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Essay calls for retiring "unalive," the euphemism born from platform algorithms

1 report1 sourceupdated 2 hours ago

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An opinion piece picked up on the Hacker News front page on October 6 calls for an end to "unalive" and other euphemisms created to satisfy platform algorithms. The word stands in for death and killing on algorithm-driven feeds like TikTok, the piece says, and has since spread into everyday speech, even into descriptions of a rape case at Cornell University. The author argues that misspellings and emoji substitutes pushed by platform moderation actually break content-filtering tools, and worries that large models train on this moderated internet data.

Written by AI from the coverage · updated 1 hour ago

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Oct 6
  1. Hacker News front page
    We are going to kill "unalive"

    一篇评论文章呼吁终结“unalive”这类为迎合平台算法而生的委婉语。该词在 TikTok 等算法分发平台上被用来替代死亡、杀戮等词,如今已渗入日常口语,甚至用于描述康奈尔大学强奸案。作者认为,平台审查催生的错拼与表情符号替代,反而让内容过滤工具失效,并担忧大模型正是用这种被审查过的互联网数据训练的。

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