We are going to kill "unalive"

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• Hacker News
• There's only one kind of free speech here: the ability to generally speak without being fined, jailed, or killed by your government. Having a platform refuse to publish your work for any reason or no reason isn't remotely on the same plane of concern. (When the government colludes with platforms to restrict speech, that's when we start to worry. But I'm pretty sure that's not the case with "unalive".)

  The author suggests that people worry about losing followers or being demonitized, but doesn't mention being banned from a platform, which can definitely happen.

  Which leads to two things.

  One, we should note that it's the free speech right of a platform owner to publish or not publish any content they choose without fear of persecution by their government.

  And two, if the author doesn't care if you lose followers or (presumably) if you get shadow/banned for what you say, then the main thrust of TFA should be for people to get off those platforms and into ones that are more amenable to genuine human behavior.

  I daresay if there's one thing us 20th-century folks agree on, it's that these algorithmic platforms stink and are best avoided.

  Finally, it's trivial for these sites to unban "kill" or ban "unalive". The fact that they don't suggests the current action maximizes revenue.

  by beej71
• At this stage it seems more like slang/ a signifier of being part of the group than actual need to evade censorship so don’t think it’s going anywhere
  by Havoc
• I don’t think the algorithm even does care, I think it’s just a mass-hallucination.

  I’ve seen these kinds of beliefs appear in organisations too. People will start doing ridiculous things just because the people around them are doing it, until suddenly entire teams are behaving completely wrong and not following proper procedure.

  by MisterMunchkin
• >> I’ve heard people say, out loud, “he unalived himself”, in reference to someone dying by suicide.

  I also grew up in the previous century and it is equally strange to hear ‘dying by suicide’ when it used to be more common to say ‘committed suicide’ or just ‘killed himself/herself’. The author does a reasonable job of explaining why people might use ‘unalive’ and why he thinks that is a bad idea, but what was the reason a person started ‘dying by suicide’ instead of ‘killing himself/hersself/themselves’?

  by docdeek
• For what it's worth, the Prequel Memes subreddit has a similar take [1] on the issue:

  > New rule, no algo-speak or self-censoring. This isn't tik tok and the target audience here does not have a median age of 11. You can say murder on the subreddit about the movies where little kids are slaughtered.

  [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/PrequelMemes/comments/1p2t06d/new_r...

  by probably_wrong
• People without power or influence use language creatively to evade censorship, typically as lowly users of social media like reddit, etc.. Content creators, influencers, etc. then pick up that new language and use it, but the typical Tiktok influencer originates nothing. They merely reflect.

  The nameless people who actually set language trends can go back to using censored words, but they will simply be banned, shadow banned, etc.. They can try to appeal to the moderators, but they will be ignored. Their fellow users probably won't even notice they're gone. They might just make a new account and start posting again. Or... they might just fall silent.

  The real solution isn't to play a peg in the game of censorship whack-a-mole. It's to build and switch to social media platforms that are more open in their moderation and resistant to censorship. American social media is abominable and getting worse. There's a popular desire to move to something better, but the alternatives aren't there. When you're doing being whacked on the head, go build those alternatives.

  by beloch
• I agree with the overall point, but I think a large fraction of the usage of these terms is about in-group signaling rather than conscious efforts to appease the algorithm.

  What I mean is that a few people did figure out that appeasing the algorithm generates more views, and these are the people that get many followers. The followers themselves probably don't think that deeply about it; they just want to be like the accounts they follow (because they think everyone else in their social circles want to), and copy their use of language.

  It's probably similar to how I started using semicolons more after reading Mary Shelley, except more gross.

  by kqr
• I'm actually just tired of the internet as a whole, which is disheartening after it being the cornerstone of my career for the last several decades.

  Corporate censorship has me tired. Government censorship has me tired. Self censorship has me tired. The way we all hate each other has me tired. The way we all hate the situation and yet do nothing has me tired. Knowing that even doing something will change nothing has me tired.

  by King-Aaron