It's not really restraining them at the moment.

As I recall, the IRS agent ended up being a bit apologetic about the whole thing.

I remember this one. Silver age DC was weird, y'all.

Indeed; it definitely would show some promise. At that point, you'd run into the problem of needing to continually update its weighting and models to account for evolving language, but that's probably not a completely unsolvable problem.

So maybe "never" is an exaggeration. As currently expressed, though, I think I can probably stand by my assertion.

Proven? I don't think so. I don't think there's a way to devise a formal proof around it. But there's a lot of evidence that, even if it's technically solvable, we're nowhere close.

We will never solve the Scunthorpe Problem.

This adage is also reversible.

LOL it wasn't words that put people in camps.

No. It was words that dehumanized people, which justified putting them in camps.

if someone's using slurs today, then it says a lot more about the person using the words than it does about the people the words are referring to.

Yes. It says "you can't trust me to have your best interests at heart, because I don't see you as a person."

and frankly, if what you say is true, then announcing yourself as a credible threat right out in the open makes for a safer situation than keeping the threat hidden, as now we know who to avoid.

Except that the word's normalization sends a message to the racists that it's safe to continue dehumanizing that group. That's the value a racist gets out of it; not "comedy" or "free speech," but "this is a safe place for your racism to fester in the open." It allows for groups of them to come together more easily, which gives them even more power. It's in the best interest of an inclusive society for that comfort to be denied them.

no one but me decides what I'M offended by,

But you're the only one who can't decide what you're harmed by.

and i can tell you i am more pissed off by misinformation, lies, and deceit than i am by any one "offensive" word

Slurs are all of those things, though. They're an attempt to tie evil things to a group of marginalized people, and thus dehumanize them. That's slander (misinformation, lies, and deceit, weaponized for harm).

how many people need to be offended by "eastern" for it to be removed?

Zero. It's not about offense, it's about harm. Once more marginalized people are harmed by a word's misuse than are served by its appropriate use, the word needs to be retired.

This isn't an exact measure, of course. But it's also illustrative of why the pearl-clutchers are missing the point when they say "why can't they just have thick skin?"—because it's not about offense, it's about harm.

No one is being harmed by the word "boomer," and boomers as a class aren't marginalized. They're just being annoyed that younger people are using it to call them out on the ways they're not being good citizens.

Votes are anonymous. You can tell who voted, but not what they voted for. It's crucial for the fairness of elections that a vote cannot be definitively connected to the individual who cast it; if you could, you could coerce or retaliate.

And all of the things you mention are the trust OP is talking about. You were a trusted person in that situation. The process increases and validates trust.

who has been caught cheating on 66% of his wives

FTFY.

the FFmpeg version is currently used in a highly visible product in Microsoft. We have customers experience issues with Caption during Teams Live Event.

This seems like a "you" problem, Microsoft, and since you employ thousands of programmers with the experience to solve your problem and commit the change back to the FOSS project, I think this is also very easily a "you" solution as well.