Comment by Cthulhu_
3 years ago
I'm just glad HN doesn't (yet?) have strict (puritanical, think of the children/advertisers, etc) language rules. I mean we're all adults here, we can use adult language to each other.
Likewise, I don't get the recent trend of self-censoring words like suicide, police or kill. I think it's mainly a thing on tiktok? But it's leaking out from there as well.
"we can use adult language to each other"
Like monad or functor?
Edit: I'd be more worried about using a word like "monad" incorrectly on HN than swearing.
I assumed they meant words like "mortgage" and "insurance."
You know, the kinds of topics they flag as "adult situations" in TV.
I think I've seen it on sexual education-like videos on Instagram, too. People censored the names of genitals, probably so that automatic filters won't ban them or whatnot.
It's a difficult problem, I think.
It's most probably a China thing. (Self-censoring "sensitive words" to avoid takedown.)
Which topics are banned in China? Other than the typical Winnie the Pooh, Tiananmen Square, and Taiwan areas?
edit - I guess Tiananmen Square isn't available in spell check
It's not that, it's more that there are words in general that TikTok does not tolerate, and there's no definitive list of those words. Some of them: gun, pissed, penis, vagina, any swear word, etc.
So since there's no definitive list and you can't make one because the content is not outright deleted (algorithm just ignores it), you end up in a situation where TikTok users self-censor just in case.
This is similar to what China does internally, but the list is definitely different.
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Indeed, and it's not as if we use those words every day in informal context. Yet when it's slightly more public it's suddenly a big deal? It's a bit hypocritical to pretend to be offended by something that everyone really does.
Even the "think of the children". Are there any children that don't know these words?
This is one of those topics I tend to agree with in principle.
And then every time I run into someone who feels very strongly about it ... the rate of me thinking about how it should be a rule based on their usage alone.
One of those weird things where i agree and then you meet the folks who have very strong feelings about it and I start to have second thoughts ;)
Granted I don't yet feel that way.
"Likewise, I don't get the recent trend of self-censoring words like suicide, police or kill. I think it's mainly a thing on tiktok? But it's leaking out from there as well."
I presume this is to that their postings won't be censored/shadow banned/deleted/muted/whatever. Kind of reminds you of China, doesn't it?
Especially TikTok has very aggressive content filtering, so if you want people to see your content about such topics, you need to use terms the filter doesn't yet penalize.
Reminds me of random warnings on OpenAI about unsafe content. I get this for very banal things that are truly puzzling
I’m a bit confused by the recent adoption in saying “unalive” instead of “suicide”, I’m genuinely not sure what it accomplishes. They sound similar and mean the same thing.
At least on TikTok "unalive" is used as a replacement for "kill" in a way to circumvent the automatic language detection from banning/quarantining your content.
I guess Short Circuit is too old for people to be using disassemble?
Oh my god, this explains so much. Thank you
I'm not sure those words mean the same thing.
A rock is most definitely 'unalive', but it didn't commit suicide, nor was it murdered.
As technologists we're tuned the idea that if you throw enough code at a problem it can be solved, but currently it's very clear that the content filtering 'AI's that are out there on the big platforms are not very good at their jobs.