Edit about the 4chan image blocking, I asked Rimu directly:
I wrote a long message about how that checkbox only notifies about federated posts.
So the difference is for local posts it blocks the creation of the post entirely, but for federated posts it just notifies the admin.
https://chat.piefed.social/#narrow/channel/3-general/topic//near/10529
– Original message:
A few people in the other thread assumed that it was required to fork the code to disable those filters. That’s not the case, the filters can be configured, and are off by default.
To hide the reputation system, here’s a line of CSS that admins can add in the admin area to hide it for every user
That CSS line can also be used by any user wanting to hide the score at the user level.


I only remember Lemmy forcing its hard coded “slur filter” on all instances. It took a lot of backlash to get them to make it optional.
That was a temporary measure very early in development, when moderation tooling was still very incomplete. This was to avoid ending up like Voat. Once mod tools were implemented, the slur filter became optional. Simple as that.