this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
65 points (98.5% liked)

Lemmy Support

4652 readers
1 users here now

Support / questions about Lemmy.

Matrix Space: #lemmy-space

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

There is a thread in another community regarding some controversies happening in women's chess. I posted to that thread, recommending a book written by WGM Jennifer Shahade who is a multi-time US women's chess champion. I also linked to a review of the book, the url of which contained the book title.

The Open Library page about the book is here: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL5849601W

it seems that the title, as chosen by the female author with considerable self-awareness, contains a word that is sometimes used as a sexist slur. You can see the title by clicking the link above. Unfortunately some kind of bot censored the title from both the post, and the review link (to chessbase.com) that I had posted. I was able to fool the bot by changing a few characters, but the bot's very existence is imho in poor taste.

We are adults here, we shouldn't have robots filtering our language. If we act sexist or abusive then humans should intervene, but not bots. Otherwise we are in an annoying semi-dystopia. The particular post I made, as far as I can tell, is completely legitimate.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 25 points 1 year ago

Frankly, I also hate this sort of word filter. I fully agree with the OP here because the issue is not the specific words that you use, but what you convey through those words within a certain context. The book title is a great example of that, as "bitсh" is partially reclaimed and the author is using it to label a group that she is part of.

It's also damn easy to circumvent this sort of filter, as I've exemplified above, so it's often useless.