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Bluesky allowed people to include the n-word in their usernames | Engadget (www.engadget.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Racism, homophobia, and similar phenomena often come from ignorance and from living within a bubble. But many responses to them also show clear signs of ignorance and living within a bubble...