I got the impression that it wasn't exactly unprompted and that they had been being overwhelmed with take down requests. Like it or not, Lemmy instances do have to follow the laws of their local jurisdiction. Which means responding to take down requests when applicable. The post suggested that until they had tools to better manage that, they had to block them, but have unblocked them now which implies that they have those tools.

Let's go!

Shit, fuck, ass, asshole, cunt, pussy, vagina, dick, cock, penis, prick, sex, screw, shag, bitch, bastard, bastich, damn, god, fag, faggot, motherfucker, unclefucker, horsefucker, suicide, kill yourself, retard, retarded, nigga, nigger, Margaret Thatcher.

Let me know if I missed a spot.

Edit: Took a while to take effect but now we can see that they remove the long form of fag and "hard r".

Furthermore the same words got censored on my comments from lemmy.world AND sh.itjust.works, so my guess is that the filtering comes actually from lemmy.ml. Other instances may have a different list.

Isn't science fun?

The r-tard one is a notable example.