elcyc

I used the term "R-e-d-d-i-t" in a BF post and it was replaced by asterisks "******" as a censored word. Why?
What is scary or offensive or censorable about one of the most popular Internet sites of all time?

Iride01 

I'm going to guess that they... the site that you can't write here, very actively seek out where their name is used and request that it not be allowed. That way they don't get disparaging comments published with their name directly attached.

Their name is copyrighted, trademarked or what ever. So they do have some rights to demand how and were it gets used.

At one time long ago they have very laughable stuff being said about how bikes worked or how to train on bikes. Not that it's really any better here! <grin>

cb400bill

Actually, the reason is that too many spammers were posting porn links from that web site.

datlas 

The word filter is ********, I mean stupid.

I have had a beef with it for oh, about 17 years, but apparently we are stuck with it. It is a very blunt instrument.

datlas 

Are you sure that’s the reason?? My understanding is BF does not permit posting or promoting any other cycling forums, and of course there are plenty of cycling discussions on the one in question.

Darth Lefty 

Bill is a longtime moderator so when he says “actually“ you can take it at face value.

People mention other cycling forums all the time. Some user-supported and some corporate.

A fun trip down memory lane is to read the oldest posts in the banned user thread. They were doing perma-bans for Rick rolls.

unterhausen

Yeah, we have had tons of spam from red dit. Anyone can start a sub there and post movies and then they come here and spam the links. I am not sure what the exact scam is, don't care. You can blame me for it being in the censor, I also don't care about that.

I always thought the cycling subs over there were a dumpster fire anyway. I consider it a service to our users not to link them.

We are aware

JaccoW

Some are chill, some are meme-y and others are filled with gatekeepers. But plenty of helpful people around. It would be a shame for these forums to just be for old people.

I'm fairly active on the xBiking sub.

njkayaker

This makes no sense at all.

They would have no legal standing to keep people from mentioning the name.

Mentioning the name or providing links increases traffic to their site, which benefits them.

79pmooney

Does that matter? If r e d ... threatened to sue BF, can BF afford to hire the lawyers and defend itself? Does it have the manpower and energy to do it? Does it even want to put itself in a position where that might be where they have to go?

LesterOfPuppets

You can say ass.

-jus sayin

unterhausen

It really is just about spam using links to that site, there's nothing more to it. There really is no need to speculate, it's because of me. At one time, spam with links to there was just as frequent as the weird spam we're getting now. At some point, this forum is dependent on people like me to do something about spammers, and it can get tiresome really quickly. In fact, I'm only on here right now to check for spammers, they just clocked into work. We put that site name in the censor and now there is no spam pointing to there anymore.

I'm pretty active on that site, not so much in the cycling forums. I only rarely see anything from xbiking, mostly linked through r/bicyclecirclejerk. Their algorithm is weird, I think they may have hired some fb programmers.

njkayaker

???

Why would being sued by this particular entity a concern but being sued by thousands of other websites mentioned not?

It’s mentioned all over the place (on other websites). The BF restriction appears very unusual. Other websites don’t have this restriction and BF only restricts mentioning this one website (yes, there could be others but it doesn’t appear to be thousands).

Why isn’t this entity suing anyone else? There’s no indication that this one entity is excessively litigious (that’s something that would be known were it the case). What’s particularly unique about BF being a target?

If this sort of thing was a real risk, you’d be able to show thousands of examples of cases. There appears to no such cases.

There is no basis whatsoever for this sort of suit. There would be no way of winning such a suit.

And, it’s a clear benefit to the entity to be mentioned.

unterhausen

I'm a little curious what links to red dit people want to post. It's not like the censor is immutable, although the person most comfortable with changing it quit. We have definitely taken things out of it. The big example I can think of is "cracker," which was only in there because people in P&R were using it as an insult because they couldn't call each other rednecks

datlas 

I think gun and ass also taken out. Still cannot say **** sapiens (human species) or ****** (shower in French).

unterhausen

Might be safe to put those back in now the teenagers aren't calling everyone those things anymore. But it's not clear the people that used ****** a lot actually took showers.