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A comment on 2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone to read. Parent comment

Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by jolmg on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @09:05PM (#24772134)
> For that example, it's at least fairly obvious why it was censored.

Actually, it's not that obvious. It censored "Dirty Sanchez". I'm thinking it thought it was a person's name, and censored it for privacy reasons?

> Keeping the p<asterisk><asterisk>e(s) full seems to

I suppose "pipe" can have an offensive/sexual connotation. Even if it doesn't so much today, perhaps it did back then.

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Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by ehsankia on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @10:43PM (#24772601)
My guess is that they just used a fairly large word list, which contained a bunch of euphomisms like Dirty Sanchez.
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Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by jozefjarosciak on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @11:03PM (#24772712)
A good guess, that's exactly what I did.
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Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by Jaruzel on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @01:09AM (#24773292)
IIRC, 'Dirty Sanchez' is a slang term for a sexual act.
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Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by glaberficken on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @03:34AM (#24774125)
"pipe" means blowjob in french. Maybe the filter dictionary is multilingual?
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Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by ben_w on Thursday October 15, 2020 @06:41AM (#24787016)
It can happen. A decade ago, Apple’s automated App Store processes warned me that “Knopf” was a dirty word in German.

(It isn’t: while “knob” can be translated as “Knopf”, the latter doesn’t have the anatomical meanings of the former).

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