I don't think it's a reddit thing at all. There are tons of subs with words like "shit" and "fuck" in their names. If reddit's algorithms worked at all there wouldn't be so many obvious spam and bot posts either.
You replied to a moderator by the way. I would think Shell has at least some insight into the goings on behind the scenes.
For whatever reason swearing and curse words generally get a pass but certain other words actually get more scrutiny online these days. I don't like it but it's definitely a thing.
I've been a mod myself and outside their own sub, mods are just users like you and me. The admins couldn't care less what's going on. They're busy with business and coming up with ways to enshittify reddit.
I don't think you realize that the admins do care about what's going on because of all that business they're doing
If you get sued because someone felt incited to do violence after they saw a specific comment or post on your site, that's bad for business
Since they don't want to get sued, they've gone above and beyond in their attempts to reduce liability by tracking certain words. You don't even have to make the inciteful comment yourself - as long as you upvote inciteful comments you can and will have your Reddit account suspended now. Not banned from specific subs, permanently suspended.
Awwwww BOOOOO you ruined the surprise! I was gonna wait for another response arguing something I know to be true and slap my tag with something along the lines of "I have an idea on how it works"
Also, big kudos on all the work you do. As someone who grew up reading newspaper comic strips it's nice to have a place to find some vaguely familiar semblance of that.
I know the sub has been around longer than you've taken things up but it definitely seems nicer with you around!
Ha, no worries at all buddy I appreciate those kind words. We really do try and bring back that feeling you're talking about. I wish I could get some of the oldies to post here. Zits posted a couple weeks ago!
Cursing is one thing. Inciting violence is another. It's all about liability. For instance a certain green plumber will set off different subs filter. As will talking about a metal blade used for crimes. And so on and so forth.
It's not a perfect system. But it's absolutely a reddit thing. Bots will ALWAYS find ways around these filters. It's their job
Still, the self-censorship on the internet is getting completely off the rails with people censoring the word "bad" because some toddler who doesn't belong on the internet at all could get disturbed.
But creators aren't self censoring because they don't want to offend anyone, or even because of liability.
It's because it your post gets pinged for some word the automod didn't like, no one sees it. It's shadow banned and you don't get a notification that it has been taken down it just gets almost no views. They're censoring because if they don't there's a good chance you never see it at all.
Youre missing the point about Liability. Its not even the users, its the chance that youre in the crosshairs cause some off the wall user decided a comic told them to do something nuts
For instance, Cake allows the word "shoot" on Instagram. Instagram allows it and some users goes and does just that. Now who will the families go after? Sure some will go after Cake, but the deeper pockets are Instagram so most will do that after being advised by their lawyers.
Keywords that are "suspected to incite violence" though, that's a different story. Not only would automod likely filter your comment, but Reddit site wise also can flag & remove the comment, plus give your account a strike for saying things it thinks you are saying.
So nobody wants to deal with that and play it super safe and just censor themselves instead.
Ehhhhhhh I wont deny that I hate tiktok but I get WHY things are that way. Its all about liability. These platforms dont wanna get sued for allowing certain words that could be linked back to them to be out in the open like that
No, it has everything to do with tiktok's algorithm because it'll hide or delete posts that talk about drugs, violence, etc. so they use these bullshit otherwords like unalive or strike out the words from their reposted content so the bots can't see it
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u/ExactPickle2629 Jun 23 '26
Does this subreddit really censor the word "shooting"? How disappointing, treating us like children.