BY ANNA FERENBAUGH
English 9/Mr. Davis|
Los Alamos High School
Almost every time I go online, I see someone censoring something. Not always because there are rules against it. Sometimes they can’t even give a reason for it, and that’s always bothered me. And it’s not just me. A study conducted by Washington University found that… the percentage of the American people not feeling free to express their views has tripled.”1 This is 2024, shouldn’t we be past needing to censor without even having a reason? Upon further research, I’ve found more statistics for self-censorship, and reasons to avoid/do it.2 Here, I will discuss how self-censoring works, why it is a bad thing, and a possible solution.
Self-censoring happens for multiple reasons, and in multiple forms. The main reason is when social media users censor words that they suspect are blocked to avoid being banned, or having their content restricted (shadowbanned, demonitized, taken down, etc). It can be categorized in four main ways, replacing letters with asterisks, such as saying “k*ll” instead of “kill”, replacing letters with numbers or symbols, like “de@th” or “d3ath” instead of “death”, using similar sounding words or phrases, such as “corn” instead of “porn”, and words with a similar meaning, like “unalive” or “delete” for death.2
It’s also worth noting that many different words get censored, from swears and slurs, other sensitive words, and political terms. I give no opinion in this essay as to how much people should talk of these matters, or use these words, however, I assume they will get spoken of, whether or not they are restricted.
One issue with this is accessibility. Screen readers can get messed up upon encountering censors that are not words. After all, how does one pronounce “h@t3”? People who wish to filter out sensitive topics, either through the website, or an external word blocker, will have to add extra words to their filters, and even then, they might miss one censor. I’ve seen several posts about this over various social medias, one such states (Insert source here when it loads)3
It claims innocent words. I can say for a fact that I have learned several words had “bad meanings” through seeing them censored, even though their context was completely innocent. The example that comes to mind is a sentence about a person having a ring cut off of their f*nger (finger). Also from personal experience, I know that it’s very difficult to use the word “ball” or worse, “balls” seriously around people of my generation, who often use it as a substitute for “testicle”.
Some might ask, “what’s the alternative? Giving people a free range of terrible words?” Yes, this could be a part of the solution. While I don’t suggest websites get rid of content rules entirely, word filters appear to work better as something that can be set by users of a website than a site-wide rule. If you think this wouldn’t work, take a look at Archive of our Own. Yep, the fanfiction archive with a bit of a bad name. Yes, some bad stuff is posted there. Yes, some trolls mistag stuff. That’s the Internet. Overall, the filtering system makes it easy for one to filter out content that they do not wish to see. On a smaller scale, try not to throw around sensitive words when not in a good environment, and don’t self-censor those words unless absolutely necessary, such as using them for examples, or if you must use them while they are, for sure, blocked.
If you’ve been censoring yourself, I hope this has convinced you of the dangers of censorship, hurting innocent speech, and the people who have issues with these words/topics Now, go enjoy the liberation of free speech.
Annotated Bibliography
1: Feshbach, Talia A. “Self Censorship on Social Media Sites.” Swarthmore.edu, 2022, https://www.swarthmore.edu/sites/default/files/assets/documents/linguistics/Feshbach.pdf. Accessed 14 May 2024.
This source talks about the various forms of self-censorship on 3 social media sites, and explores why various forms of censorship happen.
2: Gibson, James, and Sutherland, Joseph. “Keeping your mouth shut: spiraling self-censorship in the United States.” POLITICAL STUDIES QUARTERLY (December 6, 2022) https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=742110126119070019103070105110029127062041020052054087069121080029066093031112104088102031125025020116062122090078086126121083057017017032053101086074121112002102009061056073018104011080100115065005007087103022064099126018099021088097030096115122103&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE
This source, while it deals more with politics and how often the people feel free to speak their minds, goes very deeply into censorship.