Bluesky, a decentralized social network, allowed users to register usernames containing the n-word. When reports surfaced about a user with the racial slur in their name, Bluesky took 40 minutes to remove the account but did not publicly apologize. A LinkedIn post criticized Bluesky for failing to filter offensive terms from the start and for not addressing its anti-blackness problem. Bluesky later claimed it had invested in moderation systems but the oversight highlighted ongoing issues considering Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey backs the startup. The fact that Bluesky allowed such an obvious racial slur shows it was unprepared to moderate a social network effectively.
Can’t have a scunthorpe problem if you don’t sanitize.
What’s sad and superficial is that these kinds of restrictions and bans just cover a symptom but don’t cure the problem. Maybe they even make it worse. We need an overhaul of our cultural foundation and educational system.
Names starting with Nigge are not uncommon in German - it can be traced back to old lower German, meaning ‘new’ - as in, the new guy in the settlement.
In some cases local dialects ended up adding an r to it over the centuries - and nowadays a bonus of problems signing up to websites.
No offense, but I’d say your claim of ‘not uncommon’ is rather inaccurate, and with an additional ‘r’ at the end, that would be even fewer people. Honestly, in all my life I’ve neither met nor heard of someone named either variant. (Though for the first one, a quick wikipedia search brings up two apparently-notable-enough people, a quick general search suggests overall it’s less than 500 out of the 84 million Germans. No result for the r-variant, and one news story about a guy struggling with his name being the German equivalent.)
I suppose “Niggemann” or similar would be more common, but also not terribly so, from my experience.
I know several people with Nigge in the name - probably less common in the parts of Germany where lower German wasn’t spoken.
It also exists as component in the middle nof names, both with and without r - and does so in other languages as well.
The point of this example is that you can’t just filter and be done with it - depending on what you’re doing filtering, flagging for review or not filtering and acting on complaints are all valid strategies - but there is no version where you can do without staff to either block or unblock names.
edit looks like the slur filter on lemmy.ml censors the name of German journalist Stefan Niggemeier
I am all for political correctness and some restraint is needed.
But I also seen people criticizing other people for using their home country’s name Niger or the Spanish word for black as Spanish speakers (in that case even more cynical as the person who was criticised was a PoC from Cuba).
What is going on with social media right now
Unsurprising. The proposed moderation system for the platform allows child sexual assault material (csam) just as long as it is labelled. - https://github.com/bluesky-social/proposals/tree/main/0002-labeling-and-moderation-controls
I’ve seen a person with that in their username on Lemmy as well.
The difference being that should you report it it’s more likely to be moderated and rectified. That’s the joy of the Fediverse.
In 40 minutes or less?
According to BlueSky’s own timeline - the original account was deleted 18 days after it was created. They were quick to react once they knew about it, but they took too long to find it.
That was also followed by almost two weeks of activity without clearly making any statement about what was going on. Better late than never but this “Letter to the Community” should have been written over a week ago.
As for how long it should take to take an account offline on Lemmy - personally I’d like to see some kind of karma based system. If an active account that’s been around for years is flagged… maybe ignore that unless there are multiple flags. But if a brand new account or an old account that hasn’t been very active is flagged, kill it instantly and flag it to be investigated (and potentially restored).
