1y ago

Will the filtering of "advertiser unfriendly" language have larger societal implications?

I watch a lot of commentary channels on YouTube. My feed is filled with hot takes on the latest online trends and happenings, often dealing with topics like racism, sexism, abuse, and harassment. More and more, I've noticed YouTubers bleeping (or rather muting) words that might be flagged as being "advertiser unfriendly" and get their videos demonetized. Sometimes that's profanity, but more often it's words like abuse, Holocaust, kill, suicide, sexual, and abortion. Words that aren't inherently 'bad' but that brands wouldn't want to be associated with videos containing them. Similarly, TikTok creators change the spelling of words or use other terms in their speech and captions to avoid filters there.

At the same time, I heard someone comment on how they keep hearing people in real life say 'unalive' rather than 'suicide', with the former being a word often used to avoid filters. There's no doubt that online terminology creeps into our real lives. We use words and phrases that originate online in our speech vocabulary and they become a part of our culture.

Lately I've had this creeping concern that the filtering of words that advertisers don't like will have a larger societal implication on kids growing up right now. I fear that they'll view normal words like abuse as 'bad' and avoid using them because creators online can't use them, and that the fight for abortion rights will be hindered because the very word abortion can't be said in videos. Maybe I'm overthinking it or being too much of a downer but every time I watch a video that removes a normal, innocent word, it makes me wonder what that means for society.

Do you think that advertisers and platforms discouraging words and topics which can be controversial will have larger effects on society?

23 comments

It's the problem with letting for-profit corporations run our social networks.
- It’s the problem with letting for-profit corporations run our social networks.
  What is the alternative? Government run? Non-Profit run? Community Run? All of those have their own pros and cons.
  
  You are literally on the alternative. 🙄
  
  at least advertisers dont have as much influence
  
  The alternative is decentralized social media platforms federating together…
  
  Yes jack just said there's pros and cons

It's almost like the censorship was in the hands of corporations all along. Yes, obviously, making the "town square" a corporate hell scape was a bad idea.

There has been prohibited language for as long as humans have talked, and the result of it is nearly always a proliferation of euphemism. People who want to talk about something on the naughty list will simply coin different phrases, and sometimes, those neologisms will actually have more nuance and variety than the old banned words. You cite one prime example of this in your post.
That's the thing about ideas: they transcend language, and thus language shifts around them. The ideas themselves are much harder to suppress than the mere words used to express them.
- I mean it makes sense, we still have places in the world where people get executed horribly because they said a bad no no word.
  And when my mom was a kid, everyone thought it was the nicest thing in the world to call my special needs uncle "removed", and now even using that word online could get you canceled a mere 50 years later.
  
  Why else do you think we have so many ways to express feces and formication? A word becomes taboo, so people use a different one until it goes mainstream and the cycle repeats.

Updating your language is doubleplusgood.

Yes. Basically the advertisers are trying to model us, and so the loop is complete in that it’s “our” standards being implemented into language via this mechanism.
However, described statistically one might say it’s reducing the variance in the distribution of language. It’s smoothing things out and removing the edge cases of language.
And one of my favorite psychology professors always likes to say that discussing anything important basically is going to offend people. So if you remove the ability to offend people, you remove the ability to discuss important topics.
The image in my mind is of a smooth ball with little jagged twig things coming off it. Filtering out offensive content is like sanding the ball and removing all the protrusions. The thing is, those protrusions are valuable because they expand the diameter of the ball.
I know that imagery is really abstract but that’s what I see in my mind as the effect of filtering out “only the offensive stuff”.
- Those shit-pissing fuckwads can take my offensive language when they pry it from my cold, dead cunt.
  Dammit.
- I’d say banning certain words will increase variation in language since people will come up with and use alternatives.

Yes. Changing language arguably changes how and what we think. At least that's one of the main points of the woke people, of the people who want you to say indigenous people instead of something else, and it has also been explored in novels like 1984 where it (changing language) gets a political spin. I'd say there is truth to it.
Non-friendly topics are even worse. People like to hate on other nations for censoring information on the internet. We let good ol' capitalism do the job. We don't censor explicitly. Just nudge creators to say what we seem appropriate. Take away money and visibility once they stick out, pushing them around and into submission.
And it's not democratic. It's just to accommodate the rich companies that pay for the ads / the income for the video platform.
- Hey, it's absolutely democratic! One dollar, one vote!
  
  https://youtube.com/watch?v=-RW-BoCydQw (A Night at the Roxbury scene where they bribe the bouncer with their "friend George Washington")

I am not too worried about words and language. Sure it is possibility it could have a some affect but personally I think we have mostly already solved this issue buy using different words for things. You already linked an example. Instead of saying suicide you say unaliving oneself. It is a bit more of a mouth full but it signifies the same thing. As far as the younger generation is concerned "Old" people will use suicide and young people will using "unaliving" or whatever else they come up with.
Now topics themselves I do think we have an issues because some topics are basically off limits if you want to actually make money off advertisers. I don't really have a good solution besides funding the creators directly like Patron for example.

I think it'll be difficult to openly discuss stuff like this on YouTube, especially with how they are now using OCR to read on-screen text in videos rather than relying on just the auto captions.
So not only will channels need to bleep as usual, they may also need to blur on-screen text too. I think naturally people will use new words to replace older "less fashionable" terminology, but it's being forced on us at the moment by advertisers IMO.
Given how videos form the basis of a lot of popular culture nowadays, I think advertiser censorship will, and kind of has already affected society
- It freaks me out. I hate how they're making it so we're pretty much dependent on these corporate-run networks, which then in turn make it so you can't discuss topics that advertisers dislike, and then you have nowhere else to go to talk about those topics online. Inevitably, minority groups are the first to lose out. There was an absolutely chilling article posted a little while back about a leaked plan from a US conservative group to make is so allowing any discussion of LGBTQIA stuff online would be considered pornographic and disallowed. There are very dangerous people who want to control what we're allowed to say in online spaces and they are scary smart in how they're trying to go about it.
  
  I think this is a valid concern. I also very much dislike the tracking and being used. Those platforms feel like a home where you can discuss things with your friends, share pictures of your last vacation. Stay in the loop about hobbies, or just kill time... But the dark secret is, you're constantly being tracked in the background. Each interaction gets recorded and they'll assess who might be most interested in you. They will also sell that info. And used it to feed the algorithms. The algorithm will make sure to feed exactly the right content to you to keep you entertained. Calculate what to do to you to keep your engagement high or keep you swiping. And they'll probably make it a nice little bubble, too, that feels comfortable.
  And the last thing is also my main problem. I want people to break free from this shit. Not rely on the benevolence of WhatsApp (Meta) to communicate with family members (me). et cetera. But it's too easy. You don't even need to remember a password. Just type in your drumroll phone number and you're done. And our free social media alternatives also suck (in comparison) because they're not made to be addictive. And silicon valley companies arguably hire psychologists to make their apps extra addictive.
  There is no way the good will prevail.
  (Well, actually I think there is. I think we need something like the Enlightenment and have the majority of people on the world put in the effort to make some changes.)

23 comments