Disclaimer: I am a multiply marginalized person on the radical left.
I see various issues with the slur filter.
The biggest one, I feel, is that many, many people in marginalized communities have reclaimed slurs. I’d go as far as to say that some (myself included) strongly identify with reclaimed slurs. The word “queer” is a very common example. Will those who identify with it not be allowed to express themselves fully here? The ban on slurs actually makes me feel far less welcome here as a marginalized person as a part of my identity that I am proud of, embrace, and find power in is banned. Most of my friends with various marginalizations have reclaimed slurs as well and would not feel welcome in this space. The reclamation of slurs can be an essential tool for marginalized people. Who are non-marginalized people to decide which slurs marginalized people are allowed to reclaim? I encourage you to read more about this, because it is incredibly important.
Additionally, the code used to filter slurs is flawed. Does it handle if users use alternate Unicode characters to write slurs? Replacing "O"s with "0"s? Slur filters have been implemented time and time again and the result is always the same: users get more creative in their use of slurs or even invent new ones. There are so many variations of slurs, and language is far too complex for this to be enforced with a simple regex. It’s also critical to consider different languages here. If Lemmy centers English in its slur filtering, it will inadvertently censor non-English words that are not slurs as well as not censoring non-English words that are. Not to mention – centering English is incredibly problematic.
Finally, the code is easily removed, and I speculate that if anything, it will lead to a fork of Lemmy by the alt-right even sooner that will gain significant traction. At the very least, marginalized users such as myself who simply wish to reclaim slurs will have to go through the labour of modifying the code and hosting our own instances.
tldr: as a multiply-marginalized person with experience developing and running community platforms, this is a huge mistake, and will end up alienating many of those that you wish to protect.
Please reconsider this change as it is far more nuanced than it appears on the surface. Thank you.
edit: a simple solution would be to allow individual users the ability to filter out slurs (or phrases, or whatever) that they are uncomfortable with.
I am not going to stop using Lemmy if the slur filter is not removed but I have to agree a lot, me and all my friends use reapropiated slurs (from Spanish, not English) and it would be really ugly not to be able to use them.
The part about Lemmy forks makes sense. Sites like Gab and removedute were very successful in using free speech as their main selling point, and the alt-right flocked to them almost immediately. As for reclaiming slurs, I think allowing users to filter out slurs would be a great idea.
They might just be full of alt-right because they are small and few. If there were more free-speech spaces they would fill with normal people, so you wouldn’t notice the alt-right, like you don’t in bigger platforrms today.
More free-speech plaforms could be a good thing. Like wikipedia and openstreetmaps - as long as the normal people drown out the crazies, it works brilliantly, much better than a more tightly controlled space.
One thing you should consider is that all Lemmy instances and communities are moderated by volunteers in their free time. It is important that we make their job as easy as possible, so they dont get overworked, and can focus on other tasks. If we removed the slur filter, it would cause a lot of extra work for them, as they would have to decide in each case if the slur usage is justified or not.
Like we said many times before, removing the slur filter is not up for debate, not unless someone comes up with a better alternative. But we are always open to discuss adding or removing certain terms.
If this is a deal breaker for you then thats okay, I’m sure there are many other platforms where you can use these terms.
