"Algospeak" Will Eliminate the Youth

On TikTok you may encounter words such as yt, le$bian, or going camping - not knowing why they have become so apparent. These words have been carefully crafted by users to avoid their videos being taken down by algorithmic censorship utilized by TikTok and other platforms. The common words - used in videos or in hashtags - are frequently flagged by algorithms resulting in content being silenced. Users talking about race may use yt instead of white, LGBTQ+ creators have a long list of words to supplement real identities, and AFAB and female creators utilize this “algospeak” to discuss massive issues such as abortion as the more common words are targeted by algorithms.

It happens time and time again, the voices of the marginalized stomped on by those in power - where we must dance for the algorithm gods to gain traction. A white, cishet, man like FilmCooper can claim that his style is from Marsha P. Johnson (a black trans woman who was a trailblazer in America’s fight towards LGBTQ+ rights) and that he is improving on the look, but a POC transgender creator such as J Mase III must fight time and time again for his videos to breach into the wider TikTok audience.

The same happens to marginalized racial and ethnic groups. To most people, a white person popularizing Dalgona on TikTok doesn’t seem like the biggest issue in the world, but to members of the East Asian community it's vastly important. Their culture gets stripped from them and repackaged as a cute at-home activity, all the while TikTok and Instagram boost the videos posted by the white creators instead of the impacted community. Cultural appropriation or misrepresentation gets swept under the rug by algorithms, perpetuating stereotypes, and censorship.

Through algorithmic censorship marginalized communities have been disproportionality censored, silencing our stories and our voices to others in our communities and out. Without our knowledge being shared, teens growing up today are stripped of opportunity to learn from other members of the online community. This lack of diversity destroys teens' perceptions of the world and of themselves.

The algorithms of our most coveted social media applications have ruined the ways that we talk about important subjects - forcing us into complacent silence. We’ve become accustomed to the hegemonic society that algorithms seek to create, a world in which diversity fails to be fostered and actions countering this hegemony are crushed. We censor ourselves when we must speak loudly and openly about the issues that plague our social media sites and our nations.

Palestinians are trying their hardest to get the rest of the world to see them as people. Queer teens in states like Tennessee are fighting for their very right to exist. Women in Texas don’t have a say over their own bodies anymore. These aren’t issues that we can continue to be blind to; these are events that are shaping the lives of people right now, that will shape how today's teens interact with and navigate the world. Not being exposed to this content will make them complacent creatures unwilling to push for change and unable to understand themselves.

That is exactly what social media companies want. They want us to become mindless consumers of their carefully packaged, algorithmically selected content to put billions of dollars into their pockets. The moment that someone speaks up or acts out they are seen as a threat that must be neutralized - therefore their content is hidden from the wider world.

So why not regulate the apps and companies so that they must display such content?

At face value it seems like a good idea, but regulations aren’t going to save us. A government that perpetuates racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia is not going to open their hands with gifts for those that are suffering. In fact, regulations are actively hurting online communities, destroying the spaces that we have put our blood, sweat, and tears into.

KOSA and its allies work to censor social media even more with their vague terms and conditions which put targets on the backs of marginalized teens whose worlds are shaped by what they see online. I’m already getting Spotify ads telling me to join the battle to have the government write up bills which allow parents to heavily monitor the content their children see.

It’s outrageous!

Had my social media upbringing been shaped meticulously by strict government regulations and my parents hovering over my shoulder I most certainly wouldn’t have had the same grasp on my identity as I do today. This is a story that can be echoed by dozens of young adults today, so why rip away that opportunity for the next generation?

Simply working around algorithms isn’t enough, nor is waiting around for the federal government to finally pull its weight and care for its people. We must act now to build platforms which support our causes, which support our views, which support us.

The online world has seen social media sites rot: MySpace lies six-feet-under, and Vine was beaten to the ground. There always comes a site to replace the old - MySpace had Facebook and Vine had Musically - it's high time that something comes to replace the reigns of Instagram and TikTok.

But we cannot replace these sites with ones that mirror them, instead we must build our new sites from the ground up. It’s not productive to create an application that implements an algorithm that is bound to silence individuals once more. No, instead a site must be created that tears the algorithm apart and stomps it into the ground where it belongs - a world unshackled by the restraints of old.

The task may seem futile, but it has been done before. Turn to Archive of Our Own, a site which those unacquainted with fandom culture may gawk at, but at its core it’s a flame in a blizzard of misery. The most interesting thing about the Archive is that it lacks an algorithm - more precisely it lacks a recommendation-based algorithm. The site works like a physical archive, collecting works from users and organizing them based on specified tags. When a user enters a tag, the works are shown in chronological order - no recommendations, no fighting for the top spot, no silencing.

Not only does AO3 not have an algorithm, nor is it commercialized. With over six million users it can crowdsource funds to keep running, to make improvements, and to expand. It’s not new either, it was created in 2008 - older than Instagram and far older than TikTok, but it is still here. People want sites like AO3, where they can express themselves openly without the same algorithmic censors found on other social sites.

It’s a droplet in the vast ocean of the Internet, but it's our best shot; it’s our only shot.

A site where marginalized groups aren’t drowned in the tidal waves of algorithms, where every voice has a chance to be equally heard. If we want to build a better future for today's teens, if we want them to have the same open identity exploring that we had on the Internet, then we must act now. We must create a site without algorithms and without commercialization. Without something new we’re stuck with something borrowed - and right now that something borrowed is tattered beyond repair.

           Voices can be heard; we just have to give them the proper platform to do so.