#journaism

I was scrolling on TikTok as part of my night ritual before going to bed when something caught my eye. My algorithm somehow started thinking that I love true crime and thus, every video I got was true crime related. That wasn’t what caught my eye though, it was the way the people were talking about the crimes that caught my attention. 

Words like “unalive” “grape” “seggs” were being used to substitute the words “kill” “rape” and “sex”. I bet you that if you’ve been scrolling on TikTok or even on Twitter, you’ve probably come across those words. 

These words are called algospeak. And while this term has been around since 2016, it wasn’t until an article by Washington Post in 2022, the term became popular. The term algospeak is used to describe the coded words people use to bypass a social media’s moderation system. 

TikTok’s content moderation is AI powered. This system filters through hundreds of videos and flags things that it deems inappropriate. Now the thing with AI is that it learns from different sources and perhaps, the moderation system has learned from sources that might be hateful or prudent because the words mentioned above as well as words related to marginalized communities are the ones that are flagged the most.

Context is also important. And these AI systems don’t necessarily look at the contexts in which these words are used. Thus, people get flagged left and right even if they are talking about things that are important. 

Now, why is this bothersome? Well, for starters, it’s stupid and is actually making us dumber. Tell me why, if someone’s talking about women’s issues and the sexual harassment they face, should the word “grape” be used? This cheapens the conversation and actually removes the urgency of the situation.

Similarly, when queer people talk about their experiences, having to censor simple words like gay, lesbian, trans or sex just seems like a form of censorship. 

Now this algospeak has also infiltrated life outside of social media. I’ve heard at least three people use the words “unalive” and “panini”. This is the next level of brain rot and we need to deal with this before it becomes accepted. 

How do we stop this? Well perhaps we need to urge these big social media corporations to hire actual human moderators. If people stop getting flagged for the simplest things and the algorithm stops suppressing them, then maybe we can discourage people from using such algospeak. 

NYT columnist says this is ‘golden age’ of journalism at UC-Riverside lecture series

It may seem counter-intuitive considering the rapid decline of newspapers, but New York Times columnist Dave Leonhard told UC-Riverside students that “In terms of high-quality, ambitious journalism, we are living in a golden age right now.”

Leonhard made that comment, and others, on Feb. 27 as he gave the 51st Hays Press-Enterprise Lecture on Feb. 27 at the UC Riverside Extension Center, 1200…

I’d often said I got to work and when I leave; that’s when my real life begins. But, that’s a lie. My private and personal life are firmly intertwined and that’s a blessing.

My aching back reminded me it was time to stand up and go for a walk around the office. So I sent my story notes to the furthest printer and set off to get them. I was going to update a triple stabbing, a shooting and a…

Collecting the home video we’d just taken in of a massive brush fire was my focus when I heard our Web Director exclaim there had been a shooting and an explosion in Paris.  I ignored him and concentrated on finishing writing copy on the funeral for the wife of a McDonald’s mogul, the capture of the suspect in the triple shooting near Penn Station, and several other top stories.  I was almost…

My current project in second year Journalism is to create a multimedia piece.

My first thought was to create a tourism piece on one of London's attraction that I loved this summer. 

As a result, I made the decision to create a piece on Regent's Canal. 

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Newspapers in Liberia have printed black front pages after a government official was accused of threatening journalists.

The director of the presidential security service reportedly told a journalist: "Be careful, because you have your pens and we have our guns."