I agree. Writing seems to defuse some of the passion which might not be filtered, with the immediacy of speech. I also find that swearing isn't necessary on forae because people can be equally offensive without using expletives.
If its "free speech" then its free and uncensored, except for famous stuff like shouting FIRE in a theater. There should never be word filters. If people have such snowflake ears and cupcake minds they need to hide in a closet and leave the rest of us alone.
Restrict? Of COURSE a word-filter restricts a person's freedom of expression, and speech. What other purpose does such a 'filter' have? Personally, I hate the damned things! Nobody needs a 'nanny' but morons and kindergarten children....
Personally I believe that any business that purports itself as "available to everyone" and about "expression and ideas" (as all of the big 3 claim to be), absolutely nothing should be censored short of criminal acts. Don't want to see certain content? That's what the user operated filter system would be for.
If it was a rule required by the government it would be. If it's the choice of the private owner of a web forum, it's not.
I'd much rather have the word censors than a board that bans for using the words. With the word censors I can still ****ing write the damned words. It just doesn't display all of the **** I type. I'm sure all of you *********kers understood exactly what I wrote.
I'm not a liberal, but I support the auto-censoring. As I've said before, it doesn't stop me from writing the words, you just can't see them all. If you can at all read between the ****ing lines, you know exactly what kind of **** I'm writing.