Would such an extension not allow me to replace neutral words with obscenities? Or, for example, skin color descriptions with my preferred racial epithets or gender-affirming language with anti-turning-the-frogs-gay tirades?
I’d be more than a bit uncomfortable with using someone else’s ideas of what’s profane, but I’d also be a bit uncomfortable with the idea that there’s people browsing the same internet as me but looking through entirely different bias-conforming echo-chamber-reinforcing sunglasses.
Just not sure how you give anyone the ability to filter out what offends them without also giving them the power to filter in what should offend them, but doesn’t.
PureWord is designed with the noble aim of restoring civility to the internet. While it comes with a predefined list of words, you, the user, can freely customise it.
The tool is not intended for broader purposes, such as politically sensitive language, as mentioned in your example. That may be a concept for a future tool or an expansion pack.
It does not alter the meaning of a sentence; it merely makes it more civil. Users can still hover over the replaced word to view the original.
It is like watching a movie with the bad words bleeped out... you would still know what was said but even if you did not, the meaning of the scene is not lost.
If PureWord in allows the user to replace “shit” by mapping it to “poop” then it allows that same user to map “poop” to “shit”, and by extension “black” to “[not going to write this word]” or “trans|gay|lesbian|jew|palestinian” to “[not going to write those either]”.
Sure, I can see convincing oneself that there’s nobility in empowering people to pretend “bad” words don’t exist on the internet, but it seems you’re still empowering people to pretend arbitrary “good” words they don’t like don’t exist either, by replacing them with arbitrary “good” words they do like.
Sure, they’ll still be able to mouse over to discover they’re just pretending their personal version of civility has been roughly plastered over their personal version of incivility, I’m just not sure there’s an overall social benefit to that.
I’d be more than a bit uncomfortable with using someone else’s ideas of what’s profane, but I’d also be a bit uncomfortable with the idea that there’s people browsing the same internet as me but looking through entirely different bias-conforming echo-chamber-reinforcing sunglasses.
Just not sure how you give anyone the ability to filter out what offends them without also giving them the power to filter in what should offend them, but doesn’t.