Like others, the final thing that prompted me to leave the corporate r-word site was the decision to start charging for the api that forced most of the 3rd party apps out of operation.

The inconsistent, impersonal, and at times improper censoring was already pushing me away before the api change, though. I don’t mind safe spaces and civility being a precondition to participation, but if you’re going to ban people for being uncivil or using a subset of derogatory terms, then be consistent about it.

One of the many tiresome things that happened to me is that I got a warning about being banned site-wide for using one of the banned words in a completely innocuous and generally contextually acceptable way. My comment was something like “you can use baking soda to [redacted verb which in this context is commonly used to mean slow or delay] the growth of mold.” in a post about that topic.

The warning I received was basically, “you’re on our list now, and further infractions will result in a site-wide ban” and of course my otherwise helpful and relevant comment was deleted. Also, there was no way to respond or ask for clarification that I could find, as this was an admin warning, not something from a moderator of a sub. Anyway, a warning like that was obviously obtuse and stupid, but whatever.

What made it irksome is that after that incident, any time I noticed a post, title, or comment using that same word (or some variation of it like td, f*ck td, sh*t t**d, etc) in a derogatory manner, I would report it. And invariably, the comment would not get removed and I’d get the response back “we investigated but did not find it to be in violation of our policies.”

Granted, I also took issue with the fact that the banned terms list was woefully inadequate at addressing the dozens of disparaging terms that were frequently used to target the LGBT+ community and which for some reason where considered completely acceptable by the corporate r-word site.

And no, I don’t think Lemmy is any better on the consistency / censorship front, and in fact is inherently worse in some ways as a result of the general decentralized architecture.