cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/23396300
show transcript
nickyflowers posts:it would be cool if websites let you be an adult on them. the advertisers and payment processors need everything to be Family Friendly though and their definitions of family and friendly are absolutely fucked. but since they're in charge of the Internet now, no one is allowed to be an adult. tiktokers say things like "unalive" and "seggs" because they know death and sex are too adult for online. online is for idiot babies only now because they're easier to market to
nickyflowers replies:
oh im sorry you're a trans adult? super ban. you are super banned for life. you have upset Visa's feelings. Mastercard is throwing up in the corner. how could you do this to Google Ads?
The euphemistic language trend is baffling to me. For sure it's not a censorship problem, right? Adding a synonym to a profanity dictionary is trivial, it wouldn't fool anybody for any amount of time.
It's just the natural progression of forbidden language.
I'm not sure of the filters but a really easy one is:
Dim is considered too rude, so use the medical term closest to it, 'retard', retard becomes to rude so you use disabled. Disabled becomes too rude so you use differently abled, and so on. Forever.
Or; commit suicide -> go kill yourself -> go jump off a bridge -> go commit die -> be self unalived
All censored words and ideas go through this, which is why you should improve the material conditions of people so they can have enough time to empathize with others and avoid saying particularly bad words and ideas.
When you apply it to really common words and ideas, it evolves even faster and dumber.
I just want to applaud this absolute gem hidden sneakily in this comment. Well done. Like, get out of here with that excellent anti-capitalism, pro-social, pro-human logic.
I hereby declare this statement to be the new rule of law by which all of society should be run.
That's not "anti-capitalist". It's just pro-society. Don't let your hate of the former dictate your definition of the latter.
When capitalism promotes alienarion of the worker, aka anti-society...
This is called the euphemism treadmill
You are correct that it is the natural progression of this kind of censorship which is the reason this kind of censorship is a bad idea in the first place.
and then another synonym would be used, and then another and another and by the end of month 1 you've banned half of the oxford dictionary and the kiddies have already moved on to ancient Aramaic. or more realistically diacritic/lookalike spam, good luck filtering that!
you could probably make some sentiment analysis system to autoflag things but why would you bother? i doubt tiktok really gives a shit, it doesn't have morals or a goal beyond its next quarterly report, as long as it can word "we're doing the barest minimum, fuck off" into something more polite it's all good in their books i reckon
Yeah, people say this, but having seen a profanity filter in action... turns out most things do get caught. People just aren't that motivated.
It's a bit different when you're tuning an algorithm and people are just trying to cover a subject you've decided to disincentivize, I suppose, but then why bother? I guess as a token gesture towards regulators, maybe? Socials do seem keen on keeping the tone kid-friendly, though. There's lots of future money in those kids, you can't go scaring them off before you shake them by the ankles.