That’s the good ol’ euphemism cycle/treadmill. Linguists have long observed a process of semantic shift, often pejoration, for words of taboo subjects.

Words idiot, imbecile, moron were technical designations that became offensive yet somehow later softened into acceptable insults.

Words colored people, negro, black went through the euphemism cycle. At some point black was reclaimed & became acceptable. Now people are afraid to say it again.

VD became STD and now it’s STI. I still don’t know what was wrong with STD.

This phenomenon reflects society’s avoidance of uncomfortable ideas by shifting words. The words change, though it’s questionable they objectively change society’s discomfort toward the subjects. The phenomenon might be reasonably criticized as ineffective & distracting.

Can you guess what will happen to today’s euphemisms?

The word is intrinsically bad

While I agree words can offend, I challenge your understanding of linguistics: no word is intrinsically bad. They’re signs & symbols with arbitrary, often conventional meaning.

Usage & context matter. Take any euphemism & say it in a hateful manner: now it’s offensive. Lifewise, take any offensive word & speak of it in an inoffensive manner: not offensive. Language is flexible.

Saying the word is not the same thing as using it. It’s not like the N word that way.

Explain the logic for not quoting an offensive word?

Taboos are weird.

When using the web interface I don’t see any opportunity for entering the alt text.

Apparently, some instances offer it: you might want to ask your instance administrator to upgrade. If yours doesn’t offer it, the text alternative can be adjacent as stated in the success criterion for non-text content

All non-text content that is presented to the user has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose

and the techniques for it identified with prefix G. The alt attribute is merely 1 way to accomplish that.

When it’s a screenshot of a webpage, a link to the source often makes sense as a text alternative. I see way too many images that could be blockquotes & links, which are often superior to an image: more accessible & more useful to everyone else. That’s often the case of good accessibility: it benefits everyone else.

That’s interesting. At my instance & the community’s, I’m seeing

<img src="https://sopuli.xyz/pictrs/image/c274526d-0ee6-4954-9897-100010dc5571.webp" alt="" title="" loading="lazy">

attribute alt entirely blank. Yet in yours & the author’s, the attribute is filled. Seems they run later versions of lemmy with better accessibility: added alt_text for image posts introduced in version 0.19.4.

I stand corrected: instances get different accessibility experiences. 😞

Dude, you do realize I didn’t endorse centralized moderation with a single word, let alone social algorithms or any of the other trash?

They’re widespread varieties of moderation taken to natural limits. And they highlight the weaknesses of thinking that approach will save us when they’re often blamed for doing the opposite.

Clearly, you disagree with that kind of moderation, so maybe you should “no true Scotsman” this & define precise boundaries of moderation you accept. The only type of moderation I might accept is the minimal necessary for legal compliance & labeling that allows the user to filter content themselves.

become an utter pile of trash

abundance of ways to spread nonsense fully automatically

Matter of perspective: that “trash” we had before was beautiful. Sifting & picking through it wasn’t much of a problem. Despite the low moderation, the nonsense didn’t really spread & the fringe groups mostly kept to their odd sites when they weren’t being ridiculed.

Look at Nostr.

Also beautiful: beats bluesky & mastodon.

Given you’re literally starting off with ad hominem

Let’s add hypercritical to the list. I disagree with the alarmism over images & text on a screen, and I disagree with the infantilization of adults. Adults still think and are responsible for exercising judgment in the information they consume. Expressions alone do nothing until people choose to do something.

it must be a bunch of dorks that pronounce it wrong just because, right?

Yep: I often see people try to “correct” learners at bootcamps pronouncing it Jason. The fact people pronounce it Jason until told otherwise tells us which is more natural. The “correction”, in contrast, is a myth that must be learned.

Acknowledging something happens doesn’t endorse it, and Crawford never endorsed your pronunciation as natural. As I suggested earlier, he said “I strictly don’t care”. Jason is a completely reasonable & natural pronunciation.

The Web Accessibility Initiative has tons of content. For images, you can start from their tips to get started & tutorials that links to.

Here specifically, you can learn how to set alt text in markdown.

How fitting the image in the post lacks alt text. 🤦

Edit: accessibility varies by instance version.

You can try the built-in screen reader/accessibility mode in your OS and blow your mind.

There’s the original pronunciation, the suggestive spelling, the common phenomenon of punning in programming, and the natural way people pronounce it as a familiar name when they first see it. Then there’s your camp with a mythical, dorky pronunciation they pull out of nowhere and reinforce because.

I think people are fine to call it Jason & drive you irrationally mad.

Pretty much everyone used anonymous handles, so it was hard to be a victim, and very easy to disregard junk we didn’t like.

I’m sensing strong overtones of a victim complex and excessive catastrophizing. You know they’re images & words on a screen, right?

Enlightenment gives us freedom of expression. It seems uninformed & backward to assume faceless moderators of some private organization are the defenders of enlightenment, freedom, & democracy (especially while arguing against too much freedom).

Centralized moderation & curation algorithms got us filter bubbles & echo chambers personalizing the information people consume, distorting their perceptions. It feeds users information they want to see (often polarizing them with extremist ideas) to keep them engaged on the platform & maintain a steady stream of ad revenue. Rather than defend enlightened principles of society, we observe & can continue to expect moderators to serve their own interests.

Internet anarchy is a pretty good answer to that.

You seem in irrational need for validation of your pronunciation despite clear justification against it. Cool ad populum. Fly that insecurity flag high.

Well, yes: gotta comply with the law. Legal violations are often quite clear, and removing illegal content is justifiable. Can’t fault anyone for following the law.

It’s the extra moderation that’s problematic. People yearning for their corporate authorities to command the right words & images to appear on a screen & calling that progress feels quite backward like our ancestors fought so hard to gain these freedoms that our spoiled generation will so easily cede away to some nobodies at the slightest often imaginary inconvenience.

You & your buddies can keep pronouncing it jaysawn & sounding like complete dorks if it makes you feel better. However, it was clearly intended to be pronounced naturally as Jason like its inventor pronounces it.

Believing otherwise is almost as bad as the plebs who think the symbol ∅ is inspired by Greek letter φ instead of Scandinavian letter Ø.

No, it’s pronounced Jason. Douglas Crockford was just too laissez-faire to correct anyone on it probably because he didn’t give a fuck.

Ah, the rewards of moderation: the best move is not to play. Fuck it is & has always been a better answer. Anarchy of the early internet was better than letting some paternalistic authority decide the right images & words to allow us to see, and decentralization isn’t a bad idea.

Yet the forward-thinking people of today know better and insist that with their brave, new moderation they’ll paternalize better without stopping to acknowledge how horribly broken, arbitrary, & fallible that entire approach is. Instead of learning what we already knew, social media keeps repeating the same dumb mistakes, and people clamor to the newest iteration of it.