Federal Government's Banned Words List Grows to 350+ Terms, Chilling Free Speech
PEN America has compiled a list of over 350 words and phrases that federal agencies are reportedly banning or flagging, including terms like 'climate change,' 'safe drinking water,' and 'women.' The restrictions, stemming from Trump administration executive orders, are causing scientists to self-censor and threatening research on critical issues.
We're now living in a country where the government has decided that a sweeping array of everyday terms will now be erased and forbidden in government agencies, websites, or even scientific research proposals.
- structuredPizza
I posted this yesterday, it was flagged.
Today, I am posting it again because I believe the HN readers will benefit from it. Why? The majority of HN readers work in IT or adjacent information fields; we communicate information with strings aka words.
- julianlam
Sounds like the Republican party would really support the adoption Newspeak.
> It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.
- arjie
Diesel, Ethanol, Pyrolysis? Haha, odd. I know this is supposed to be “not allowed in government documents” and so on but I think it would be useful to have a list of “words that are not permitted to be used in the US”.
It could be a convenience list that one could refer to to ensure that they’re not about to say a banned word. E.g. obviously the n word and r word are on it, but is homeless on it? Gay? A single source of truth to know what you’re not allowed to say would be good.
- arionhardison
"Black"? Being a black man I am more interested in the context in which this list is applied and hope just the list/words in the abstract are not being simply used as rage bait.
Edit: I no longer think me being a black male is relevant in this context because after looking further into the list it basically covers multiple terms that apply to everyone; thus I think context of application is even more important and the list in itself is fairly irrelevant.
- vardump
Can that list be real? If so, it's absolutely crazy. A lot of very common words are blocked.