What you’re referring to is a recent trend of social media platforms enforcing a wordlist ban, causing people to resort to using “newspeak”, coined from the book 1984.
Newspeak was a language where negative words were not allowed. You can literally see it on platforms like TikTok, where people say “unalive” instead of “kill”, “seggs” instead of “sex”, or “oui’d” instead of “weed”.
Algospeak is the use of coded expressions to evade automated moderation algorithms on social media platforms such as TikTok and YouTube. It is used to discuss topics deemed sensitive to moderation algorithms while avoiding penalties such as shadow banning or downranking of content.
i don’t think newspeak is a good term for it, that implies an authority is forcing specific language onto people to limit their communications
what’s happening is the precise opposite, people are inventing new language to keep communicating the same things despite being censored, it’s the exact same thing that happened in hong kong with the chinese censorship.
That’s a good point! I’ve always heard it referred to as newspeak, but there is indeed a small but important distinction between the two.
The end result is similar, but the way there is the opposite (blocking vs enforcing)
I think comparing it to newspeak is still a good warning however, as they are caused by similar pressures applied in different ways, but algospeak is the more accurate term.
I got off of tiktok a while ago because of the newspeak stuff. Hearing someone describe the horrors of Katrina while saying things like that was my last straw.
And it invades other platforms that don’t do it too because people are just so used to using it.
What you’re referring to is a recent trend of social media platforms enforcing a wordlist ban, causing people to resort to using “newspeak”, coined from the book 1984.
Newspeak was a language where negative words were not allowed. You can literally see it on platforms like TikTok, where people say “unalive” instead of “kill”, “seggs” instead of “sex”, or “oui’d” instead of “weed”.
My french is in pain 🥖
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algospeak
Thank you, I wasn’t aware of this term!
https://lemmy.ca/comment/15035910
You’re welcome. I only learned of it myself a few weeks ago.
i don’t think newspeak is a good term for it, that implies an authority is forcing specific language onto people to limit their communications
what’s happening is the precise opposite, people are inventing new language to keep communicating the same things despite being censored, it’s the exact same thing that happened in hong kong with the chinese censorship.
That’s a good point! I’ve always heard it referred to as newspeak, but there is indeed a small but important distinction between the two.
The end result is similar, but the way there is the opposite (blocking vs enforcing)
I think comparing it to newspeak is still a good warning however, as they are caused by similar pressures applied in different ways, but algospeak is the more accurate term.
I got off of tiktok a while ago because of the newspeak stuff. Hearing someone describe the horrors of Katrina while saying things like that was my last straw.
And it invades other platforms that don’t do it too because people are just so used to using it.