oh shit new logo just dropped
— kottke.org (@kottke.org) January 7, 2025 at 5:35 PM
This is an interesting piece about TikTok users getting around an algorithm that mainly rewards posts about shopping and fashion:
For the past 48 hours, thousands of TikTok users have been posting and sharing videos ostensibly about “cute winter boots.”
[…]The phrase “cute winter boots” is not about footwear. It’s a code phrase being used to discuss resistance to Trump and how to fight back against the draconian immigration policies his administration is enacting. Users talking about “cute winter boots” keeping people safe from “ice,” are referencing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Cute winter boots” is just the latest example of algospeak, coded phrases and words aimed at subverting algorithmic filters.
As the U.S. government seeks to enact stricter controls over speech online, TikTok users are adopting more coded language specifically aimed at criticizing the government and alerting others to government surveillance of online spaces. For instance, the phrase “Senator, I’m Singaporean,” a quote uttered by TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew in response to Sen. Tom Cotton’s racist line of questioning implying that Chew was a Chinese government agent, is now frequently posted in the comments of videos by users seeking to warn others about the content they’re posting. The phrase “Senator, I’m Singaporean,” has come to mean that a video is not something that the government wants, or that they’re going to show this type of video to congress, a creator explained.
Predictions about the future of non-right-wing content on social media are hard. Twitter is easy — it’s run by a nazi and is now a nazi propaganda hellhole. The rest are going to tune their algorithm, or even remove posts, as Meta recently did by blurring, blocking or removing posts from abortion pill providers.
Reddit, which I guess is a social media platform, is different from the others because it has strong volunteer moderators. Recently, a number of those moderators in some of the big subreddits (oddly enough, starting with sports Jersey subreddit*) starting banning Twitter links. This reddit post is an interesting read on that.
I’m really enjoying BlueSky and think it’s a great platform with great promise. But the reality is that the reach of BlueSky is minuscule compared to the Meta, TikTok and YouTube platforms. I have hope for the future, but for the moment, I’m not going to ding any Democrat or activist who uses platforms (other than Twitter) to try to spread the message. Hopefully, they’ll cross-post on multiple socials so they can build followers on all of them, and that includes BlueSky.
Please use this thread to talk about social media or anything else you’d like.
* JerseyBeard showed his Jersey pride by pointing out that the Jersey subreddit was the first to ban Ketamine Boy’s private website.