Businesses, community groups, arts organisations and residents in a thriving town on the Croydon-Surrey border are in uproar because the automatic systems employed to police social media have silenced them on one of the world’s biggest digital platforms – all because Coulsdon has the letters L, S and D in its name.

Residents’ associations and businesses with “Coulsdon” in their titles have found themselves “cancelled”, with posts being removed from Facebook and warnings issued as to their future conduct under a set of rules so vague that any post, however innocent, might fall foul of them.

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      1 month ago

      Fucking, Austria eventually gave in:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugging,_Upper_Austria

      Despite a population of only 106 in 2020, the village has drawn attention in the English-speaking world for its former name, which was spelled the same as an inflected form of the vulgar English-language word “fuck”.[1][2] Its road signs were a popular visitor attraction and were often stolen by souvenir-hunting vandals until 2005, when they were modified to be theft-resistant. A campaign to change the village’s name to Fugging was rejected in 2004 but succeeded in late 2020.[3][4]

      • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
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        1 month ago

        The village on Lunt near Liverpool considered changing its name to “Launt”, because vandals kept adding a top stroke to the L in signs.

  • masterofn001@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    Next up: Facebook bans half the streets and towns in the UK

    Dick place

    Assloss rd

    Semicock rd

    Butthole lane

    Twatt

    Dicks mount

    Cock pond

    Clitterhouse

    Etc

  • scrchngwsl
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    1 month ago

    It doesn’t actually give any examples of removed posts or screenshots of the reasons why? Surely it can’t just be because a town name happens to contain “lsd” in the middle of it?

    • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgOPM
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      1 month ago

      Surely it can’t just be because a town name happens to contain “lsd” in the middle of it?

      Facebook is a remarkably bad website so i think you’d be quite surprised at how stuck in the past they are over there