemmy.ml
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    3 years ago

    I don’t t care what the developers and admins think. I care what they do. And for the most part I think what they do is very, very good.

    For the thought police on the other hand, I can’t see what good would come out of what they’re trying to do. Addressing concrete decisions like the slur filter is of course fair game. At least take the time and effort to look into the what and why of actual decisions that have been made before criticizing something.

  • @polymerwitch@lemmy.ml
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    133 years ago

    I really like this project. I think there are some areas for improvement in community building tools and moderation, but the software isn’t even at 1.0 yet. So, that makes sense. It will be interesting to see how the structure of the software influences community building. How will the up vote aggregation affect what is seen? How will that differ between instances?

    As far as the politics of this instance. I’ve found it fine as an anarchist. As lemmy spreads and there are more instances I might find a more fitting home, but I feel welcome here in all my identities for now. There are certainly other lemmy instances I don’t feel welcome at so :woman shrugging: .

    • @roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml
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      It’s certainly good have diversity of opinion, to keep it interesting for everyone. But how far would you extend that?

      If there were more (or more active) fascists here, would that make it richer? Probably not - there ideas are empty and obtuse and self serving and racist. But i would have said the same about tankies before i joined Lemmy and listened to them.

      The one thing you do not want is a circlejerk, where everyone agrees and is happy, but there is no important argument between people who strongly disagree.

      • @polymerwitch@lemmy.ml
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        143 years ago

        I definitely wouldn’t feel safe on an instance that tolerates fascists and/or racists.

        Personally, I don’t use the label “tankie” to describe people. I just think it’s outdated and doesn’t really relay where I might have disagreements with authoritarian leftists and staunch nation state supporters. Where I don’t feel welcome on some other lemmy instances has more to do with those authoritarian leftists and staunch nation state supporters not making enough room for a nuanced discussion about the balance and tension of individual autonomy and collective action (where does the liberation/rights of the individual end and the state/commune begin?). I don’t really feel like I would be silenced here for exploring that nuance though.

        • @roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml
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          13 years ago

          Yes good points.

          Btw what’s a better term than “tankie”? I only learnt about this ideology recently, am ignorant of the details of it.

          It’s okay IMO to have instances which are now closed, more restricted speech/ideas. There are good reasons why some people like them, and why they need to exist. But there must be other places where fee speech/free debate is possible. For example in France it recently became illegal to criticise a policeman by name, no matter what he has done. Very dangerous.

  • @roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml
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    I’m always the first to start these threads.

    But it’s good to remember, we chose Lemmy over sites like notabug because it works better. Some good decisions by the devs created a good website, enabling good discussions, which you just don’t see elsewhere.

    Some things like the “slur filter” seem sketchy, but you have to give the devs the benefit of the doubt. They clearly know a couple of things about forum design.

    At the same time, it’s important to talk about this stuff. Better ideas usually come from debate.

  • Jama
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    93 years ago

    I’m not a fan of slur filter. IMHO words aren’t the problem, the context is. I could use a word to describe a problem or to link a paper, in a sarcastic way, as a slang, or to make examples for something else. I don’t think just banning some words will solve any problem, this should at least be opt-out, and I really think a different way to check for offensive content need to be found.

    Anyway: keep up the good work! Lemmy seems an awesome project and I really hope this will grow

    • @nutomic@lemmy.mlOPM
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      163 years ago

      The slur filter is certainly not perfect, but so far it has been very effective at preventing bigots from using Lemmy. If anyone has a better idea how to achieve that goal, we will definitely consider it.

      • ghost_laptop
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        23 years ago

        What if the filter sends a notification to the communities admins, so then they can read it and decide for themselves if it deserves a ban or not? It would require human moderation but it’s an idea.

        • @Echedenyan@lemmy.ml
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          33 years ago

          The idea is to ensure the maintenance in every instance built. Moderators here are not the same as other instances. The software could be used for really bad things.

          • ghost_laptop
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            23 years ago

            Well, I don’t think that’s the problem, though, anyone could literally use Lenny which is Lemmy without the slur filter, so if people in other instances want to take that route they already can. The important thing that could cause issues with this idea is that A. You need active moderators in all communities who are willing to cooperate in this and B. The instance admins need to want this, too.

            • @Echedenyan@lemmy.ml
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              3 years ago

              Lenny is the proof that it works. They were forced to fork it and remove it by hand and even to maintain backporting every time which could lead into incompatibilities and slow maintenance.

          • @AlmaemberTheGreat@lemmy.ml
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            03 years ago

            The software could be used for really bad things.

            Open-source software is supposed to serve its user, not your political goals, no matter how holy said political goals are.

        • @PP44@lemmy.ml
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          33 years ago

          I agree it would be more efficient in general, but it would allow the creation of spaces dedicated for people ok with using those words. And I do agree with the “clear net positive” of preventing creation of the accounts and communities here.

    • DessalinesM
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      143 years ago

      I don’t think sarcasm or slang are a good excuse to use slurs. On the internet where sarcasm can be impossible to decipher, it inevitably leads to irony-poisoning where people can’t tell if anyone’s being racist or “just being sarcastic”.

      • @AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml
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        Another point, even saying them in jest is in very bad taste in the majority of cases. I hear arguments that some groups use slurs as part of their slang and “don’t actually mean to insult anyone”, but here’s the thing: those people are usually not the marginalized group that the slur is meant to insult and when someone who the word is meant to insult feel insulted, their feedback is at best ignored and at worst mocked.

        I guess a notable exception is black people’s use of the n-word, which is fine, but it’s also a whole can of worms when you consider the fact that other ethnicities like white people also regularly use it “because they can, so why can’t I?”

      • Jama
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        13 years ago

        Maybe sarcasm can be subtle, but expression like “we’re back [common synonymous of sex-workers]” are often used not in an offensive way. And there still are a lot of contexts where I can choose to use a word to prove a point or talk about something. IMHO words shouldn’t be banned without context

        • @k_o_t@lemmy.ml
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          93 years ago

          if you spend any bit of time on any far-right or centrist forums you’ll see that irony and sarcasm are very often used to express ideas that a person is not yet fully comfortable with expressing openly, a testing ground of some sort, so in case of backlash they can always backtrack and just say “it’s just a joke”

          developing a slur filter that is based on context is much harder than just creating a list of words that are forbidden regardless of context, especially because much of the sarcasm can quite literally be Schrodinger’s sarcasm (a person decides whether it’s a joke or not retrospectively based on the response to it)

    • ghost_laptop
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      23 years ago

      Yeah, I understand it and know it’s a patch for a bigger problem but I kind of feel what you say. Once I talked about a book called The F… and their friends between revolutions and it got censored, and in this context is perfectly fine, but if you add an opt-out you will have a lot of people abusing it.

  • @Tomat0@lemmy.ml
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    3 years ago

    Isn’t instance-blocking alone sufficient for being able to prevent the environment from being overrun? I understand the hesitancy to platform reactionaries, but as it stands the network effect is easily the biggest hurdle the Fediverse is going to face. Right-libertarians and actual reactionaries might be a net negative on the main instance, but as far as the software itself goes, numbers are numbers, and could end up making a world of difference.

    Let them form their own circlejerks away from everyone else and have slur-blocking be on a per-instance basis, after all that’s why the federated design works so well.

    • @nutomic@lemmy.mlOPM
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      63 years ago

      There are more important things than making numbers go up. Just the existance of the slur filter makes right-wingers upset, and stops them from even considering to use Lemmy. That makes our job much easier because we dont have to deal with them.

      • @Tomat0@lemmy.ml
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        3 years ago

        I disagree just due to the aforementioned network effect. Numbers with social media have a snowball effect, where people make their decision on whether or not to participate based on existing levels of activity. What sets Lemmy apart from stuff like Lobste.rs and HackerNews IMO is that it’s integration of federation gives it potential to break out as a serious alternative to the platforms rather than catering a specific niche, so I’d say the snowballing is important also since it has the potential to help bring up the rest of the Fediverse.

        Given Lemmy’s reputation as being a platform run by communists, the fact that such a hardcoded filter even existed to begin with, and also per-instance blocking/slur filtering, I’d think that should be enough to keep them away and stop them from polluting the communities associated with the flagship instances, then again I’m not an admin so I can’t say for sure. It’d also help the issue you mentioned regarding ambiguity of what slurs to include, since each community can decide that for themselves.

        • @nutomic@lemmy.mlOPM
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          73 years ago

          Lemmy is growing quite well, one year ago we only had 800 users, now we are already at 13.000. Sure the slur filter might limit growth a bit, but we are not a silicon valley company whose goal is growth at any cost.

      • m-p{3}
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        33 years ago

        Can’t they just remove the slur filter, recompile and join the federated network with their instance?

        • @jadziadax@lemmy.ml
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          43 years ago

          Would take a lot of effort and would be immediately unfederated when it was noticed. Not worth the time investment

  • @MyopicTopic@lemmy.ml
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    3 years ago

    Myself I’m personally not sure what is a slur about the term for a female dog, or a prostitute for that matter. Seems like those words can be used for expressing more than simply misogynist rhetoric, but whatever. Or maybe my belief that the phrase "ain’t that a b**ch* isn’t offensive is outdated. If that’s the case, so be it.

    Don’t have much against a slur filter per se, but it will always be controversial, and I don’t necessarily believe some of those who view it negatively are better off not joining. But, it is what it is.

    • @neuromonkey@lemmy.ml
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      03 years ago

      Just because a particular word isn’t offensive to you, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a population that itvs meant to insult. Claiming that you find an insulting term to be fine suggests that anyone who is offended by it is just being overly-sensitive. That’s not a great way to approach looking for methods of reducing insulting speech.

      • @MyopicTopic@lemmy.ml
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        23 years ago

        I’m not even implying the words bch or wh* to not be offensive, because they are. I’m saying I’m not sure if those words specifically (out of all the very specific and pointed offensive terms to use towards a certain group or subset of individuals which are also banned on here) are so pointedly offensive to warrant an outright ban on them. I’m also not entirely convinced those words were or ever have been used to disadvantage an entire group of people in the way the words that I feel are justifiable in their banning have been. If anyone feels calling a woman those two terms is on the same level or at all comparable to the other words on the list then I absolutely disagree, even though I also agree that calling a woman either of those terms to be offensive and wrong.

        At the same time I feel their use outside of that context warrants allowing them to be used even so. Especially if we’ve decided the term cunt is evidently fair game when to call a woman that would be much further over line than either of those other two banned terms.