eXpletive Archive Shutting Down Due to Resources and Low Conversion

eXpletive Archive is shutting down due to high resource usage and conversion rates too low to justify purchasing additional resources. eXpletive Archive detected use of expletives, ethnic slurs, homophobic remarks, and accusations on social media before archiving the results. Unfortunately, most content aggregated by eXpletive Archive saw little engagement largely due to it being left out of search engines and most people just not caring if they got caught using the words. Categories that saw more engagement have been migrated to a different site focused more on content known for better engagement instead of simply taking broad collections of data based on broad keywords.

eXpletive Archive consumed large amounts of storage space due to images. We frequently found ourselves having to run plugins designed to compress images or remove unused images in bulk but even that couldn't make up for the fact that expletives are used so often that most of the content we ended up with was low quality Tweets that just happened to use the f-word or one of George Carlin's other 7 dirty words you can't say on television. Our newer site looks more for statements of substance indicating allegations of wrongdoing.

Ethnic Slurs and Homophobic Remarks Often Not Used Hatefully

The biggest surprise of eXpletive Archive was how hard it was to find homophobic and racist remarks based on use of homophobic terms and ethnic slurs. Those words seemed to be used often by those they've typically been used against. Gay men often use the word "fag" in reference to themselves, the same is true with the ethnic slur "beaner" regarding Latinos, and the n-word with blacks. We got more complaints from gay men angry over being caught calling themselves "fags", Latinos calling themselves "beaners", and blacks calling themselves the n-word than we did straight people caught calling homosexuals "fags" or racist people calling Latinos and blacks their ethnic slurs. People caught using ethnic slurs historically directed at them often demanded removals on the grounds of their race or sexual orientation as if a computer incapable of knowing what race someone was were somehow racist for treating everyone who used the same words the same way regardless of their race. They didn't seem to understand that the computer doesn't understand context and that any policy which would give people preferences based on their race would be racist. It would mean that people of certain races could get anything removed simply by claiming membership of the historically marginalized group in question. On top of that we don't hire staff to review complaints beyond pasting directions in response to emails normally. We were not in the position to hire anyone to review content for any type of context, so our policy options were limited to only things that wouldn't increase the need to manually do things.

Accusations Migrated

Accusations seemed to convert the best, so those have been migrated for the most part to a new site which focuses more on accusations. People seem to engage most with accusations against businesses followed by accusations against people. Accusations against businesses typically involve scams or ripoffs while allegations against people typically involve being unfaithful to intimate partners or engaging in other taboo activity.

Associates Migrated

eXpletive Archive began monitoring people mentioning associates of theirs. That section was one of the first to be migrated last year. That section focused primarily on people talking about their exes or employers. Be careful what you say about your ex or your boss online.

Conclusion

eXpletive Archive was an interesting project which swept far too broadly to be feasible long term. We hope to further build upon what we began with eXpletive Archive build better archives with more interesting information.