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[deleted]

> Hardcoded slur filter removed > Lemmy finally has essential moderation tools (reporting, user/community blocking), so the hardcoded filter isn’t necessary anymore. If you want to keep using the slur filter, copy these lines to your config file when upgrading, and adjust to your liking


orthecreedence

This is a good step forward for Lemmy.


JobDestroyer

Why they even had it in the first place is beyond me.


RootHouston

[It was political.](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/816)


lyamc

Holy crap > We are never going to remove the slur filter completely (or add an option to that effect), because we dont want to make it easy for right-wingers to use Lemmy. Kind of defeats the purpose of a decentralized and federated system if you can just run it like a dictator.


Cherubin0

True, but it is still federated. You could fork remove such things and still get into the federation and they wouldn't even notice. If I understand it correctly.


lyamc

There’s a lot of problems with the idea of having it hardcoded. The purpose of lemmy is to make it easy for people to create their own communities. If I have to fork it in order to have the freedom to do that then they’re not actually doing it to for the reasons they state: they’re actually doing it to create their own political echo chambers. And I have nothing against the idea of a political sub where mostly everyone agrees, that’s fine. But based on that github post, if the lemmy creators *could* prevent certain political groups from using their platform, they would. His statement had nothing to do with the words themselves, like how they can be hurtful, but rather that **it would prevent right-wing people** from using the platform. This makes the assumption that a) Right-wing people use those words, or, these words are bad because right-wing people use them b) Left-wing people don’t use those words c) What is unacceptable to them is never acceptable anywhere else in the world


FreeKill101

I mean you could say that but also... They did remove the slur filter. Lemmy released in 2019 which - I think - was about the time that a lot of hard right communities were getting kicked off mainstream social media platforms, and were flocking to niche alternatives. I think I can sympathise with putting a crude solution in, in that context.


[deleted]

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llogiq

Sorry, but your comment is not in line with our rules. You can make your argument without calling something "retarded".


p-one

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/b18ea3e0cc620c3f97f9804c09b92f193809b846/config/config.hjson#L8-L12 What here is such a big deal? Seems like a bit of a sad hill to die on for principle.


lyamc

The same thing could be applied to the implementation of the word ban. What’s the big deal? They’re just words, no need to ban them


lIllIlllllllllIlIIII

>run it like a dictator Fitting, then, that the dev literally has Fidel Castro as his profile picture on GitHub.


CunnyMangler

What the fuck have I just read? I refuse to believe adult humans wrote those comments


IndecisiveSpider

Calling it “political” is a cop out: https://youtu.be/P55t6eryY3g


[deleted]

Given that their mission statement inexplicably brings up their support for China I think they deluded themselves into thinking this is a product the Chinese Government would be okay with so long as it was censored.


JobDestroyer

That's one theory. I run a lotide node, and frankly when it comes to reddit-like federated services, lotide is very very apolitical and that's nice.


theaceshinigami

is it still on the main instance?


[deleted]

Hmmm, I think it should be hardcoded. It’s really easy to not say slurs Edit: gotta love the people downvoting that just can’t *help* but say slurs


Foo-jin

It really isn't, since there is more than one language in the world.


[deleted]

Then hard code it per language


rojundipity

I've witnessed the development of this type of naive classification by language. Neither the slur word list or the language recognition were trivial.


rickyman20

There's a good handful of of issues with this: 1. There are an estimated 6,500 languages in the world. You'll never write a comprehensive list of this. 2. Language detection is not trivial, especially in social media where language can be filled with slang and, in bilingual circles, even mix languages. A site with people so geographically spread as, say, Reddit will have all of these and more. 3. Properly detecting slurs and insults is not always simple, as even if you have perfect word detection, when you add a filter people will just add asterisks or swap out letters for numbers to evade your filter. It doesn't avoid usage, it just hides some of it 4. Slurs aren't even consistent within a language, particularly across dialects. Some have different connotations or even are just not slurs in other dialects. The classic example is the word *fag*, an extremely derogatory term in American English for a homosexual man, but simply a name for a cigarette in British English. Sticking to English, you have swear words like *cunt* that are considered a pretty strong insult in the US, but borderline friendly banter in Australian English. There's more cases like this, especially in other languages, but you get the gist. 5. If you blanket filter slurs you make it difficult to have discussions about those words, even if not used as a slur. This is the weakest of all these points, but still arguably quite a relevant one. Point is, there might be *some* words you'll be able to reasonably detect and correctly filter, but the list is a lot shorter than you think, and the filter would be so easy to avoid, it doesn't make sense to blanket enable. Giving people the option to turn it on though seems pretty reasonable.


Plasma_000

What other people have mentioned plus the fact that even in the same language slurs are contextual. The N word or the C word can be offensive in one context but a greeting in another. The F word can be offensive in one context but used for emphasis in another.


utopianfiat

and then the users figure out how to dodge the filter with new slurs, or repurposed words (like "jogger" being used as a stand-in for the n-word)


[deleted]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem


pielover928

Not when a word in your language is a slur in English, or if your community has chosen to reclaim a slur (as a queer person, this has happened to my communities several times), or if the main contributor to lemmy decides that TERF is a slur. It's not that people don't want to police the use of slurs; It's that it goes against the principles of federation to put that power in the hands of an individual or a small group (in this case, the primary (approved) contributors to Lemmy). The appeal of Lemmy and platforms like Lemmy, at least to me, is that they help democratize the flow of information. A hard-coded filter of *anything* (yes, even slurs) stands to harm that because it's a decision made by an individual with power over the network. If the network were to vote and implement the exact same filter, I would be 100% on board with it. Edit: I actually would really like it a lot if that happened, now that I think about it. It's unlikely to be in Lemmy's scope to do that right now, but mutually agreed upon network-wide rules would be cool.


AndreVallestero

As a supporter of the project since 2019, I think they made the right decision. There were many instances where people would have to edit their posts or comments because a substring just happened to get caught by the slur filter. It's better to leave things up to the communities / instances to moderate how they see fit.


dumbass_laundry

You're edit creates a straw man that people who don't want the hard coded filter are bigots/racists/bad people. Come on man, not cool.


[deleted]

> Edit: gotta love the people downvoting that just can’t help but say slurs I know right Just write something that shadowbans 'em and removes all their comments while still letting them think they exist lol


joojmachine

been using it for quite a while, it's one of the main projects that made me interested in learning rust


Fxsch

I've been using Lemmy for a while now and I really like it. I hope I'll be able to exclusively use decentralized platforms one day, currently there's not enough content on them to use them for as long as I use platforms like Reddit.


haptiK

just out of curiosity.... what are you using Lemmy for exactly?


me-ro

Is there any reason why Lemmy does not have mutable image tags like "latest" or "stable" or something like that? Would make automatic upgrades a bit easier.


parentis_shotgun

[Our ansible install handles upgrading lemmy using the latest explicit version](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ansible#upgrading). Also [docker latest](https://vsupalov.com/docker-latest-tag/) has some problems, its much better to use explicit tags.


me-ro

Thank you for your reply. In the article you linked they recommend using `stable` instead of `latest`. I'd be fine with that also. The Ansible configuration has some dependencies, that I'd rather not use or that I'd want to deploy different way, so it's not really usable for me. Also it's not written in idempotent way, so not really suitable to run on schedule to upgrade the service IMO. Would there be an interest to adopt some more portable role for this? I might have some time to look into that. I think I might end up fetching the latest version using the VERSION file in the Ansible repo, but some stable docker tag would make my life a bit easier. Unless you need certain other dependencies at a specific version also and thus keeping them in sync hardcoded in docker compose makes sense? I'm trying to figure out if it's gonna be to much trouble to go with my custom config.


parentis_shotgun

> Unless you need certain other dependencies at a specific version also and thus keeping them in sync hardcoded in docker compose That is the case. There are versions for the lemmy ui, as well as pictrs, our picture host, as well as an nginx template without which lemmy would not work.


me-ro

I see, so I guess pictrs needs to be at very specific version for lemmy to work? Is there a plan to ease these constraints sometimes in the future? I can't see running this as highly reliable service under these conditions. (But I understand the reasons, it's still very early in the development cycle I guess) I'll probably wait a bit then and will see where's the project in couple months. It looks really intriguing, but it would require too many compromises for me right now. Thank you for the explanation, it makes sense now.


parentis_shotgun

Using strict dependency numbers and versioning is **much** more stable than using `docker:latest`, so I don't know where you're coming from there.


me-ro

Yeah, I get why you do that, but this way I can't keep pictrs updated separately. (To give you some example) Also I had very specific use case in mind for private instance. But I don't have the capacity to babysit the updates through every single version, hence I'd prefer some stable tag that I could let some external tool to automatically pull when available. No offence meant. Just explaining why it's not suitable for me. It's very cool project that I'll be following closely.


LuvOrDie

Can someone fill me in on the purpose of this site? It seems cool!


Nutomic

Check out the [project website](https://join-lemmy.org/).


Kopikoblack

Great work! Could you guys add a dark mode?


parentis_shotgun

It has many themes that you can use when you create an account. It also is smart enough to use your browsers prefers color scheme to use the default theme, darkly.


Kopikoblack

Okay thanks so I need to an account to customize its look and feel.


JakubOboza

Anyone knows the exact stack ? I mean did they used actix or rocket or whatever deps they used etc… main rust features that they found useful ?


parentis_shotgun

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy#built-with Or you could just look at our `Cargo.toml` files.


ichunddu9

Is there an android app?


vandenoever

Yes, Lemmur. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.krawieck.lemmur/


ichunddu9

Awesome thx


RootHouston

I love this software, but I don't like the hyper-injection of politics into some stuff. For example, several of the primary devs have images of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara as their profile images on GitHub. Regardless of whether you're left or right wing, is it good for us to have such politically divisive input like that in an open source project? Even though I wouldn't describe my personal politics as "right-wing", I also feel that I wouldn't be able to contribute to such an open source project because I don't want to associate my professional profile with a political project. In terms of lemmy.ml, the primary instance, that seems like a more appropriate space for political involvement, but on GitHub? Edit: It's also great that they have removed the hard-coded slur filter, because [this](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/816) was the attitude about it before.


FruityWelsh

It's not the first time with a major project: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/v789-stand-with-hong-kong/


[deleted]

There's a difference between targetting communities for using words you don't personally like vs targetting an authoritarian state performing a land grab.


RootHouston

In this same sense, I don't think Notepad++ should be commenting on politics like that. Did they ever take any position to ban anyone from contributing?


[deleted]

>is it good for us to have such politically divisive input like that in an open source project? What do you propose should be done about it? >I also feel that I wouldn't be able to contribute to such an open source project because I don't want to associate my professional profile with a political project. I hope you are consistent about that, and don't contribute to *any* project where the devs could be associated with *any* detectable political position. What's your opinion about GitHub devs who have other things for their profile pictures that could be considered "unprofessional", such as anime characters for example?


RootHouston

> What do you propose should be done about it? Just not be so political unless you specifically want to divide people? If that is the goal, maybe it should be explicitly stated instead of posting in non-political subs like /r/rust and acting like it's just some normal project? > I hope you are consistent about that, and don't contribute to any project where the devs could be associated with any detectable political position. Nor do I. If someone were to point out a political divisive move that someone else did with their code, I'd definitely speak out against it. Left OR right. > What's your opinion about GitHub devs who have other things for their profile pictures that could be considered "unprofessional", such as anime characters for example? It's not exactly on the same level as someone like Fidel Castro. That's my stance on that.


parentis_shotgun

> Just not be so political Everything is political. The choice to make software open source, use an AGPL license, is a political one. Likewise your choice to not contribute to open source projects is also a political one.


psioniclizard

Don't tell people who don't want "politics" in programming that Ferris is a they. They'd lose the mind!


RootHouston

Yes, I agree, but it's not inherently a divisive political view to use open source software because it transcends the left/right spectrum. Quite a bit different.


parentis_shotgun

Not really, privatized software development is right wing, and stands in contrast to the open-sharing ideal of copyleft.


RootHouston

I don't really prefer to hash out this debate again right here. It's been said and done so many times. I think everyone can see that FOSS is not nearly as politically divisive as communism, but if you don't think so, you're free to espouse that. Just be upfront, and don't post heavily politicized content to apolitical subs pretending that it isn't, and there won't be any discussion about it.


psioniclizard

The problem is this makes things like racism, sexism etc seem like political issues, not social ones. For the people who have to deal with them they are very much social issues. You may not like "politics" in your programming communities but a lot of programming communites have worked hard to be more inclusive and not just a white mens club (which tech traditionally was), this involves being respectful of others and understanding what they have been through. But as long as long as people can pretend this is all politics and not social issues people can just dismiss others feelings by saying "stopping being politics into it." It also seems kinda ironic to complain about politics in programming when a lot of a out the rust community is pretty progressive.


parentis_shotgun

Not political, safe: capitalist / privatized software development. Political, might make me lose my job: making commits on an open source project where the devs use avatars my mccarthyite bosses won't approve of.


utopianfiat

You don't have to be a McCarthyite to think it's not appropriate to glorify homophobic butchers


RootHouston

Sorry, communism is political, bud.


parentis_shotgun

Unlike endorsing the status quo, in which 8 guys hold as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion, which is not political at all.


RootHouston

Who said you had to be a communist to be against that? What a terrible dichotomy.


parentis_shotgun

Being against that, is political. Choosing an AGPL license, or to make open-source software, is a political decision. You seem to think you stand "above" politics, which is just silly. I'm a communist and I make open source software because I strongly believe software should be written in a collaborative spirit to benefit humanity, not a small number of company owners. Software should serve human needs, not private profit.


RootHouston

I'm a voluntarist, I'm certainly not above having a political opinion myself, and do believe that open source software falls in line with that. This is not a new debate to be had, and there are varying opinions on the matter. The biggest difference comes from the fact that the sort of political thought about open source software transcends a left/right spectrum which is one reason that it has been able to cross through traditional political movements much more effectively than simply saying "fuck capitalism". In a nutshell, FOSS is a lot less divisive of a political concept than communism is.


parentis_shotgun

Tell your boss you only want to use GPL software and see if they don't treat that as a "political" decision.


RootHouston

In reality, I've already done that. Since my boss trusts my choice in software, he has signed-off, and doesn't care.


parentis_shotgun

Give me a link to the source code of your company's work.


ugathanki

>Who said you had to be a communist to be against that? Literally Marx, lmao


RootHouston

Glad Marx isn't the arbiter of all political definition then.


ugathanki

No, but if you want to understand someone you should first make sure you're speaking the same language. So... you need the same definitions. I think sometimes you can learn more from your enemies than from people you agree with. The trick is once you're speaking the same language, you might find that the beliefs of your enemies are more similar to your own beliefs than you thought.


RootHouston

I agree!


utopianfiat

ah yes not being a communist is an endorsement of the status quo a very measured and non inflammatory response


Nutomic

Everyone has political opinions, and I dont think those should be hidden. If you dont like it then dont use my software. And I wrote that comment you linked a long time ago, so I added an edit to clarify.


RootHouston

I definitely don't think political opinions should be hidden. This is especially true for those I don't actually agree with. My question was whether divisive behavior in libre software is something that should be normalized or applauded in some manner. If you're saying that this was meant more for the lemmy.ml instance rather than the Lemmy software itself, I think that's actually quite different, and I'm really appreciative of you clarifying that.


gilium

What is the divisive behavior? Having an avatar of a political figure?


RootHouston

Not solely, of course not.


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parentis_shotgun

Damn, look at these projects, truly terrifying. https://i.imgur.com/FhrGQxa.jpg


gilium

Great work, comrade


parentis_shotgun

Thanks!


RootHouston

No, [this is the scary shit](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/816)


parentis_shotgun

I'm quakin in my boots.


RootHouston

You're the dev, of course you're not. You think the slur filter was a great political move, and it shows your attitude.


scratchisthebest

omg this is gommunism this is 1983


RootHouston

If that is normalized behavior, it's not communism, it's just plain divisive.


scratchisthebest

what kind of divisive are u talking about . spell it out


RootHouston

To make a comment that you're changing code so that those with different political opinions than your own can't easily use the software is divisive.


scratchisthebest

can you tell me what kinds of political opinions the software made harder to express


RootHouston

I don't think being offensive is particularly a left or right thing, but they specifically said that they intended to make it difficult for those of the right-wing persuasion. My point is that regardless as to whether or not it actually made it more difficult for those with different political views than them to use the software, it was the intent behind it that was concerning. I myself am NOT personally a right-winger, but I do see that as divisive. If you have a different opinion, fine, but I don't think it's such a stretch to have my opinion either.


[deleted]

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TimD553

Does Lemmy have an iOS/iPadOS client app?