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.
Please no. One of the parts of Reddit I really hate is the amount of useless bots that clog up the comments.
While I do agree that Reddit has an issue with bots clogging up the comments, I personally believe that users should be allowed to make one for their community/communities.
I.e a character bot for book/film/etc. communities/instances, an encyclopedia bot, a bot that helps users find tv shows/movies/Internet Videos, Fanfiction, etc.
Just my opinion.
I’m NOT saying that ALL bots MUST be allowed, etc., but that it should depend on the instance/community, as well as judging on an individual basis.
@TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca