Iv seen posts with people substituting rape with r@pe. Other than bypassing filters I can’t see a reason to censor just 1 letter that doesn’t actually censor the word? I see if you fully censor the word, but even still context completely ruins the censorship.
It seems pretty useless to me. The words are obviously still legible and comprehensible, so I don’t see how it has a different effect than just typing it out all the way.
I suspect sometimes they don’t really think about it, it’s just something they think “everyone does.” But sometimes I think it’s an annoying sort of virtue signalling.