EFF on Self-Censorship in Social Control Media
canopic jug writes:
Science fiction novelist, journalist, and technology activist, Cory Doctorow, has written an article at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) covering the self-censorship that social control media participants exercise when playing to the algorithms, a behavior sometimes called algospeak. In pursuing algospeak, participants avoid certain words, phrases, and topics while boosting others to play to the automated moderation algorithms. If played correctly the algorithm will actually raise the visibility of the content in question. If played incorrectly the content disappears off the radar. However, since the algorithm itself is unknown to the participants, the result usually falls somewhere in between even after a lot of trial and error.
"Algospeak" is a new English dialect that emerged from the desperate attempts of social media users to "please the algorithm": that is, to avoid words and phrases that cause social media platforms' algorithms to suppress or block their communication.
Algospeak is practiced by all types of social media users, from individuals addressing their friends to science communicators and activists hoping to reach a broader public. But the most ardent practitioners of algospeak are social media creators, who rely-directly or indirectly-on social media to earn a living.
For these creators, accidentally blundering into an invisible linguistic fence erected by social media companies can mean the difference between paying their rent or not. When you work on a video for days or weeks-or even years-and then "the algorithm" decides not to show it to anyone (not even the people who explicitly follow you or subscribe to your feed), that has real consequences.
Cory Doctorow goes into a bit more depth about how these circumstances are abnormal and closes by recommending the Santa Clara Principles on transparency and accountability in content moderation.
While there are a lot of articles here on SN about censorship as it is imposed from the outside, self-censorship gets relatively little coverage at least by name. Social control media has been using the computer as a Skinner box. Skinner himself would have been impressed, though whether positively or negatively is another matter.
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