Navigating Algospeak on Social Media

"A few years ago, I began noticing that while some of my posts found thousands of readers in a matter of minutes, others only garnered a few over days' time. At first, I thought, Well, some topics were just not as interesting as others. After a while, however, I began to suspect that it was not me writing about uninteresting topics, but rather the words I was using."

"I put on my Sherlock Holmes deerstalker cap and began doing some research. That's when I found out that we secretly were at war with robots-the language police. I am reminded of 1984, George Orwell's classic dystopian novel, in which the state manages to control people's thoughts by controlling the language, which he calls "newspeak." Maybe a better term for our age would be " algospeak.""

"As a sex and relationship therapist who deals every day with clients' repressed identities, shame, projections, and so on, one of the things that disturbs me about this algorithmic censorship is having to use workarounds like slang, emojis, and code words ("seggs," "corn"), reinforcing the idea that sexuality must be hidden. This is anathema to healing one's sexual traumas. My entire career is to help people use correct language and get explicitly correct information. Social media compromises some of this with its censorship."

Multiple social-media platforms apply automated moderation that can suppress or block posts without clear explanations, producing inconsistent visibility for similar content. Some posts gain thousands of readers rapidly while others receive almost no engagement, suggesting language-dependent filtering. Automated language policing pushes users toward slang, emojis, and coded terms, which reinforces secrecy around sexuality. Such coded communication conflicts with therapeutic goals by hindering explicit, accurate information and impeding healing from sexual trauma. The phenomenon functions as a form of linguistic control akin to historical concepts of newspeak, prompting the label "algospeak."

Read at Psychology Today