Hacker News Reader

Comment by wcoenen | Hacker News Reader

Context: it's a slur that was used during the Chinese civil war by the Nationalists to refer to the Communists, still used by Taiwanese. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_bandit

IMHO it makes sense that youtube removes comments that are just a slur and nothing else. Those wouldn't be tolerated on hackernews either.

View on HN

> IMHO it makes sense that youtube removes comments that are just a slur and nothing else.

The comment only needs to contain it, not solely consist of the phrase. I tried, “welcome mr. joe rogan to the land of 共匪” on a Joe Rogan podcast, and it was deleted in within 20 seconds.

That's interesting. I was basing my comment of the demonstration in the tweet which used just the slur and nothing else, so I didn't know.

Based on the few times I made the mistake of reading the comments on YT, I do not believe that YT removes other slurs automatically.

I’d be fine with it if they removed all slurs. Or at least a reasonable effort to remove generally acknowledged slurs for many cultures. I know the line can be fuzzy.

This is the correct explanation but got downvoted. Comments containing only one slur would be considered as spams.

But what if I want to seriously claim that the communists, and specifically the Chinese communists, are bandits (or at least thugs), not based on the Taiwanese using it as a slur, but because of their actions?

I recognize that slurs are outside of polite discourse. But not everything that anyone uses as a slur should be off-limits for serious discussion.

Then you could say something like "共产主义者是土匪".

"共" doesn't really mean "communist", from my very basic duolingo mandarin I remember it means something like "together". The slur is a very specific abbreviation which doesn't make sense without the context of the civil war.

So its an insult directed at supporters of a political party? Do we really want to be deleting peoples messages using slurs based on political affiliation?

What if someone deems that "Nazi" is a slur that used against anyone right of center? Do we delete messages that include the word Nazi?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com