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by ctdonath 5189 days ago
Innocuous perhaps, but the real time net-nanny filters installed by IT don't know or care. I can't read the article because of the proliferation of blacklisted words. I can't even read the Hacker News comments about it because of all the discussion using the opportunity to use such blacklisted words. Had to switch to my own personal system & ISP just to make this comment. Whatever the quality of the article, however salient his point, a lot of people are blocked from reading it - never mind poignant commentary getting lost amid all the blather over whether or not a four letter word should be used.

"Go home" doesn't need an intensive on par with cursing or copulation.

2 comments

So you you work at a company so censorious and distrustful that it expends labor and money to make sure you don't view any content with the dreaded F-word in it. And the OP is responsible for tuning her content to this company's perceived needs... why, exactly?

I'd be curious how the management of this company (and others like it) feel about the actual content of the talk - sustainable pace vis-a-vis productivity & all that. I would not be at all shocked to find out that there was an inverse correlation between employee distrust and a GTFH ethic.

So instead of complaining about a fascist employer, you make the effort to complain about someone using common language, ignoring the utter insanity of a company filtering access to words on the internet.

I can think of certain phrase to describe that that wouldn't make it through those filters.

Reality check: LOTS of businesses use such filters. It's normal practice, especially in this litigious "sensitivity" age where one stray "objectionable" page could cost a company a whole lot o' money from which one "offended" person could get rich. Ergo, if you're trying to reach out to a broad professional technical audience, don't use terms which widespread common-usage lawsuit-avoidance filters will block. You may not like it on principle, but that's the reality out here in the business world.