WASHINGTON — The Washington Post published a lengthy report today highlighting the hypocrisy of algorithmic censorship, which has forced sex workers and others to develop “Algospeak,” nonsensical euphemisms to refer to banned words and concepts.
“To avoid angering the almighty algorithm, people are creating a new vocabulary,” proclaims the Post story, which is titled “Internet ‘algospeak’ is changing our language in real time, from ‘nip nops’ to ‘le dollar bean.’”
“Algospeak,” as defined by the paper's top internet trends reporter, Taylor Lorenz, refers to “code words or turns of phrase users have adopted in an effort to create a brand-safe lexicon that will avoid getting their posts removed or down-ranked by content moderation systems.”
“For instance, in many online videos, it’s common to say ‘unalive’ rather than ‘dead,’ ‘SA’ instead of ‘sexual assault,’ or ‘spicy eggplant’ instead of ‘vibrator.’”
Algospeak is “becoming increasingly common across the internet as people seek to bypass content moderation filters on social media platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Twitch,” Lorenz noted — and chief among those discriminated against by the almighty algorithm are sex workers, the LGBTQ community and sex educators.
Sex workers, “who have long been censored by moderation systems, refer to themselves on TikTok as ‘accountants’ and use the corn emoji as a substitute for the word ‘porn.’”
Lorenz also cited LGBTQ YouTube creators who reported having their videos demonetized for saying the word “gay.”
“Some began using the word less or substituting others to keep their content monetized,” she wrote. “More recently, users on TikTok have started to say ‘cornucopia’ rather than ‘homophobia,’ or say they’re members of the ‘leg booty’ community to signify that they’re LGBTQ.”
TikTok discussions about issues like women’s health, pregnancy and menstrual cycles “are also consistently down-ranked,” according to sex educator and entrepreneur Kathryn Cross, who Lorenz says “replaces the words for ‘sex,’ ‘period’ and ‘vagina’ with other words or spells them with symbols in the captions. Many users say ‘nip nops’ rather than ‘nipples.’”
“It makes me feel like I need a disclaimer because I feel like it makes you seem unprofessional to have these weirdly spelled words in your captions,” Cross told Lorenz, “especially for content that's supposed to be serious and medically inclined.”
To read the full story, visit TheWashingtonPost.com.
