On site censorship and what can be done about it?

I'm finding it increasingly difficult that the place I have to mask the most, is here on a site that's basically for people who mask to much.

We need to be very honest. We are a very odd lot. We say it as we see it. We do not have filters. So many people  choose to be offended by the way we express ourselves.

I consider that is their problem, not ours.

However, in terms of polite Society, I do accept that we may, without intention upset people who are not used to autistic straight thinking and expression.

So it becomes necessary to occasionally moderate our language.

However, I consider it equally important the moderators explain exactly where and why and for what reason they edit or delete someone's post. If the moderators choose to not explain themselves to the community they are supposed to serve, they cause the very frustration and irritation and resentment exclusion and anger. This entire community is supposed to address the issues around autism, not make it worse for us..  

Why not be mature and say what you mean? I don’t understand why you have spaces between letters in the word that I am guessing means breasts - or perhaps you have a different intention? 

I wrote a reply that included the word b o o b s the day before yesterday. It hasn't appeared. So even that word gets censored?!

Or this? .....

Because we get censored, I don't think the word breast is, but if this appears with load of asterisks then we'll know it is.

Your comments are ridiculous. For autistic people who have or have had breast cancer, the last thing needed is gobbledygook terminology. Why can’t people just say say what they mean so that everyone can understand? 

Peter, I'm sorry but I don't know the Cyrilic alphabet so most of the words you were using went right over my head.

As others have said not having access to the list we don't know what words are on it. We know we sign up to the rules when we join, but I myself and I presume others didn't know we were signing up for the censoring of words in common usage, that are proper names. I suspect all or at least most of us aren't in the habit of littering our posts with swear words, but we do expect some proportionality in the use of language, randomly banning some words in case someone somewhere might possibly be offended does feel like an infringement of free speech, as well as being nannying. As we have seen from posts below it is fairly easy to get around the restrictions if one can be bothered, which most of us can't. It also feels as though we're being shut down to the lowest common denomitator in terms of word choice, is this really fair? ASC people like to talk about a wide range of subjects, just like NT's, but please treat us like the adults we're meant to be.

look at this highly offencive filth!

The current problem started because we were censored from describing a photo of a cat as a "p u s s y" cat.

Of course what it won't do is stop you being put in the moderator review sin bin for all your posts like I have just been. No doubt because too many of my posts were reported (looking at no one in particular <_<). Again if you want this nonsence to stop people have to stop using that report button every time they get offended.

(no idea when this post will appear)

And I'll point out using 1337 and so on will also confuse the filter that flags your posts for modderator review if they are on controversial topics.

There are lots or words in that filter that aren't swear words. Or are only swear words in a given context. Your filter can't tell that if I say "my βιτςн has had puppies" I'm probably not swearing. It doesn't know that "I'm going to chop some ƒαggοτs for the fire" is probably refering to wood. Where exactly did you get this mystical list of words. Many of them aren't swear words at all just word that tend to be associated with controversial topics. For example is the word нαςκεя on this list? What about βяεαsτs? We couldn't very well talk about worries about βяεαsτ cancer with out using the words βяεαsτs or βοοβs or βοοβιεs. For that matter βοοβιεs are also birds which we might want to discuss in that context. The term βοοβιεs is not a swear word. I hope it must be very self evident how farcical this all is. Are people from 僃ιη and ςοςκεямομτн going to be banned from talking about those places?

Well a few things come to mind:

1 Become a 1337 |-|4XOR:

In the pre internet days of dial up bulitin boards administrators would ban certain words. The tech savy users would get around this by confusing the filters by replacing letters with numbers / symbols. The more word varients they banned the more exotic the substitutions became. H became |-|, S became 5, E became 3. so 1337 is LEET, short for elite. You might say this is very anoying but is it more anoying than the censorship?

2 Use W*ldcards.

Using wildcards is hard to get around with a simple word filter. After all if the wildacard is carefully placed it could be several difrent words. And you can use difrent wildcards to get around filters. For example if the filter bans s*x you can use s§x or s~x or s-x.

3 Stop using the report button, you are feeding the AI

It's not just calling a human moderator any more. Not in the first instance. The first thing that will see that report is the AI and it will use that data to update it's filter in much the same way an email spam filter works after you've trained it by marking certain emails as spam. If you think a post needs moderation PM a moderator or @ them in the thread instead.

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Also bare in mind if you have a post you think may trigger the spam filter and put your post into the content moderation queue using obfusticating text may also help prevent this. It will confuse the AI.

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Isn't it a shame that there isn't you know, another uk autism forum without censorship like this. Wouldn't know where to find somewhere like that. <_<

And this is why I've been very much against the online safty act. It tends to make website owners feel they have to turn their websites into walled gardens where everything is micro managed.

Some clarification would be good, so would some sort of input from us that was actually listened too and acted upon. I feel a bit infantalised by all th things that can't be said, like when talking about birds, lots of countries around the world have birds with the banned word in their name. I'm also pretty sure that most ASC people wherever they're from and whatever their mental age will have heard far worse words than any we would consider using on here. I still think that many of the words deemed offensive are more offensive to the "adult" carers and parents than they are to the ASC person who maybe reading a post.

Presumably some one sat down and compiled a list of "offensive" words or words that could cause offence, who was that person, where are they and why are we listening to them?

Boobs. Sorry, couldn't resist the temptation to write something like that just to see if it would appear. I've got a silly sense of humour.

Hi I sperg, good to see you posting. I for one can say I've never seen a post of yours that I felt was offensive. But I'm rather "broad minded" and for example, I have no problems with the humorous British seaside postcards we used to see in resort gift shops, but I expect they have all been banned now.

Also, it seems that we are not able to understand what this site deems offensive due to lack of information - just having a message from a mod posted on a thread reminding us not to swear or use offensive language when we don't understand what was termed offensive, or why, is really not helping.

I don't know what you used to do to make your film night reminders "pop up" but can't you just start a thread and add to it each week? Or is that what you were doing and it's now been "disappeared" ?

I have no time for that. I really believe the internet is more stressful than real life.