They actually have, I believe.

https://github.com/LemmyNet

What project were you referring to here?

Unfortunately I can’t tell the same thing about the developers of a fork that don’t work well and isn’t Fediverse.

What do you think I think you’re saying?

Gab failed because they intentionally catered to the alt right and the CEO is a raging low IQ blowhard who hates people he disagrees with while pretending to be a Christian. (Sorry, I have massive gripes against the guy and can’t stand the fact that people trust him lol)

If you want the ability to say slurs then go find another project.

I think I have, I mean the whole point of this post was to talk about Lemmy.

this is not censorship though. It’s moderation.

Okay well lmk when you find internet censorship void of moderation

It’s just saying hey don’t use these particular slurs…They are just saying don’t use the words or if you do need or want to use them put an asterisk or something.

There’s nothing wrong with that, on an instance level, but there needs to be an option where people can say whatever they want, so long as it’s legal.

I’m envisioning this new FOSS social media frontier that is the Fediverse more as a platform for all, and less of a fanclub centered around specific ideologies.

You have ironically stated my reason for not by default holding all Lemmy users to the word blacklist in this comment:

If a community is to have autonomy it needs some consensus on rules and standards of behavior. If we don’t want to have an authority ruling over us, we need to have responsibility, hold each other accountable, and create an environment where the most vulnerable in our community feel protected and like people are actually going to fight for them.

the developers of Lemmy are not assholes

A-holes, perhaps they are not, specifically. But their stance on this antifeature is a very jerk-like move, on their end.

[Lenny is] a fork that [doesn’t] work well and isn’t Fediverse

Ooh interesting! There are key differences between Lenny and Lemmy? What functionality does Lemmy have that Lenny is missing?

I don’t even plan on saying those words, I just think that the software should allow the blacklist feature to be configurable in the UI to easily allow for these two things to happen:

1. Instances who don’t want censorship can easily disable the blacklist
2. Instances that want stronger censorship can easily add more words to the blacklist

Another use here mentioned that you can change the settings in the source code, which is a good start. Not sure how that’s better than just using Lenny tho.

Yeah, that’s a fair point on the Parler part.

Now THAT was a very…strange and bad website.

No, it shouldn’t be made illegal, but, I mean unless it’s for like historical reasons and probably even then…is there even really a justification for creating art supporting Nazism? And IDK about others, but being black, it’d be hard for me to envision making something neutral in regards to the Third Riecht.

I’m not opposed to it, but that needs to be done on a separate instance cuz plenty of people are put off by that kinda thing

Hmm…well if it’s so easily configurable that’s not too bad. It would be nice if you could configure it in the FE tho, but making it easily editable is a HUGE step in the right direction. Good to know that this is the case, ty

Why should all instances by default be forced to ban the same words? That is just preposterous in my view and cannot possibly serve all users properly.

Moderation should be up to the admins, not the code itself. Something is wrong if you cannot properly moderate your space, and you need a computer to do it for you. Either get more admins, or close registrations.

Also, I voted yes on both “there’s too much censorship” and “the current level is just right” because there is a need for moderated spaces, like this one, it’s just that unmoderated spaces aren’t possible in the current Lemay code.

I’m not active here, but I would be if there wasn’t hard-coded censorship on the software. It’s come a long way since I saw it last. The blacklist has even shrunk, which is a good sign.

But I believe that the ultimate power should be in the hands of admins. If an admin wants to ban naughty words, fine, but it shouldn’t be the default, just like whitelist mode isn’t the default on Fediverse instances, but it’s still an option.

For me, it is about principle. Platforms, especially FOSS ones, need to be ones where people can speak their mind freely. Most people leave Big Tech platforms precisely because of the censorship they perform, but others leave because they don’t censor enough. My view: create software that by default does not censor, but can be optimized through settings to censor to a far greater degree than Big Tech can/does. This allows both sides of the aisle to be served in different ways by the same software.

I can see them trying to block Lenny sometime in the future tho

Heh well if you think blocking a small list of words will keep people from saying alt-right things, I can’t help ya, buddy.

If you want to prune extremism from a platform just moderate your spaces properly.

What do you mean? Twitter censorship is at times as bad as it comes.

I’m not arguing against moderation, I’m just saying that maybe a communication platform shouldn’t have hard coded word bans 🤷🏾‍♂️

I’m not against automated tools for moderation, I actually support them and advocate for that feature to be added to Mastodon and Pleroma. But it should be an easily customize feature disabled by default that allows instances to pick whatever words they want to ban, or to not ban words at all.

I feel like being able to say whatever words you want isn’t too much to ask for but here we are! 😂