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Profanity Filter

The Profanity Filter takes words you do not want in your chat rooms and replaces them with **** as each message is sent. You can switch on a built-in list of English profanity, add your own words, or do both.

It is one setting for the whole account: every chat room you own uses the same list, and there is nothing to turn on per room.

Where to find it​

Open the Dead Simple Chat dashboard, go to Settings in the left sidebar, then Profanity Filter. The page is titled Hide/Censor Bad Words Automatically in the Chat and has three parts:

Part of the pageWhat it is for
Use Pre-defined List of Bad WordsA toggle that switches the built-in list on or off
Add Custom Bad WordsA box where you type your own words, and a Save Word List button
Current Custom Bad WordsThe words you have added, each removable, and a Remove All button

Everything on this page saves as you use it. The toggle saves the moment you flick it, Save Word List saves what is in the box, and removing a word takes effect straight away. There is no confirmation step on any of them.

What happens to a word that matches​

The word is replaced with ****. Nothing else about the message changes, and the message is delivered normally.

Typedthis is damn good
Seen in the roomthis is **** good

A few consequences worth knowing:

  • Nothing is blocked. The message still reaches the room; only the matched word is masked.
  • The sender is not warned. They see the masked version of their own message, the same as everyone else, with no notice that anything was changed.
  • The masked text is the message. It is what is stored, what a reader sees on scrollback, what the SDK's message event delivers, what the new_chatroom_message webhook carries, and what a message export contains. The original wording is not kept anywhere, so there is nothing for a moderator to look up later.
  • Nobody is notified. No alert, no report, no counter, no automatic ban. See It is a filter, not a moderator.

How words are matched​

Matching is on whole words and ignores case. Punctuation around the word does not matter, and an entry can be more than one word.

Word on your listSomeone typesIn the room
damnthis is damn goodthis is **** good
damnDAMN it**** it
damndamned, damnitunchanged
assass.****.
assclassicunchanged
idiotidiotsunchanged
bad phraseone bad phrase hereone **** here

Because matching is on whole words, a banned word inside a longer word is left alone — which is what you want for classic and not what you want for idiots. Add the variants that matter to you: plurals, hyphenated forms and the spellings people actually use. Accented and non-English words work the same way.

The built-in list​

Use Pre-defined List of Bad Words switches on a list of roughly 450 English entries: profanity, slurs, and the deliberate misspellings people reach for when a filter is in the way, such as 5h1t and b!tch.

The list is all or nothing. You cannot see it, edit it or drop a single entry from it, and it is broad — it includes mild words and a few religious exclamations, so it will catch things some rooms would rather keep. If that is a problem, leave the toggle off and list your own words instead.

Your own words​

Type your words into Add Custom Bad Words and press Save Word List. You can add one word or a whole set in one go, separated by commas:

idiot, moron, competitor name, spam-this-link

Spaces around each entry are trimmed and blank entries are ignored, so a trailing comma does no harm. The words are saved in lower case, which changes nothing about matching — a word is matched however it is capitalised.

Saved words appear under Current Custom Bad Words. Each one has a small cross that removes that word, and Remove All clears the whole list at once. Neither asks you to confirm.

Both lists can be on at the same time. The built-in list and your own are applied one after the other to the same message.

What the filter covers​

The setting belongs to your account, so it applies to every chat room on it. There is no per-room switch and no way to exempt one room.

FilteredNot filtered
Messages people send in a chat roomMessages you post from the Moderation Dashboard
Messages in a room's channelsMessages sent with the Send Chat Room Message API
Private one-to-one messages between participantsFile names and the contents of attachments
The question on a poll, which is the message textThe choices on a poll

Filtering happens as a message is sent, so turning the filter on — or adding a word — changes nothing about messages already in the room. Delete those if you need them gone.

Usernames​

The filter also runs over a username someone types on the older join screen — the one that predates the New Join Modal — so on that route a display name is masked the same way a message would be.

It is not a name policy, though. A display name that comes from your own system — a user you created on the Users page, through the Create User API, or by CSV import, and anyone joining with a unique user identifier or an access token — is used exactly as you set it. If you need control over the names in a room, set them yourself when you create the user, and choose a permission level that stops people typing their own.

It is a filter, not a moderator​

The Profanity Filter cleans up the wording of individual messages. It does not decide whether someone should be in the room, and it does not tell you that anyone tried anything.

For everything the filter cannot do, use the moderation tools:

  • Stop a message appearing at all — turn on Q&A mode / Pre-moderated chat room and have a moderator approve messages before they go out.
  • Act on the person, not the word — delete their messages, or ban the person or their IP address, from the Moderation Dashboard or from inside the room.
  • Keep an account-wide block on an address — use Settings -> Global IP Ban.

Availability​

The Profanity Filter is available on every plan, and Profanity Filter appears under Settings for every account. There is no limit on how many words you can add.