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@[email protected] Glad you posted this! I've been getting a lot of comments on my video about Lemmy regarding the political views of the Lemmy devs.

I've think I've handled them like a champ but they seem to be so afraid that Lemmy will be used to "convert" people to communist ideology which is absurd.

As for the slur filter, while I personally don't think it's a good way to deal with abuse on Lemmy instances (e.g words can be used in different contexts). I understand the reasoning behind it.

I agree with the policy in concept, and I think it has generally done good. As a new user to the platform I am impressed by how friendly and non-vitriolic it seems to be.

Having the filter hard-coded and public is a great way to keep things transparent and free from abuse.

However, I do have some issues with the actual content of the list.

I'm not going to even allude to them for obvious reasons, but there are many slurs that really should be included and are not.

There's also the case of reclaimed slurs. While some of the slurs on the list are pretty much purely used by racists, a few are frequently used in a reclaimed context, and excluding them may harm or exclude the targeted group - possibly more so than to allow them.

Thanks for clarifying the position!

You can see for yourself the words which are blocked

I have two problems with the slur filter. First i believe it should be configurable on a per-instance basis because this filter won't be applicable to other languages. Second i believe a word-based filter is highly to produce false positives, as has been the experience with every "NSFW filter" in existence so far.

Maybe we don't agree on that, but i don't believe quoting/mentioning a word necessarily validates it. For example, how can i advertise an article that explicitly explains why these words are insulting without falling into the slur filter myself?

I appreciate this is the policy of lemmy.ml as an instance, but i believe having it configurable would be better. For example, maybe users could be warned that using a slur their message will be moderated and only appear once it has been approved?

While I very much get and respect the general sentiment, I think from the perspective of a Central European non-English person in a country with a significant number of, also non-English speaking Nazis, the current approach of filtering slurs based on an English regex is fatally flawed. You can happily use Lemmy to create a hostile far right community where everyone is easily able to use whatever hurtful slurs they want as long as they are not the few specifically blocked English ones.

On the other hand you create a situation where people feel the need to question the choice of software of their community because they read about censorship or whatever to be used in Lemmy and might stay away and move to other software even though the would maybe never be affected by the slur-filter as the number is not so large and the overlap with other languages not very big.

So I would argue that this specific implementation of a slur-filter just doesn't achieve what it aims to achieve and should be fundamentally rethought, maybe as configurable per instance.

Hi, I'm new to Lemmy. I saw the post about LemmyBB on hacker news and it brought me here. On the HN thread you can see the discussion on the slur filter right from the beginning. I consider myself very tolerant and I personally would not have added it by default. I also understand that the authors see things differently.

I want to thank the team who made this project a reality. You've built a serious alternative to a massive echo-chamber propaganda machine. THANK YOU. The slur filter is a non issue and whoever is only focused on that doesn't understand the dire situation we reached with walled gardens being built everywhere on the internet, which is actually becoming more of an intranet ...

Can you post a link to your Lemmy? When I ask the Duck about it, it shows me this old guitarrist from UK. I don't wanna ask Google. When I type "Lemmy net" it shows me an internet company in Germany but nothing with forums.

I'd say the entire politics thing has been an issue of the past for a good while. I remember there was a time when just about every thread about lemmy anywhere would turn into a complete mental shitshow and that wasn't exactly enticing. But I followed the development for a good while before jumping in, and the communication got gradually much more professional (in a good sense). And I wish people would stop digging that up from years ago since it doesn't really matter.

I'm glad you two can work on this full-time and hopefully the platform gets adopted by enough people that it will stay lively. Cheers.

Why bake the slurs inside the code?
Why didn't you make it so every instance admin makes a list of slurs they want or want not to ban? without having to mess with the code and mess with the license, especially AGPL.