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I was just thinking about the Voat situation and many of the issues facing "free speech" platforms.

Besides attracting an audience that tends to shit where they eat I was thinking a good portion of the issues they have stem from a few words.

The discussion of free speech and censorship on these sites almost always boils down to a few words.

Which reminded me of the time when 4chan decided to create a word filter to replace certain words with "rudy poo" and "the people's champion". It was a fun creative way to skirt some site issues for a time.

So why not word filter the words that will get you demonetized and deplatformed, the community will know what the words mean and outsiders seeking to bring down your community would have to do a lot more work to prove intent.

I was just thinking about the Voat situation and many of the issues facing "free speech" platforms. Besides attracting an audience that tends to shit where they eat I was thinking a good portion of the issues they have stem from a few words. The discussion of free speech and censorship on these sites almost always boils down to a few words. Which reminded me of the time when 4chan decided to create a word filter to replace certain words with "rudy poo" and "the people's champion". It was a fun creative way to skirt some site issues for a time. So why not word filter the words that will get you demonetized and deplatformed, the community will know what the words mean and outsiders seeking to bring down your community would have to do a lot more work to prove intent.

19 comments

[–] [Deleted] 7 points (+7|-0)

It's a natural idea, and a creative one, but not necessary.

There is no reason for Polsaker and Boukert or whoever pays the bill to have to pay three or possibly ten times as much and have a lot of fake news here. This is a nice forum with nice people. It's not necessary to say the n-word or one of the very few words the ISP will throw a fit over.

Besides, most of the 'free speech' crowd in Voat's context are only obsessed with free speech because it affects them when they are the minority. If given the power/majority they'd forcefully relocate people or genocide them, and ban certain topics from public discussion because of their 'moral convictions' (no gay public school teachers, etc.). Those babies can whine elsewhere. We already had an increase in whining since Voat shut down.

Just to clarify, I'm not talking about doing it here, it's more of a "why don't they do it there" thing. Seems like it would save these sites a lot of hassle.

[–] [Deleted] 2 points (+2|-0)

Oh well yes that is a good idea and good thinking. Yeah I'm just so happy to not have them here lol!

I remember when on Voat Amalek was constantly getting banned for his long spamming of racial rants, he was not the norm and for the most part was the running gag of the community. A couple years later and Amalek won, almost all the frontpage posts were racial Amalek rant style posts. Kind of a fucked up turn of events.

[–] starjello 0 points (+1|-1)

Besides, most of the 'free speech' crowd in Voat's context are only obsessed with free speech because it affects them when they are the minority.

One of the few nice things about Richard Spencer is he has the self-awareness to admit that. I'm not sure many like him know what they truly believe about free speech.

[–] Polsaker 4 points (+4|-0)

Reminds me of when we had shitposting.space online, which was an exact copy of Phuks but with the word "Phuks" automatically replaced with "Shitposting" everywhere

[–] [Deleted] 4 points (+4|-0)

Could the word cabbage be replaced with something less offensive?

[–] folly 3 points (+3|-0)

A friendly reminder: you can't word filter images or videos. Well, you maybe you can, but I guess it would cost some millions in equipment and years in development.

It's no perfect solution but it's a start, if you can establish to your community right away that they have to show a degree of savvy if they want to post certain things on your platform it helps weed out the the dimmest bulbs.