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I just read the link. I don't think your characterization of the conversation is fair. Either way, it seems like the people behind the project have a CoC about

I just read the link. I don't think your characterization of the conversation is fair. Either way, it seems like the people behind the project have a CoC about what language is allowed. Further, the first response seems pretty reasonable to me from both a technical and ethical standpoint. I would add, lemmy doesn't seem to be about pure free speech, or free speech above all else. They've made it clear that slurs are not acceptable, and anyone who doesn't agree is free to go somewhere else.

rjknight 4y ago
Their principles are fine. It's just that hard-coding a list of English-language bad words, then matching on them in an extremely naive way, is not an excellent way of manifesting those principles in code. The Scunthorpe Problem[1] has been known for over 25 years. Plenty of people have names that incorporate a word that, on its own, would be a slur. Many English-language slurs are also words with entirely different meanings in other languages. Naively regex-matching all incoming text to see if it contains any of a hard-coded list of words means that you're going to get a lot of false positives, which the instance administrators can do nothing to prevent. Meanwhile, you are requiring only the level of creativity of an unremarkable eight-year-old on behalf of those who wish to evade the filter by creatively mis-spelling something. This is all very very obvious to anyone who has ever worked on content filtering, and not much less obvious to someone who hasn't and just sits thinking for five minutes or so. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
- nortonham 4y ago
  >Many English-language slurs are also words with entirely different meanings in other languages. Possibly. But looking at lemmy, it seems like most interaction is in English. As such, it seems reasonable to expect people to make a good faith effort to learn what isn't acceptable on a mostly english language website. >It's just that hard-coding a list of English-language bad words, then matching on them in an extremely naive way, is not an excellent way of manifesting those principles in code. I imagine there are better ways to do it, but this goes back to who owns the instance, and what type of community do they want to foster. More to the point, the github issue originally linked was resolved (to the extent it can be) by having user created filters. https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/configuration.html https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/configuration.... https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1481 https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1481
- Mezzie 4y ago
  Also there are genuine reasons to want to be able to type out slurs that aren't racist. I have an interest in linguistics (complete with degree - so I'm not just saying that to be racist), and discussing something like 'how the use of ethnic slurs has changed over time in English speaking countries' or how the euphemism treadmill functions with regard to insults would be impossible with this filter in place. Similar as to how a hard coded 'no swears' would make it hard to discuss English infixes since the most obvious infix is 'fuck'. Which is the exact kind of niche, pedantic, really nerdy small group discussion that is a good match for this.
ufmace 4y ago
> I don't think your characterization of the conversation is fair. You're free to think so. I for one don't care to censor those who disagree with me. Note that there's a number of deleted comments, and neither of us know what those say. > anyone who doesn't agree is free to go somewhere else Fair enough, and I just said above that that's exactly what I intend to do. I think it needs to be remembered here that their project is attempting to build a forum hosting tool, not a particular forum. If a particular forum intends to censor any slur list they choose, I have no issue with that, that's entirely their right, and I'll post on it or not. But I feel it's highly inappropriate for a team building a hosting tool to impose a particular chosen slur list on anyone using their tool to host a forum, with no regard to what the purpose or character of that forum is intended to be. I shall indeed choose not to use such a tool.
- lovich 4y ago
  >Note that there's a number of deleted comments, and neither of us know what those say Does that mean you get to just create a narrative? Dessalines is the closest in that thread with telling people they can use voat or gab if they want to use slurs, which at least implies some racism but that other dev Nutomic has a pretty inoffensive stance when he says >If you dont like it, fork it. Stop bothering us about it, we will never fully remove the slur filter.
  - Minor49er 4y ago
    >Does that mean you get to just create a narrative? Eh? GP was pretty clear in showing that the developers of the project are pro-censorship, not only in hard-coding in naive badword filters, but also in how they handle responses to requests on their own project >Dessalines is the closest in that thread with telling people they can use voat or gab if they want to use slurs, which at least implies some racism There is no "some" in their statement. They are saying that if you have a problem with blanket-filtering language, then that means that you want to use words that are designated as bad, and that only bad people use those words. It's purely black-and-white. Nobody could ever want to use those words in any other context, according to them >that other dev Nutomic has a pretty inoffensive stance when he says "If you dont like it, fork it. Stop bothering us about it, we will never fully remove the slur filter." On the contrary, saying that anyone who disagrees with you is a "bother" is offensive, especially if you flip-flop on your position and plug the change in anyways, which is what they did
throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
cocs are supposed to police the contributors, no? who will you complain to when a user violates Corey Ehmke's Ten Commandments? the cyber police?
- serf 4y ago
  > cocs are supposed to police the contributors, no? its a generic phrase. I definetly would have thought that if I was reading a github page; but not necessarily when I have to read a COC for joining a Discord. Apparently it's getting tough to operate outside of everyone's random (usually poorly written) CoC on the net.
  - throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
    Discord and the other services have ToS/EULA. a legal agreement that has actual power, unlike github cocs
rootusrootus 4y ago
I read the whole thread, and the developers don't come off as principled, it feels more like they're just wedded to a particular implementation and are grasping at all straws to defend it. A singular regular expression as a slur filter is pretty terrible by any modern coding standard. I'd avoid the project on the grounds that the rest of their code is probably just as amateurish.
serf 4y ago
>I just read the link. I don't think your characterization of the conversation is fair. "If you dont like it, fork it. Stop bothering us about it, we will never fully remove the slur filter." "stop bothering us about it" is , in my experience, a huge red-flag to run into while perusing issues and commits. a 'code of conduct' that dictates all use cases for software for the forever-future is a cute concept -- but 1) it has never worked, and 2) it's basically untenable in the open-source environment. If the software IS workable, it WILL be forked, and your power-from-on-high to force behaviour on people crumbles. If the goal really is to force your political/ethical position on people who use your software it's probably better to do so more transparently so as to not scare the herd into another avenue of control from another actor. As with any software tool in my preferred catalog of tools I prefer one that doesn't foist it's own methods and standards onto me; furthermore I prefer my tools don't foist their politics and societal standards onto me. I don't think that's the purpose of a tool. >I would add, lemmy doesn't seem to be about pure free speech, or free speech above all else. that moral absolutism doesn't need to exist within software. We know that hard-coded lists of restrictions hidden deep within software are a Bad Thing for a long variety of actual technical reasons -- there is nothing stopping the developers of Lemmy from shipping a filter-list that reflects their values right along side their software; the choice towards inflexibility and zero-tolerance just makes the software less reliable, less maintainable, more opinionated, and less popular.
- nortonham 4y ago
  well if people maintain/own a project, and say no to a request multiple times, eventually they will just say, please stop bothering us. In regards to the technical side, the original linked github issue was resolved. See: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/622 https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/622 https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/configuration.html https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/configuration....
cocoricamo 4y ago
Nah, they definitely overreacted to a reasonable request. Different languages, different cultures and different groups will have different words they consider as slurs or not acceptable. Then there are edge cases like history forums where they have a valid use case for posting transcriptions with words that are currently deemed not appropriate. Their response can drive possible adopters away because they could only think in US centric politics.
- nortonham 4y ago
  What is US centric about not wanting to allow words that are commonly understood in English to be slurs, on a site that is predominately English speaking? Also, why is it wrong to expect non native speakers to eventually work out what is and isn't acceptable in day to day conversations with native speakers?
  - cocoricamo 4y ago
    Isn't the idea of Lemmy to run your own instance that could be used to host communities that don't speak English? In their instances list they have servers that speak German, Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, Euskera, French... Why would some non English speaking person be forced to change their language because someone in the USA decided that an innocuous word in their language is now a slur? Also USA is not the only country speaking English and some words considered slurs or offensive in the US are not in other countries that also speak English. They did in the end made it configurable and that's good, but their initial response is a major turnoff for anyone thinking on seriously running the software without planning to maintain a fork in the future.
    - nortonham 4y ago
      Ah yes, I should have thought of all the words in Euskera that overlap with racial/homophobic/transphobic slurs in English
notpushkin 4y ago
Also note that slur filter is now configurable [1] and seems to be completely optional [2]. [1]: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/622#issuecomment-897785317 https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/622#issuecomment-89... [2]: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/235cc8b22897bfb3e71ba3dbd725d36863fea8ba/crates/utils/src/utils.rs#L35-L62 https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/235cc8b22897bfb3e71ba...

rjknight 4y ago

Their principles are fine. It's just that hard-coding a list of English-language bad words, then matching on them in an extremely naive way, is not an excellent way of manifesting those principles in code. The Scunthorpe Problem[1] has been known for over 25 years. Plenty of people have names that incorporate a word that, on its own, would be a slur. Many English-language slurs are also words with entirely different meanings in other languages. Naively regex-matching all incoming text to see if it contains any of a hard-coded list of words means that you're going to get a lot of false positives, which the instance administrators can do nothing to prevent. Meanwhile, you are requiring only the level of creativity of an unremarkable eight-year-old on behalf of those who wish to evade the filter by creatively mis-spelling something. This is all very very obvious to anyone who has ever worked on content filtering, and not much less obvious to someone who hasn't and just sits thinking for five minutes or so. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

nortonham 4y ago
>Many English-language slurs are also words with entirely different meanings in other languages. Possibly. But looking at lemmy, it seems like most interaction is in English. As such, it seems reasonable to expect people to make a good faith effort to learn what isn't acceptable on a mostly english language website. >It's just that hard-coding a list of English-language bad words, then matching on them in an extremely naive way, is not an excellent way of manifesting those principles in code. I imagine there are better ways to do it, but this goes back to who owns the instance, and what type of community do they want to foster. More to the point, the github issue originally linked was resolved (to the extent it can be) by having user created filters. https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/configuration.html https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/configuration.... https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1481 https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1481
Mezzie 4y ago
Also there are genuine reasons to want to be able to type out slurs that aren't racist. I have an interest in linguistics (complete with degree - so I'm not just saying that to be racist), and discussing something like 'how the use of ethnic slurs has changed over time in English speaking countries' or how the euphemism treadmill functions with regard to insults would be impossible with this filter in place. Similar as to how a hard coded 'no swears' would make it hard to discuss English infixes since the most obvious infix is 'fuck'. Which is the exact kind of niche, pedantic, really nerdy small group discussion that is a good match for this.

ufmace 4y ago

> I don't think your characterization of the conversation is fair. You're free to think so. I for one don't care to censor those who disagree with me. Note that there's a number of deleted comments, and neither of us know what those say. > anyone who doesn't agree is free to go somewhere else Fair enough, and I just said above that that's exactly what I intend to do. I think it needs to be remembered here that their project is attempting to build a forum hosting tool, not a particular forum. If a particular forum intends to censor any slur list they choose, I have no issue with that, that's entirely their right, and I'll post on it or not. But I feel it's highly inappropriate for a team building a hosting tool to impose a particular chosen slur list on anyone using their tool to host a forum, with no regard to what the purpose or character of that forum is intended to be. I shall indeed choose not to use such a tool.

lovich 4y ago
>Note that there's a number of deleted comments, and neither of us know what those say Does that mean you get to just create a narrative? Dessalines is the closest in that thread with telling people they can use voat or gab if they want to use slurs, which at least implies some racism but that other dev Nutomic has a pretty inoffensive stance when he says >If you dont like it, fork it. Stop bothering us about it, we will never fully remove the slur filter.
- Minor49er 4y ago
  >Does that mean you get to just create a narrative? Eh? GP was pretty clear in showing that the developers of the project are pro-censorship, not only in hard-coding in naive badword filters, but also in how they handle responses to requests on their own project >Dessalines is the closest in that thread with telling people they can use voat or gab if they want to use slurs, which at least implies some racism There is no "some" in their statement. They are saying that if you have a problem with blanket-filtering language, then that means that you want to use words that are designated as bad, and that only bad people use those words. It's purely black-and-white. Nobody could ever want to use those words in any other context, according to them >that other dev Nutomic has a pretty inoffensive stance when he says "If you dont like it, fork it. Stop bothering us about it, we will never fully remove the slur filter." On the contrary, saying that anyone who disagrees with you is a "bother" is offensive, especially if you flip-flop on your position and plug the change in anyways, which is what they did

throwaway0x7E6 4y ago

cocs are supposed to police the contributors, no? who will you complain to when a user violates Corey Ehmke's Ten Commandments? the cyber police?

serf 4y ago
> cocs are supposed to police the contributors, no? its a generic phrase. I definetly would have thought that if I was reading a github page; but not necessarily when I have to read a COC for joining a Discord. Apparently it's getting tough to operate outside of everyone's random (usually poorly written) CoC on the net.
- throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
  Discord and the other services have ToS/EULA. a legal agreement that has actual power, unlike github cocs

rootusrootus 4y ago

I read the whole thread, and the developers don't come off as principled, it feels more like they're just wedded to a particular implementation and are grasping at all straws to defend it. A singular regular expression as a slur filter is pretty terrible by any modern coding standard. I'd avoid the project on the grounds that the rest of their code is probably just as amateurish.

serf 4y ago

>I just read the link. I don't think your characterization of the conversation is fair. "If you dont like it, fork it. Stop bothering us about it, we will never fully remove the slur filter." "stop bothering us about it" is , in my experience, a huge red-flag to run into while perusing issues and commits. a 'code of conduct' that dictates all use cases for software for the forever-future is a cute concept -- but 1) it has never worked, and 2) it's basically untenable in the open-source environment. If the software IS workable, it WILL be forked, and your power-from-on-high to force behaviour on people crumbles. If the goal really is to force your political/ethical position on people who use your software it's probably better to do so more transparently so as to not scare the herd into another avenue of control from another actor. As with any software tool in my preferred catalog of tools I prefer one that doesn't foist it's own methods and standards onto me; furthermore I prefer my tools don't foist their politics and societal standards onto me. I don't think that's the purpose of a tool. >I would add, lemmy doesn't seem to be about pure free speech, or free speech above all else. that moral absolutism doesn't need to exist within software. We know that hard-coded lists of restrictions hidden deep within software are a Bad Thing for a long variety of actual technical reasons -- there is nothing stopping the developers of Lemmy from shipping a filter-list that reflects their values right along side their software; the choice towards inflexibility and zero-tolerance just makes the software less reliable, less maintainable, more opinionated, and less popular.

nortonham 4y ago
well if people maintain/own a project, and say no to a request multiple times, eventually they will just say, please stop bothering us. In regards to the technical side, the original linked github issue was resolved. See: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/622 https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/622 https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/configuration.html https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/configuration....

cocoricamo 4y ago

Nah, they definitely overreacted to a reasonable request. Different languages, different cultures and different groups will have different words they consider as slurs or not acceptable. Then there are edge cases like history forums where they have a valid use case for posting transcriptions with words that are currently deemed not appropriate. Their response can drive possible adopters away because they could only think in US centric politics.

nortonham 4y ago
What is US centric about not wanting to allow words that are commonly understood in English to be slurs, on a site that is predominately English speaking? Also, why is it wrong to expect non native speakers to eventually work out what is and isn't acceptable in day to day conversations with native speakers?
- cocoricamo 4y ago
  Isn't the idea of Lemmy to run your own instance that could be used to host communities that don't speak English? In their instances list they have servers that speak German, Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, Euskera, French... Why would some non English speaking person be forced to change their language because someone in the USA decided that an innocuous word in their language is now a slur? Also USA is not the only country speaking English and some words considered slurs or offensive in the US are not in other countries that also speak English. They did in the end made it configurable and that's good, but their initial response is a major turnoff for anyone thinking on seriously running the software without planning to maintain a fork in the future.
  - nortonham 4y ago
    Ah yes, I should have thought of all the words in Euskera that overlap with racial/homophobic/transphobic slurs in English

notpushkin 4y ago

Also note that slur filter is now configurable [1] and seems to be completely optional [2]. [1]: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/622#issuecomment-897785317 https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/622#issuecomment-89... [2]: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/235cc8b22897bfb3e71ba3dbd725d36863fea8ba/crates/utils/src/utils.rs#L35-L62 https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/235cc8b22897bfb3e71ba...