TikTok, Censorship, & Algospeak

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 13 October 2025

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There's his trend on social media of using code words for different topics so you can trick the algorithm from categorizing your content in a certain way. What do you think? Is this a form of censorship?

Or...are algorithm categorizations a way of protecting users from seeing too much violent or aggressive content? Well, whatever side of the debate you fall on, Code Switch's B.A. Parker and Gene Demby are going to show you how this so-called ALGO-speak or algorithm-speak shapes your beliefs in conscious and unconscious ways.

You can listen to more episodes of NPR's Code Switch here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This message comes from Conan O'Brien needs a friend.
0:03.4	Join Conan every week in deep, unboundly playful hangouts with people he enjoys most
0:09.0	and perhaps find some real friendships along the way.
0:12.5	Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
0:15.4	A heads up.
0:16.4	This episode contains mentions of sexual assault.
0:20.1	Okay, I'm going to, we're going to play like a rapid fire game.
0:24.0	I want to describe some of these terms and then maybe you can tell me what they mean.
0:30.4	So when I say pew, pew, pew, what does that mean?
0:36.3	Gun shooting, gun violence.
0:39.1	All right.
0:40.8	Palm-colored people.
0:42.7	That would be white people.
0:47.2	Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR.
0:52.4	A show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
1:03.8	Okay, so, Gene, there's this code language that's been around for a while. Like, have you heard someone used the term
1:12.0	unalive? Yes, unalive.
1:14.3	Like, they mean, like, dead
1:16.8	or killed, right?
1:18.4	Yeah. And sometimes you'll see people use
1:20.7	things like, instead of saying, like, President
1:22.4	Trump's name, they might say
	...

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