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Many creators are already afraid to use their community’s vocabulary because of the perception that the algorithm is working against them. TikTok in particular lost a lot of trust due to occasional “glitches” like the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag showing up with zero views[6] or the exposés showing how it prevented undesirable creators from showing up on the For You page. Reading between the lines, these creators choose to find algospeak replacements instead of using their own language. This is an incredibly relevant concern in the LGBTQ+ space. Beyond mass-reporting trolls and built-in bias politicizing queer identity, the community has to contend with direct geographic suppression. TikTok has openly admitted to censoring hashtags like #gay and #trans in conservative regions like Russia and the Middle East,[7] so, again, there’s been ample reason to be suspicious of the platform. Murky or incomplete feedback only worsens the issue. Several American trans creators have complained about being banned without explanation—contributing to the justifiable paranoia even if their incidents had valid but uncited rationale. As a result, many queer creators feel they must resort to algospeak to best express their identity. You’ll see people use the word “zesty” or the emoji as a metonym for “gay.” In other instances, they’ve replaced the term “LGBTQ+” with phrases like “leg booty” or “alphabet mafia.” The most famous example in the early 2020s was probably “le$bian” for “lesbian.” While this might seem like a typical grawlix substitution, TikTok’s text-to-speech function clearly didn’t understand that, and would instead read the phrase aloud as “le dollar bean.” This pronunciation was so wholly embraced by the online lesbian community that many creators started saying it out loud themselves.
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Adam Aleksic (Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language)