Why does Yahoo! allow people to use racial slurs in their Yahoo! ID's?

Recently, while brousing a Yahoo! message board, I encountered a message from a person using "outrigger_******" as a Yahoo! ID. You may find that message at:


http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.m...





On March 9, 2006, I filed a complaint with Yahoo!, explaining that the use of a racial slur in a Yahoo! ID was offensive.





Then, I checked to see how many other people were allowed to use the term "******" in a Yahoo! ID. Here are the results of that search:


http://members.yahoo.com/interests?.oc=t...





I was shocked to find that Yahoo! allows 80 people to use "******" as part of an ID, including "****** beeter" and "****** hunting season88".





Yahoo! continues to allow these slurs in Yahoo! ID's.

Why does Yahoo! allow people to use racial slurs in their Yahoo! ID's?
this is so sad. since joining yahoo answers I realize that there a a lot of racist hateful young and old people out there. I report it and see what happens
Reply:It is shocking indeed! Yahoo! is quite quick to ban someone who gives a straight forward %26amp; honest answer about sex and a user reports it. This happened to a friend of mine! Yet, they allow that kind of stupid and hateful kind of ID... Report It

Reply:TIS TRUE MY BROTHER...I SIMPLY OFFERED A FREE BOOK THROUGH A FREE PHONE NUMBER TO HELP SOMEONE OUT AND "BAM!!!"--I WAS SLAPPED FOR SOLICITING! "FREE"?...AND YET THE "HOLY ONES" ALLOW SUCH BLATANT OBVIOUS TRASH TO BE UTTERED WITHOUT DELETION?....DO YOU SEE A PATTERN HERE? OR AM I SPEAKING OUT AND EXERCISING MY RIGHT TO EXPRESS MYSELF IN A FREE COUNTRY THEREBY "ABUSING" ANYONE IN THE PROCESS!
Reply:Dang. That's weird. I suggest you post this question in the Yahoo Answers section, or write the people at Yahoo a note. That is utterly ridiculous.
Reply:Cracker eatter.
Reply:Would you rather they hide their beliefs?? I prefer to know the truth..Least you can clearly see the trap and step over it..
Reply:This is actually an old debate-most recently it was about the use of "Allah" in ID's. Many users would use such names as "Allahtheflyingpig", etc. Yahoo announced they were not going to allow it any more and there was outrage from those who actually used names such as "ServantofAllah", etc.





So yahoo said they would allow it (they could have used a script to allow such names in much the same way as they disallow the f word) and simply watch names.





There is a lot of noise on all the Yahoo services. It's hard for them to take care of them all quickly.





As for "******", if they did away with that then people will simply try to get creative again with "n!gger" or "nlgger" (using lowercase "L" instead of the number "1"
Reply:Unless you report it, they probably won't become aware of it. With a lot of reports coming in for the same word, they will get it censured. But like anything else, a determined knucklehead will just find another way around it. You have to keep reporting and get the offenders suspended.
Reply:I agree with you. I think that Yahoo also needs to watch some of the more sexually explicit comments that are posted as well. I read one message about a 12 year old masturbating!
Reply:its probably something yahoo didnt think about when first creating the useage of the yahoo ids... that would be my guess...
Reply:please dont get me wrong as i think its bad taste for anyone to imply such things but in the defense of yahoo and most other ip's their system is automated and while sometimes they put keywords in that allow the system to reject certain terms when you start substituting numbers for letters it gets hard to beat and with millons of subscribers its hard to check through each one and if they cancel ones that subded numbers for letters they could open themselves up for lawsuits if they cancel a membership because of a freedom of expression issue. Hope this helps to clarify their position a little
Reply:Probably for the same reason that they allow people to blatantly post racist propaganda in the dscussion section for Yahoo News. Whenever the topic of the news subject matter is about non whites, the 99% of the discussions are racist repys. I have complained about this too, and I got an email saying that I could ignore the comments. So I just stopped going to any Yahoo News discussions.