Lemmy.ml has extensive word censoring. It's at the instance level, not community level.
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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Extensive? Do you have any more details or sources for that?
I’ve just checked the hard coded slur filter and it’s fairly limited and covers only the usual suspects.
To illustrate, some terms that should pass: cunt, fuck face, shit head.
You can say cunt but not a female dog?
Well I’d certainly say that the b word is more of a gendered pejorative than cunt, which would be the point. Thought, obviously the c word can be gendered too, depending on where you are and usage (I’m used to it being fairly neutral though blindly offensive).
I'm pretty sure the other instances don't have a slur filter
Having a filter at all is rather different from having extensive word censoring. Do you think having a filter at all is "extensive"? I can understand the reflex against it, but in the end, for indie social media with limited resources, putting a basic hardcoded prevention right in the software seems like a pretty natural and easy to implement measure.
The other instances may or may not have the filter, I don't know ... but last I checked the filter is more or less baked into the software (as rust is compiled), which would require recompiling from source to remove, something which I bet a number of instances don't bother with ... though this could be very wrong.
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/622
From the github discussion it's an optional feature. See last message
The reason why I think word filters are dumb is evidenced by the reason this discussion started. They randomly censor stuff with no consideration for context or even if the meaning is the same. If widespread, any bad actor can remove or replace random letters to avoid them. And if you happen to use other languages, there's a good chance you'll run into random blocked messages for no good reason.
Ah right ... thanks! ... I'd missed that.
I'm aware of all the issues a simple filter can have, as you describe. My argument is that for an indie social media platform, where high quality and quick moderation is by no means guaranteed, such a filter would generally be worth it.
The most poitical instance prevents you from even referring to the reasons you need politics? Amazing!
Look, it is extremely likely that there a few things potentially going on here:
- Posts are not federating across your instance right now properly due to lemmy.world having issues.
- You may have been banned from that community you are trying to post in.
- There may be word triggers that have been added to lemmy.world as a safety measure due to recent attacks.
- Or potentially the person you are responding to blocked you, unsure how that functions fully.
- You may be rate limited.
You can view the community's modlog you are trying to post to see if you have been banned. What community are you trying to post in?
This one. This very thread took about 15 goes to post.
Lemmy.ml has a slur filter and might be limiting whatever the hell you're trying to say, regardless. Chill.
Even this reponse needs rephrasing all to hell. Come on. Are you telling me I can't use the word meaning the main part of an article? The part between your neck and your legs, the HTML element where the visible part of the page goes. Mustn't say it. Seriously. What a freaking clown show.
1: nope. It's repeatable and predictable, instant nope page or success, depending on content.
2: Nope. I managed to post this here, but only after removing certain words about being mean, rhyming with violets and calm.
3: I don't doubt it, but unless the software is running on Eddie from HHGTTG, I don't see how mentioning the topics could contribute to issues.
4: Nope, this very item was getting noped, and the post wasn't responding to an individual.
5: nope, see points 1 and 4.
You mean "body"? Seems to work fine.
Meh, I ended up having to snip a sentence at a time, and that was the only word I could see that was remotely interesting. I'm not going to binary-search the whole thing to check :D
chill, its lemmy.ml that u r trying to post in! i get errors from it all the time
Testing to see if I can post "body" as well.
All I’m aware of is a hardcoded racial slur filter, which IMO isn’t the worst idea for a platform like this. Personally, I can’t tell what words are causing problems for you. You could take a screenshot of the text if you wanted to discuss the efficacy of the filter.
Honestly, for me, since Jan this year, this is the first time I’ve heard of anyone having any trouble. I’m genuinely curious what’s triggering the filters.
Each instance has different word filters, thus each community has different filters depending on the instance it’s on. What community were you trying to post on?
For example, you can find the word filter that lemmy.ml uses somewhere on this page here: lemmy.ml/api/v3/site
It’s kinda messy, but it’s after/under “slur_filter_regex” and it’s written in a format called RegEx