This week…
I was thiiiiiis close to writing this opening paragraph entirely in leetspeak, but I fear some of you would think the link you just opened is malicious, so I decided against it. Anyway, here’s a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
Internet ‘algospeak’ is changing our language in real time ($)
“To avoid angering the almighty algorithm, people are creating a new vocabulary,” writes Taylor Lorenz for WaPo.
“Algospeak” is becoming increasingly common across the Internet as people seek to bypass content moderation filters on social media platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Twitch.
Algospeak refers to code words or turns of phrase users have adopted in an effort to create a brand-safe lexicon that will avoid getting their posts removed or down-ranked by content moderation systems. For instance, in many online videos, it’s common to say “unalive” rather than “dead,” “SA” instead of “sexual assault,” or “spicy eggplant” instead of “vibrator.”
If you are an early Internet user with years of 1337-speak practice (similarly used to overcome word filters in chatrooms and online forums) here are a few algospeak words. Let me know how well you know them: accountants, ouid, le dollar bean, leg booty, nip nops.
‘Meatspace’? Technology does funny things to language ($)
Peter Coy’s opinion piece on NYT:
Consider this coinage: meatspace. It refers simply to the physical world, where we have tangible bodies made of … meat. “Meatspace” is a word that didn’t need to exist until the invention of cyberspace. Technological progress gives us a new perspective on things we once took for granted, in this case reality itself.
“I.C.E. vehicle” (pronounced “ice”) is similar. I.C.E. is short for internal combustion engine, a modifier that was superfluous until electric cars came on the scene. Like meatspace, it’s what the journalist Frank Mankiewicz called a “retronym” — a new term that’s invented for something old because the original term has become ambiguous, usually because of some development such as a technological advance.
There are lots of lists of retronyms on the Internet. Among my favorites, each revealing society’s progress in some way or another: incandescent light bulb (necessitated by fluorescent, LED, etc.); landline phone; analog watch; Euclidean geometry; hard copy; vacuum tube radio (as opposed to transistor radio — although who bothers specifying “transistor” radio anymore?).
The power of a pamphlet
Skip to the good part, right to the closing paragraph by Karen Maniraho for CJR:
For [Sarah] Wade, the project was revelatory. “You know, reporting can look like a big long investigative feature,” she said. “And it can also look like the kind of pamphlet you normally associate with, like, the YMCA.”
What I read, watch, and listen to…
I’m reading about a day in the life of (almost) every vending machine in the world, by Tom Lamont on The Guardian.
I’m listening to CIGI’s Big Tech episode, where host Taylor Owen speaks with Ephrat Livni, a lawyer and journalist about how regulators are taking notice of crypto as it moves from the fringes to the mainstream.
I’m watching CBC’s Marketplace team up with hacker Jim Browning to track down and confront phone scammers:
More stray links:
In a vulnerable media economy, journalists are demanding ownership of their work writes Alex Sujong Laughlin for Poynter.
The chaotic week Musk tried to buy Twitter – and the questions that lie ahead by Kari Paul for The Guardian. Eat the rich, I say.
A new magazine delves into the ways that people consume wrong information by Shraddha Chakradhar for Nieman Lab.
Chart of the week
From Bron Maher’s piece for Press Gazette on how news publishers made $12 mil selling NFTs. Varying strategies with varying degrees of success, from Time’s Timepieces sales in excess of $10 mil to SCMP’s Artifacts (of historical moments) at $130k: