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In general we are open for constructive feedback

My one big fear right now is that a mod could delete my words, and they would be lost forever.

Sometimes I write long essays here. They are ideas that I think are important and original. I write them so people will be able to read them many years into the future.

It's important that anything deleted by a mod or an admin can be saved by the creator afterwards.

I'd argue it's necessary that nothing can ever be fully deleted, if you want people to ever write anything important here.

That's why historically most of the most important world-change essays were written to newspapers. Once a newspaper is published, it is available forever. It can never be expunged.

New to Lemmy and the decentralized realm in general but really appreciate the work you've done here and the community thats been cultivated. As a long time Reddit Mod I have to say while I'm pretty anti content filtering in general...bravo to the slur verboten list. It is as you say a net positive for reasonable minded non hateful people. As long as the code is open source I'm fully behind it.

I like how the slur filter is described here:

"Note that it doesn’t include any simple swear words, but only slurs which are used to insult and attack other people."

but I guess the devil is in the details. Where do I see the actual words that are being blocked? When I clicked on the link I just saw a page of code which I cannot understand.

Lemmy is a fabulous creation - keep up the good work. I am excited to see what the future holds for Lemmy.

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!

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

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.

“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 💪🏽💖

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 ...

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.

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.

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

❤️❤️❤️

I don't see how filtering very few words could annoy anyone, none of them are used in normal circumstances (except b***h I guess).

Instead of filtering the words, you could change them for something nice. Like changing "idiot" for "dork"; sounds like it'd make it fun (and of course, still filtering the worst offenders).

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.

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.

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?