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Should Lemmy (or a user) consider potentially adding a profanity counter bot similar to Reddit's u/profanitycounter? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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On Reddit, there is a bot called u/profanitycounter that users could summon to count the number and types of swear words someone had used in their recent comment history.

While it was mostly used for humor or lighthearted callouts, it also sparked discussion around online civility, user behavior, and moderation trends.

With Lemmy growing as a federated alternative to Reddit, I'm curious:

Should Lemmy (or a third-party dev) implement a similar profanity counter bot?

Would such a tool add meaningful engagement, moderation assistance, or humor to the platform?

Or would it be seen as invasive, performative, or redundant given Lemmy's decentralized nature and local moderation policies?

Some possible considerations:

Could such a bot be opt-in or confined to specific communities?

Would this be better as a per-instance moderation tool or a user-invoked script (like tagging a bot)?

How would it handle federation? Would it scan only local comments, or across instances?

Could it be useful as a moderation analytics tool, or does it risk shaming users?

Would love to hear from both devs and moderators—whether this kind of bot aligns with Lemmy’s goals, or if it's best left in Reddit’s history books.

I would love to attempt something like this, but I lack both the time and energy.

https://www.reddit.com/u/profanitycounter/s/6cwlJ9sjIG

https://www.reddit.com/r/profanitycounter/s/V6bvzqUrrH

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think Lemmy developers should focus on developing and supporting Lemmy’s core features and not stuff like novelty bots. Lemmy is not a monolithic entity, so the rules regarding implementing such bots would be up to each instance and then each community on the instance. There’s no technical reason I’m aware of that would prevent such a bot from working, just a question as to whether it would be allowed or even welcomed.

[–] sbv 1 points 1 week ago

The developers building Lemmy are very different from the folks building bots. I've got a half-assed repost bot working, but there's no way I have the time or inclination to work on Lemmy itself.

Generally speaking, a bot needs to meet a much lower quality/reliability bar than the server does.