I guess there is a difference between accepting discussions around a subject with people you disagree with, and accepting someone creating an account specifically designed and named with only one goal : bad faith and low effort posts (yes this is what such a username clearly seems to announce to me).

I spend much time having great discussions with people both online and afk about vaccines, people who are both pro or anti, and it is sincerely interesting. But seeing such a username is as stupid as seeing someone named “vaccineguaranteeyoursurvival”. Those username are themselves clearly false statement that are meant to create unusefull discussions.

Hope this ban isn’t getting canceled.

I’m not sure… I’m pretty sure sometimes and in some languages, separating two words can really change the meaning of a title, don’t you think ?

I quite agree with you that moderation is hardly a machine job, and not saying it is the perfect solution. It sure as it’s drawback. I am just arguing that the benefits outweigh them. I would prefer to be in a world where there are not needed, be as of the world today, I admit I prefer having this filter rather than not having it, mostly because of the systemic effects I explained.

I agree that the relevance of he content of the filter can be discussed too, and that banning some words can make it difficult to discuss certain topics. But I think some words are almost always meant to harm, and can be easily replace by more positive or neutral term.

As a direct example : I can talk in this post about homosexuality, and I can event paraphrase to talk about the way some f word is used as a slur for it and how I think allowing it here isn’t a good idea in my opinion. See, I can talk about it, be respectful about it. I just prevent to call you a [insert here whatever banned slur] pretending to use my free speech.

I’m clearly “left-leaning”, so I might be biased, but I don’t agree with your criticism toward the slur filter : the project is open source, and as such people wanting to use these slur can work they way to another version. The devs explain here a clear intention to make this change difficult enough to prevent at least partially the migration of some communities they don’t want to support and/or give a platform to. I think that’s an honest way to do things ?

It also open up the debate on free speech and how saying some things actively attacks fundamental rights of others. In those cases, defending free speech as a “right” becomes irrelevant since both sides of the debate can use this logic to defend opposing actions. Trying to be short here, hope you understand what I mean !