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‘Forbidden Words’: Github Reveals How Software Engineers Are Purging Federal Databases (www.404media.co)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

10 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/23276792

A project called "Remove-DEI" shows the tweaks used to remove "forbidden words" from a database about childhood school readiness.

The updates, shown in Github commits, are to a database for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Head Start program. They show a project called “Remove-DEI,” which reveal some of the back-and-forth that is happening behind the scenes to align federal agencies with Donald Trump’s executive orders that forbid almost anything having to do with race or gender within federal agencies. The Github pages show software engineers discussing amongst themselves how to best remove all instances of “forbidden words” from a specific database, and the code updates they used to do it. The changes also show that, while thousands of government datasets are disappearing from the internet, even ones that remain are having parts of their utility deprecated or broken in a way that may not be visible to those outside the government.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So many mission statements will be lost when they accidentally delete everything containing the word "transparent."

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago

The USGS has renamed "jadeite" to "jate".

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago

Ministry of truth

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (2 children)

If it's still in git, then it's not actually purged. Nobody tell the fash.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

One of the Muskrat's kits will undoubtedly tell him sooner or later. Then Github'll get a takedown order.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Dropped branches get all their commit trees purged, unless the commits are also part of another branch.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

First they came for the "master" branch name, but I didn't care what the "reference" branch was called.

Then they came for "blacklist", and while it was a BS mixup with the "black book", I didn't really care what the "deny/allow list" was called.

Now they're coming for "Remove-DEI" and "forbidden words"... and they're pushing it as a bigoted administrative mandate using the same censoring procedures in overdrive.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I wonder how many software devs and admins now weigh their morals. And how many reject to implement or not.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Can't imagine many. Many didn't have issues with 2016's Cambridge Analytics shenanigans and with how their apps ignored queer and brown people being habitually targeted over the years. I've met a few "liberal" software devs here in LA and they're at the same level of insufferable as gentrifying real estate agents. Sigh.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I dont understand.

The US government is using public git repos as a database? Huh?