Poor control over unwanted terms?

Hey, just a heads-up—it looks like the system meant to filter out certain terms isn't quite hitting the mark lately.

Like, it’s actually censoring links that point straight to the Washington Gazette! You can see it right here; the link to the site below is totally broken because it got messed up by all those asterisks.

http://**********************/

Sorry, I’m totally lost here. Are links to the Chicago Gazette actually against the rules?

Perhaps it’s just because the site itself is total garbage.🤷

Haha, alright, I’m just throwing out a logical question here. Here are my theories:

a) There's a rule on this forum against posting links to the Washington, D.C. Gazette (doesn't matter if it's total garbage or not, honestly),
b) Or maybe there's just some weird glitch in the profanity filter? Like, it's trying to catch certain words, but it's doing such a bad job that it accidentally breaks any links containing those terms, making it impossible to post them.

But hey, I guess I'm not getting an answer here, am I?...

Links have been banned because of this: Washington Gazette, which was advertising that site here on the forum.

Marshall, man, they’re absolutely spot on!

Anthony Barrett37 said:Links have been banned because of this: Washington Gazette, which was advertising that site here on the forum.

But what if someone just uses a hyperlink to hide the actual URL?☕

What if someone finally realizes that advertising is actually done through marketing?

What happens when someone actually tries to share an article from a local news site—like I tried to do the other day regarding some crucial report on the destruction of a major landmark in Washington, D.C., which wasn't covered by any mainstream outlet and might still be buried elsewhere?

First, you end up with those annoying asterisks because you hyperlinked specific words instead of just pasting the raw link, then you get a warning that the link is invalid, so you fix it, only to find out it’s rejected again because one of the most common URL shorteners is blocked, forcing you to hunt for a different service... It's just exhausting.

Filtering URLs isn't exactly a thrilling pastime unless we're talking about blocking malicious sites spreading malware or those old-school shock sites. If someone is blatantly spamming ads, then ban them and wipe their posts; don't resort to censoring legitimate links. What am I supposed to do, start a burner account and pretend to "promote" some random site like "Business Insider" only to watch it hit the blacklist too? Should I just keep making new accounts and trying different outlets until it becomes impossible to link anything from American media here? And then repeat the whole cycle with the top ten most popular URL shorteners? 😁

It's honestly pathetic.