Censorship in the text box

Hi, I’ve noticed that the chat box has recently started censoring certain words, but it is not clear to me what the rhyme or reason is for the words in question, which mostly appear to be political terms. Could someone explain the reasoning behind the words chosen to be censored?

Thanks.

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You can disable it under the Big Settings Menu → Comfort & Safety → Safety → Chatbox Language Filter

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It’s good to know that it can be disabled but I’m concerned about the specific words that were chosen to be censored. For example, it doesn’t appear to censor any slurs or profanity, but it does censor relevant political talk, and only talk that is critical of one political party in particular. I don’t see how this is helping to make anyone comfortable or safe.

(For obvious reasons I will not be listing the words that are censored, nor the many words that are not censored but should be in the context of a word filter.)

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It doesn’t for any political party as far as I can find, even signed into another account to see if it censors it to other people, I have the filter on for both accounts, none of this got censored.

Is this something you actually experienced or just heard from someone else?

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Here is a video of it too for extra proof :P

I actually experienced it. At the risk of being banned from Ask VRChat, the specific words that were being censored are “Nazi,” “fascist,” and “holocaust.” I also found that “1488” (a Nazi dogwhistle) gets censored. I could not find any other terms which were being censored in this way, including overt slogans.

I could not find any slurs or swear words that were being censored, although someone with me says they found it censors the “hard-R” N-word (I did not want to verify this myself).

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Given the gravity of a bunch of those terms I’m imagining it’s not anything malicious and moreso to discourage people from calling themselves Nazis/Facists or spread conspiracy theories about tragic historical events.

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It makes it super difficult to discuss the rise of fascism, especially when there are deaf/HoH people in the room. It’s also a strange choice for them to censor those words but none of the slurs that I could think of.

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