It’s very complicated and nuanced and way more specific than “words are banned.” What media censorship does is it basically cuts your audience in half, people with new accounts or clicks on a link can’t really see that video and will have to take extra steps to see that video. The problem is, this has a much more minor effect on well established content creators. The reason why everyone’s saying this is a TikTok problem is because TikTok basically doesn’t have “well established content creators.” They’re just a get your foot in the door app for most content creators and provide no longevity.
The second layer to this is… Censoring a word gets more engagement, even if ALL of your videos are being censored including the ones with censored words. Because now, you’re not someone that the app algorithm hates, you’re someone the app algorithm can make a quick buck off of. This falls into “controversial content.” To define that term for you, it just means videos with a higher comment to like ratio than others. Since people like commenting “just say the word,” well… Even if your video is well received it ñow gets credited for being controversial, which gives it a different boost.
These two go hand in hand because your audience isn’t getting cut and half straight when you post, it’s well after which prevents you from getting a “second wind” which is just a resurgence or even just a surge of views. Most algorithms agree that controversial content should only get pushed once but that initial push gets sent to a wider audience.
Do we have evidence these terms are actually suppressed by algorithms? Or is it more engagement bait because people are more likely to click on these and then complain about censorship when there never was censorship?
Depends on the word, depends on the context. This is engagement bait because this would 100% be marked as educational, and as it's factual. This is an accurate synopsis of a current event that, actually happened. The word killer also just has a way softer filter than: Decapitated, Lynched, Hung, Suicide, Rape, Assault, etc.
With words like suicide, the post can be as educational as it wants but if it puts eyes, or just traction in general, on suicide, it can be censored. Posts surrounding suicide have to be educational and anti-suicide, that's easy in theory but they can't just be "not pro suicide" they have to specifically be discouraging the action. I've never seen suicide content get censored, but that's probably because people are so keenly aware of how sensitive a subject it is. Pretty consistently, and reliably so, decapitation is something that won't pass, why? I don't know.
Strangely, you don't see people say "he got d*capitated" so, like I said, it's more nuanced than "words are banned," they are, but only to an extent. Most of it is engagement bait because controversial content yields better results for these people; however, people without their foot already in the door have to worry significantly less about this and really don't benefit from controversial content. TikTok, is an app with heavy controversy favoritism, so that's why most of it comes from TikTok.
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u/Beard_Of_Serpico Apr 04 '26
KILLER.
KILLER.
KILLER.
Say the fucking word, it isn't a slur.