Censorship Is Killer!

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The idea behind censorship has always fascinated me. The way people try to filter their words online, making it look clean when in reality, there’s nothing clean about it. When you go on Facebook and other apps these days, you see that many people already have it ingrained in them. They type their posts with censorship in mind, taking out certain letters and replacing them with special characters that will still represent the word they’re trying to spell.

We see them do this all the time, and so far, we’ve all learned to read regardless. Censorship is now such a part of us that no matter how many actual letters are missing in a word, we’d easily know what they’re talking about. We’d get the gist and simply continue reading, no harm, no foul.

But then, why exactly do people censor their words? The more I think about it, the more confused I get. Are they doing it because they want their posts to be clean? Or are they simply doing it in a bid to bypass the algorithm? Because no matter how you look at it, it has to be either one or the other. No in-between. At least not in my opinion.

If they want their posts to be clean, then I feel that certain words shouldn’t be used at all. Personally, I don’t enjoy that brand of censorship. If I can’t write something out in full, then I’d rather not write it out at all. This is why you won’t see swear words in my posts, because I don’t want to be chucking asterisks(*) in my words. However, it seems that some people just can’t do without using swear words.

Well, the good news is that we can actually write loads and loads of things without swear words, but many people still enjoy making use of them. And in their case, it can be said that they do it simply to trick the algorithm. After all, the goal of writing the post is for your audience to understand you. Once that is achieved, it won’t matter how you wrote it or the levels of censorship you had to bypass. What matters is that they got the message.

However, this case is not limited to only swear words. There are other specific words that have been known to be flagged, not because they’re offensive themselves, but because they can be used in an offensive or triggering manner. Words like ‘racism’, ‘drugs’, ‘scam’, ‘abuse’, ‘sex’, ‘terrorism’, ‘gun’…. And the list goes on and on.

Over the years, creators have noticed that due to one word or another, their posts get shadow-banned, and they have no idea why. It’s because algorithms have been taught to look out for certain words in posts. They scrub the internet on a regular basis, and anything that has such words would be deeply scrutinized. Sadly, algorithms are not all that smart. They don’t know context.

So, they don’t know when the word ‘sex’ is referring to the gender of a person, or when it’s referring to intercourse. It could simply get flagged. They also don’t know when ‘gun’ is being used to advocate for less violence, and not actually being used to promote more violence. And I could give more and more examples.

I guess this is what the new world looks like for us now. When making posts in Web2, you have to be worried about people you’ll offend, you also have to worry about the algorithm so your post doesn’t get thrown into digital limbo. It’s sad that we have to dance around certain words, simply because such words can be used in unfavorable situations and as such, get banned.

I guess that’s a form of Literary Stereotyping. Classifying a certain word as offensive, not because it’s offensive itself, but because it can be used in an offensive or triggering manner. Well, let it be known that I was the first to give this phenomenon a name. You’re welcome.

I just hope that with time, we might get to a point where people won’t have to be so picky when it comes to certain words. Because there are some words that carry more power than others, and using synonyms or special characters might just take away the seriousness of what you’re trying to say. Well, I guess time will tell.

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_{Thank you for reading. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below, I would love to know what you’re thinking. Till we meet in the next post.}

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_{N.B: All images used in this post are mine. The thumbnail was designed using Canva.}

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