Internet ‘algospeak’ is changing our language in real time

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/08/algospeak-tiktok-le-dollar-bean/

by curmudgeon22 • 4 years ago

16 6 4 years ago

vermarish• 4 years ago

Instead of an authoritarian government forcing "ungood" into our vocabulary, we've got companies pushing "unalive" into our vocabulary, at least in online discourse. If this fervent content blocking becomes an industry-wide practice, there won't be much that separates us from the language regulation in 1984.

So what, we just hope that Twitter doesn't give in?

sippeangelo2• 4 years ago

The most concerning, in my opinion, is how young people can't have an open and healthy conversation about mental health with their peers without having to resort to speaking in code. All strides to normalize mental health discourse is being undone in the name of profit and advertising.

DoItToMe81• 4 years ago

What disturbs me deeply is that people can't express themselves in ways that aren't approved by whatever regional cultural standard the moderation team / algorithm devs have chosen to uphold.

Smithalicious• 4 years ago

I'm a decently young person who spends a lot of time on the internet and I don't recognize virtually any of these terms. I would certainly raise an eyebrow if someone used any of these in conversation with me.

Is this actually affecting how any people outside the tiny demographic of "some popular content creators on some social media networks" speak?

People finding creative ways to get around censorship is nothing new, people talked like this to get around chat filters all the time in multiplayer games I played as a kid. I feel like people only think it's interesting now because mystical "algorithms" speak to the imagination

sippeangelo2• 4 years ago

It's mostly visible on TikTok, which has very heavy censoring with voice matching, just like YouTube. At least on YouTube you only need to self censor of you want to play nice with advertisement money, but TikTok will heavily black-hole your videos of you mention anything "controversial", like suicide, or COVID or anything sexuality related. Not sure if this is due to Chinese taboo culture bleeding over to the western counterpart, or if it's just advertising money just like YouTube, but the effect on TikTok is much harsher since you don't just risk demonetization, but even your video being visible at all to your close peers.

jolen33• 4 years ago

I agree with all the comments here and would like to add that this really isn't anything new. Back in the 2000s with the onset of Livejournal/AIM/Tumblr/Memes 1.0, we saw a similar kind of "internet language" develop as a form of codespeak or shibboleth communication for the in-crowd. Granted, in this case the motivation to create this language is for a different purpose: to get around algorithmic censorship.

Internet ‘algospeak’ is changing our language in real time

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