Algospeak is an emergent lexicon of euphemisms deployed by social media users to avoid blocking or downranking from the algorithms that govern the biggest platforms

After Facebook paid a Republican dirty-tricks company to stoke fear of Tiktok by associating it with the Chinese military, Tiktok found itself under increased scrutiny, and began to block pandemic-related content in a bid to stave off covid disinformation scandals:

That led to the company downranking videos that mentioned the pandemic in any way — a bizarre circumstance when the pandemic and its consequences were the most salient facts in the lives of every human being on Earth! Naturally, Tiktokers found a way to keep discussing the pandemic: they started calling it the “Backstreet Boys reunion tour” or the “panini.”

The moral panic around social media — as well as the growth of toxic communities — has made the platforms risk-adverse, and they’ve explicitly chosen to silence positive and important speech in order to avoid the possibility of a scandal. Suicide prevention content has to use “becoming unalive” as a euphemism to avoid being disappeared by Tiktok’s algorithm.

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