• NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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    6 hours ago

    In February 2006, Linda Callahan was initially prevented from registering her name with Yahoo! as an e-mail address as it contained the substring Allah. Yahoo! later reversed the ban.

    I know I’m expecting too much from a war on terror-era Western company, but did these idiots not think of (among other things) people called Abdallah?

  • Schal330@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    I remember the first time I found out about this, I mentioned it to a friend and they linked me to the profanity dictionary their company uses. While perusing through the list and having a laugh at some of the words that are filtered, like “cumtart”, “dickweasel”, “mastrabator”, and “wankerers” to name a few I realised that someone must have sat there thinking up some of these words to filter them. That must have been a fun afternoon.

    • clif@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      I was that someone at a company in the early 2000s. I can confirm that it was, in fact, fun.

      A coworker and I came up with every offensive word we could think of over a few days. Then, on Friday afternoon, we shared a 6 pack and got really inventive.

      I’d imagine the list is still kicking around that company somewhere and hope it is our eternal legacy.

    • TIN@feddit.uk
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      5 hours ago

      A friend pointed out to me that Microsoft Word wouldn’t underline swear words (because they are spelled correctly), but also wouldn’t suggest if they were misspelled.

      I spent many a happy afternoon in Word VBA (it was a while ago) trying to get access to the list that it must keep!

  • Danquebec
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    8 hours ago
    • In June 2008, a news site run by the anti-LGBT lobby group American Family Association filtered an Associated Press article on sprinter Tyson Gay, replacing instances of “gay” with “homosexual”, thus rendering his name as “Tyson Homosexual”.

    Why would they do this? Why replace a non-offensive word with a non-offensive synonym?

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      Gay used to be more of an insult, especially for a site like that, and my gay friends called themselves f’s. Different world.

  • nnullzz@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    The word or string “ass” may be replaced by “butt”, resulting in “clbuttic” for “classic”, “buttignment” for “assignment”, and “buttbuttinate” for “assassinate”.

    Hehe… buttbuttinate

    • Cracks_InTheWalls
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      3 hours ago

      Proposal to have this replace un-aliving where possible.

      (Both are dumb but one is at least funny)

  • Xanthrax@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    There’s a reverse. On most censored platforms, you can say “tit” or “tittty,” because “tit” is in a ton of words like “titan”.

  • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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    11 hours ago

    Are there auto filters on Lemmy? Or is it all human reviewed?

    Not planning on breaking anything. Just curious.