What is it with this online censorship with ordinary words?

[Soubriquet]

I keep seeing unalive for dead/killed.

Why? If someone has been murdered, why are you saying John unalived Bob? It just sounds stupid.

Rape is another one. It’s often now as Rpe. It still happens in the world. Don’t censor something that needs fighting against. Stop Rpe is not going to have an effect.

Where? I spend a lot of time online and I haven't seen either of those.

Never seen it either

Havent seen it either.

this is one of them

talking about atrocities that happened in the past only to say the people were unalived

It is mainly used so that people can talk about such things as suicide, murder and rape without falling foul of the social media platform's talk guidelines.

For example on Tiktok any recording with reference to "suicide" is automatically taken down. The same with Facebook, they have cetrian words that trigger an automatic deletion. The deletions don't take context into account and people who want to discuss these matters now use the alternate phrases to do so.

I have only seen it on social media where it is felt that algorithms will hide or limit content which mentions rape, murder, sexualities etc., and so it is an attempt to subvert filters, rather than human sensitivity to the words.

On YouTube it’s supposedly down to the demonetisation of certain content, so creators are finding workarounds so the phrases or words can’t be detected. They also report that when their videos contain these words, they show up lower (or not at all) in rankings which limits the channel’s growth potential.

I know of a channel that looks into unsolved mysteries and the presenter is constantly having to avoid saying ‘murder’, ‘killed’ etc.

FWIW, I agree with you. They’re words and often important topics, they shouldn’t be hidden.

It’s stupid. If someone has made a video on suicide, it needs flagging, sure but only so someone can intervene and maybe help.

Straight up deleting it, could make things worse.

As for saying unalive, it looks really disrespectful in posts such as those above

The one that makes me laugh is religious people writing G-d. Seems it’s OK to say God but not write it!

Isn't that a Jewish thing specifically though? I'm sure it's a thing in Judaism where writing the word God in full is seen as disrespectful.

The filters/algorithms don’t distinguish between, for example, someone talking about feeling suicidal, and videos from a suicide charity. So videos about awareness and support get taken down too.

I’ve seen it done by American right wing evangelical “Christians” rather than Jewish people.

It is a thing some Jewish people do. Evangelicals do like to 'lift' old Testament stuff for some reason.

I literally saw someone use 'unalive' for the first time online just now, and it is as @Dudds says, a way of getting past filters for words around death, suicide etc. www.cyberdefinitions.com/definitions/UNALIVE.html

So it's not the people saying/using it who are being censorious, it's the platforms. But I'm just waiting for press or social media to have posts or articles about 'Look at these snowflakes who can't even say "dead" LOL' when that's not what it's about at all.

Has no one read Orwell? It seems the media morons have adopted the novel 1984 as an instruction book rather than the warning it should be