algospeak
noun

- a combination of ‘algorithm’ and ‘speak’, the term “algospeak” refers to the replacement of phrases that are disfavoured by social media algorithms, with seemingly harmless ones

—
ORIGIN

On the 8th of April 2022, Taylor Lorenz, a technology journalist for The Washington Post, drew attention to a new trend in English: the use of euphemisms or coded language in online messaging.

Following this article, many news channels have started to use the term “algospeak”.

—
SECRET LANGUAGES

Tailoring language to avoid scrutiny predates the internet. Many religions have avoided uttering the devil’s name lest they summon him, while people living in repressive regimes developed code words to discuss taboo topics.

In China, people often speak in code online. Why? To evade the Chinese government’s filters. The authorities don’t want conversations they don’t like — most notably criticisms of major officials. So they run software to autodetect banned keywords on the major Chinese social networks.

As a result, Chinese Internet users have developed an extensive lingo of substitution phrases to outwit the filters. For example, after COVID first exploded in China, the government blocked the word “Wuhan” — so users started using the shortform “wh”. When the Chinese Red Cross’s logistics were under scrutiny, citizens figured those conversations would get shut down too, so they began calling it “red ten” (since the Chinese character for “ten” resembles a cross).

In the West, as the pandemic pushed more people to communicate and express themselves online, algorithmic content-moderation systems down-ranked videos mentioning the pandemic by name in an effort to combat misinformation.

To counter this, anti-vaccine groups on Facebook and Instagram began changing their names to “dance party” or “dinner party”. Vaccinated people were termed “swimmers” and pandemic became “panini” or “panda express”. "Dancing” or “drinking beer” meant getting the vaccine, while ‘pizza’ and ‘Moana’ referred to vaccine-makers Pfizer and Moderna.

Sources: The Washinton Post, The Quint, One-Zero.Medium

—
SYNONYMS

- for something that is kept secret, or meant to be kept unknown or unseen by others

abstruseness, a closed book, anyone’s guess, brain-teaser, brain-twister, can of worms, Chinese puzzle, conundrum, cryptogram, enigma, head-scratcher, inexplicableness, inscrutability, knotty problem, mind-boggler, mind-twister, mystery, mystification, mystique, perplexity, puzzle, riddle, secret, sphinx, stumper, teaser, toughie, tough nut to crack, twister

—
SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation, say something like:

“I’m wondering when the term 'ALGOSPEAK' will enter the standard dictionaries?”

—
HERZLICHEN DANK to all readers helping me keep OWAD alive with single or monthly donations at:

https://donorbox.org/please-become-a-friend-of-owad-3

and,

Paul Smith, IBAN: DE75 7316 0000 0002 5477 40