Recently there have been some discussions about the political stances of the Lemmy developers and site admins. To clear up some misconceptions: Lemmy is run by a team of people with different ideologies, including anti-capitalist, communist, anarchist, and others. While @dessalines and I are communists, we take decisions collectively, and don’t demand that anyone adopt our views or convert to our ideologies. We wouldn’t devote so much time to building a federated site otherwise.
What’s important to us is that you follow the site rules and Code of Conduct. Meaning primarily, no-bigotry, and being respectful towards others. As long as that is the case, we can get along perfectly fine.
In general we are open for constructive feedback, so please contact any member of the admin team if you have an idea how to improve Lemmy.
Slur Filter
We also noticed a consistent criticism of the built-in slur filter in Lemmy. Not so much on lemmy.ml itself, but whenever Lemmy is recommended elsewhere, a few usual suspects keep bringing it up. To these people we say the following: we are using the slur filter as a tool to keep a friendly atmosphere, and prevent racists, sexists and other bigots from using Lemmy. Its existence alone has lead many of them to not make an account, or run an instance: a clear net positive.
You can see for yourself the words which are blocked (content warning, link here). Note that it doesn’t include any simple swear words, but only slurs which are used to insult and attack other people. If you want to use any of these words, then please stay on one of the many platforms that permit them. Lemmy is not for you, and we don’t want you here.
We are fully aware that the slur filter is not perfect. It is made for American English, and can give false positives in other languages or dialects. We are totally willing to fix such problems on a case by case basis, simply open an issue in our repo with a description of the problem.
As a Scottish person, I’ve been tripped up by the slur filter only twice. Once was when I used the c word to describe Dominic Raab (I still stand by that), and the other was when I used twit by with an A instead of an I. I genuinely had no idea that it actually meant vagina! I’ve heard it since I was a child and had no idea what it actually meant.
Still, you can’t really complain about it, it’s more of a trivial thing to people who aren’t being offensive.
“Twat” doesn’t mean vagina, it’s a slang term for clitoris. In the US, “cunt” is slang for vagina, and it is also a derogatory term, typically reserved for women.
Determining what is offensive and what is not is a complex matter. It isn’t only in intent that words become harmful. I have never heard a person use the word “kaffir” as an insult, so I might think that using it was inoffensive. The one time I asked a crowd of people what it meant, my two friends from South Africa turned pale and told me to never, ever, ever use that word again.
The Internet takes us from being citizens of a country, to citizens of the world. It’s on us to learn how to avoid insulting each other. Slur filters are one approach, but… they always have problems. Words aren’t in themselves offensive; people are offensive. Instead of blocking words, I prefer to corral people who won’t stop treating others badly. But I don’t run Lemmy, and I’m thankful that this isn’t a problem that I need to solve.
Google told me it meant vagina, lol.