‘SwearJar’ is a Slack bot that gives to charity each time you drop a naughty word

If your team spends a lot of time on Slack, chances are there are the language tends to veer into the wrong side of clean at points. Even us wholesome TNW types tend to drop the occasional four letter word from time-to-time.

And that’s just the editorial team! Well, the editorial team minus our squeaky clean Napier and Amanda (and plus our fearless leader, Boris); I couldn’t find a single f-bomb from either of them on Slack. Luckily, the rest of us swear enough to pick up the slack for the two that don’t.

The point is, there’s a better than zero chance that your team on Slack can get a bit rowdy at times with language.

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SwearJar has a really ~~fucking~~ ingenious solution: a Slack bot that charges you for each bit of foul language in the form of a one dollar donation to a nonprofit on your company’s behalf. In short, by being bad, you can actually do some good.

According to SwearJar’s Head of Product, David DeParolesa:

We are constantly looking for new ways to insert philanthropy and social good into people’s everyday lives. Given how much of our life is spent chatting on Slack, we thought it would be a perfect place to do some good in an unexpected way.

Although the name SwearJar seems to indicate its for foul language, the trigger words don’t necessarily have to be of the four letter variety.

In our case, I’d rather switch it to puns — I’m looking at you Martin.

Credit: SwearJar

While my first question immediately went to privacy, I was assured that SwearJar doesn’t store or analyze your Slack messages in any way other than scanning for marked trigger words.

Donations are processed with Stripe, and are fully tax deductible. You can even set a maximum if you — like us — would be forced to shut down and fire all of your employees if you were charged a dollar for each use of bad language.