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Comment by BiteCode_dev | Hacker News Reader

Clearly, they don't play online games with a chat lobby. They would have quickly learned that such features is useless, as it's easily bypassed:

- in novembre, we should cost them the electrons. Ionize!

- It's time we u_nionize

- un10n1z3 people !

- let's fetch the U:\N\I\O\N\I\Z\E file

- all go to http://unio.ni/ze

- so we should do the u-thingy

- what about talking to Mr Ulysse Nionize

- never too late to ｕｎᎥｏｎｉｚｅ

In fact, it actually creates a sense of community by fostering a culture, make the movement stronger, and give it more visibility.

I'm assuming on this one that FB employees know this, and are just giving idiots what they ask for.

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I've fought this feature in products for years - the product ppl always wanna ban bad words and I'm like - you can't, it literally never works, it just becomes a stupid arms race and it's not worth our time. I always lose this argument for some reason.

Here’s a good article to show people:

http://habitatchronicles.com/2007/03/the-untold-history-of-t...

Rocket League's approach to this is very good.

The D-pad is bound to several predefined words and phrases that are useful such as "Nice shot!" or "Great pass!". Because of the fast paced nature of the game it's pretty tough to try to abuse this system (maybe by spelling words with the first letters of allowed phrases?) but no one does that.

To appease the folks who wanted to express that they were using a curse word, you can also send "$#@%!". It's really satisfying to be able to express a curse when you accidentally send the ball flying towards your own team's goal, for instance.

Of course they also have straight up text chat where they asterisk out curse words and anything that might look like personal info such as phone numbers. If you're on a console, it's unlikely you even have a keyboard hooked up. And the text input system for controllers is just too slow to type anything worthwhile in the limited time you have during goal-replays. Typing anything more than a few words means you're not helping your team which is naturally shamed and can lead to a server kick.

It drastically reduces the toxic bigotry that usually pops up on extremely popular multiplayer games. The only exception is that people sometimes have bigoted usernames which are tougher to censor for the reasons mentioned in the article.

Anyway, while I do think it's an arms race of sorts, Rocket League has gotten about as close to possible to solving the issue.

> That reminds me of Rocket League's approach. The D-pad is bound to several predefined words and phrases that are useful such as "Nice shot!" or "Great pass!". Because of the fast paced nature of the game it's pretty tough to try to abuse this system (maybe by spelling words with the first letters of allowed phrases?) but no one does that.

Dota has that, and it didn't work.

People just used the nice phrases sarcastically, and repeatadly.

When you miss an actions for the 3rd time and your team mate congrats you everytime with a "nice one", it's equally infuruating. Even more, because it cost so little to be an ass.

> People just used the nice phrases sarcastically, and repeatedly.

As an avid player of rocket league, this happens. For example, if one team scores a goal, if they want to be mean they can spam "What a Save!" quick chat. Making fun of the other team for not saving the ball. The same for "Nice Shot!" when the opposing team misses, or "Great Pass!" if the other team makes a bad pass.

But it is still a decent system. People who abuse it are always gonna find ways to abuse things.

Is there a timeout on repetitive chat? In RL you're temporarily blocked from chat after repeating the same phrase three times. Solves the repetition issue.

As for sarcasm, yeah that can be used to harass people but only mildly. I consider that about the least toxic possible form of chat in a competitive video game where people want to engage.

If someone hits the ball into their own goal at least someone from the team that got the goal will say "Nice shot!" sarcastically. Mildly toxic but everyone's done it at least once before and so there's usually someone else chiming in with "No problem." Ultimately works out really well. Sometimes people quit but it's rare and it's usually due to embarrassment than anger.

Edit: just to be clear, I agree with the premise that it's an unsolvable arms race with the community. I just meant to say that RL's implementation was pretty good considering that fact.

It's not about repetitive chat in that game. The community always adopts certain phrases that are there to signal that somebody sucks. I've yet to play an online game where people compete and this doesn't happen. Even the most innocent words and phrases work for this.

People focus too much on the specific words used. That's not what hurts. What hurts is the intent behind the words.

Eggplant emoji.

well, it's different games, in dota (relatively to RL) your teammates have all the time in the world to harass you.

> Rocket League has gotten about as close to possible to solving the issue.

To be fair, it was Tribes that solved that issue, and Rocket League just implemented it.

I was just about to post this! It's such a good set of examples.

Ha, that's pretty great.

In apps targeted to kids I've found it to be often a useful deterrent. And can even shift the culture a bit; it makes it very clear what is "ok" and what is not.

Yes because kids don't have a strong opinion on anything, so as long as you don't prevent them to have fun, they won't try to find work around.

Try the same a few years later, with teens, and it's a whole different story.

It's like the button at traffic lights that does nothing: it's not about actually working, it's about giving the user a feeling of control.

And gradually you learn to stop pushing the button. Then when you are in a new neighbourhood you wonder why the green never comes. That's learned helplessness. You have been taught that any control was illusory and that nothing you do helps, so you don't even try.

So it does something.

When you push it, the electrical signal goes from finger to brain, inducing a change, instead from button to traffic light.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo_button

Waiting for the western version of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu_10_Mythical_Creatures

Somewhat similar. I used to moderate a web forum and last summer I met someone from Scunthorpe. He said "yeah, its a small town, you've probably never heard of it." But I HAD heard of it because when I used to moderate that forum, we had someone from Scunthorpe sign up and the site blocked them for profanity. It was because their name contained the word "cunt". I've always found this funny and will remember Scunthorpe forever.

It's in the Big List of Nauthy Strings for this reason:

https://github.com/minimaxir/big-list-of-naughty-strings/blo...

It's the same thing fb does to avoid ad-blockers, though of course it's easier to evade than detect it

Or you could get round the block by just spelling the word correctly.

That's incredibly naive.

Facebook has one of the strongest AI research groups in the world led by Yann LeCun. They could build models that are quick good at finding all of these and similar versions.

And it doesn't need to be perfect. If you're an employee who may face severe repercussions if you mention unions, are you going to risk your job based on whether the filter catches your post?

The best AI in the world cannot currently understand the political and cultural context. Make up a slang and you win.

But the cost to process every single message with a powerful AI just to censor bad words would be way too much.

> And it doesn't need to be perfect. If you're an employee who may face severe repercussions if you mention unions, are you going to risk your job based on whether the filter catches your post?

You are conflating censoring and detecting. This is en different matter entirely which would necessitate a whole new debate.

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