In this comment my use of the “b” word was overzealously suppressed, silently without telling me. I only discovered it when re-reading my post.
There are THREE #LemmyBug cases here:
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when the “b” word is used as a verb, it’s not a slur. And when it’s used as a noun, it’s only a slur if not literally referring to a dog.
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my post was tampered with without even telling me. Authors should be informed when their words are manipulated and yet still presented to others as their own words.
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The word “removed” cannot simply replace any word. It makes my sentence unreadable. In the very least, the word should be “REDACTED”, and there should be a footnote added that explains /why/ it was redacted.
I think you’re better off changing instances to one that doesn’t use the filter.
Do you know what I should look for? Is it the version number? I recall Lemmy was forked to Lenny, but not sure how to recognize Lenny instances.
(btw, fwiw, I wouldn’t use sh.itjust.works because that’s even more nannied [by Cloudflare]).
I don’t think lemmy comes with a filter enabled by default, so you could probably move to most other instances
It’s not a fork or version number thing. It’s just a instance admin toggle as far as I’m aware.
Lemmy.ml was actually the only one I knew of previously with it enabled.
sh.itjust.works, lemmy.ca, lemmy.world, etc all dont have the filter.
Have you messaged your instance admin? They may not be fully aware of the implications of having the filter on.
And regarding cloudflair at least on sh.itjust.works we’re still hoping its a temporary measure.
I was thinking the “b” word was bank and was confused af
Purged by creator
No, it’s definitely still slurry when used as a verb. The connotation is “You are acting like a woman and that is bad because women are bad.” Don’t use it.
I can see your point in many situations but when I say I am the one b*tching (myself… in the 1st person), in this context I am not saying I am acting badly myself. So the “women are bad” narrative doesn’t follow. In this case the word merely serves as a more expressive complaint.
If someone were to talk about someone else b*tching, it might well be what you’re saying, as they are complaining about someone else complaining & maybe they oppose that other person complaining or their aggressive style thereof.
I think the other thing to remember is that in different English speaking countries the word as a verb causes a different level of offence.
In British English it’s not offensive at all to say someone was b***ing about something.
Frankly it isn’t offensive in much of America either, typically only to church going grandmas who wish to sanitize all obsceneties, or people who connect a lot of dots with assumption that they know what you really mean, that it can’t possibly simply be synonymous with “complaining” in the same way “ass” means “butt,” because of course all men think women are bad and stupid because men are bad and stupid.
I am not going to go into whether it’s right or not, but using the term “B*tching” may not be a slur, but it is still considered misogynistic in many cases, because it is comparing a negative action (complaining) with a misogynistic stereotype (the B*tch).
R*tard is a slur, but if you called something r*tarded, that would still be ableist and be rightfully removed. Many people believe that the same logic should apply to misogynistic slurs.
Whether you agree or not is up to you, but the developers’ logic for the filter being in the state it is is sound.
I’ve seen “idiot”( I d i o t) removed in a comment while “retard” (r e t a r d ) in the same comment remained.
The OP is very correctly pointing out that even per word, the filter is very inconsistent.
And personally, I think it’s a bit ridiculous to shelter every possible bad word. Bad people will come up new ones and good people will be left having to tiptoe over every word(after all, words like “Monkey” or “Ape” could be used racistly, so let’s ban them). It doesn’t solve the actual problem of human behaviour; it just throws a cutesy, useless bandaid over it. Besides, you will probably never be able to censor something racist like “Colin Powell was well spoken”. In context we know it means “he’s well spoken for an African American”. A phrase used often when he was in office. A phrase that would get past filters but is clearly not ok.
Almost as if the whole endeavor is a ridiculous counterproductive waste of time.
It would be possible to implement a “slur filter” on the reader’s side, that automatically redacted a configurable list of bad words from any comment on any instance… but I suspect that the percentage of people who would enable it, and the general community feedback on it, wouldn’t be what the person who made the decision wants to hear. Doing it on the sender side provides a convenient pretense of “I’m doing a good thing here” because it prevents that feedback.
