This is something we should have posted a long time ago, but better late than never, we suppose. To keep spambots from clogging up the comments with their bullshit, we added certain strings to the profanity filter. Some of you may be confused because a typo or a hypertext link got blocked when it was otherwise completely innocuous, but unfortunately it’s a necessary measure. The following strings are blocked from Disqus comments. We’ll update this as needed to account for changing spam and link this article to the “commenting policy” above each article thread:
UPDATED 4/18/2022: href, *url?sa=, t.co/, ASAP!!!, .tk, .ml, .gq, .cf, feedproxy.google.com, disqus-blog.com, fullwork, ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤, bit.ly, pinterest.com, cutt.ly, https://cutt.ly/, Private key: , Anna04025413, utraker.com, rotf.lol, .ax, t.ly, .ga/, .sh/, .la/*., #173, ly/.su
The first one is important. You cannot paste a link as <a href="https://example.com">Example Here!!!</a> because that’s how the spambots hide their bullshit, by masking the URL with something more innocuous-looking. Instead, just paste in literally the URL – “example.com” – and the link will still work. Also the t.co, which is Twitter’s URL shortener is blocked because the spammers somehow hacked a way to redirect from those addresses. A few are random top-level domains for various countries. The last one .su, is for the Soviet Union, which doesn’t even exist anymore, so there’s unlikely to be any legitimate websites using it.
Lastly, without saying the specific word, one actually offensive term has been removed from the list as there are plenty of historical contexts and a handful few modern ones in which it is used. Any deviation from those contexts will be deleted by mods and trolls using it will be banned.