AlgoSpeak is coming to RightsCon! Join us for our session - It’s that forkin’ h0rny AI again: AlgoSpeak and the evolution of how we talk about sex online- in-person or online on Thursday, February 27th at 1130am Taipei time (0430 CET, 1930 PST, 2230 PST)!

Have you ever posted seemingly-innocent and/or informative educational content on social media, only to discover it’s gone? For many people — particularly SRHR (Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights) practitioners, pleasure advocates, and sexuality educators—this is the everyday reality of simply sharing your knowledge with the world, as automated decision-making and algorithms censor, monitor, suppress and remove SRHR content globally. TikTok and Meta's “Al Gore Rhythm’s” have birthed a new linguistic era of corn 🌽 (porn), Spicy Eggplants 🍆 (vibrators), seggs (sex), and legbooty (LGBTQ+) as content creators are forced to use AlgoSpeak to communicate the everyday basics of sex(uality) education, sexual pleasure, sex work, reproductive health, abortion, and healthcare products for menopause, endometriosis, pelvic pain and sexual wellness, amongst many other SRHR topics. This censorship is not benign. When accurate and inclusive information is considered a violation, what is considered acceptable? How does censorship perpetuate dis/misinformation on gender and sexuality, further bolstering the anti-rights movement? What does it mean when those most targeted by regulations meant to keep spaces safe, are the marginalised groups advocating for a progressive agenda or simply sharing accurate information? Does this also aid trolling and hate-speech? And what can we do about it?

In this session, we explore censorship and restrictions on online freedoms that are frequently overlooked, while examining the creative ways people circumvent these often-veiled regulations. Through this suppression, a new language emerges, and the future of progressive SRHR work and activism both in, and outside of normative online spaces, must be envisioned. At RightsCon, we want to learn how others experience SRHR censorship and rights’ violations on personal and professional levels, collaboratively strategise solutions, and crowdsource terminology used to circumvent automated content removals and censorship.

During the session, we want to learn about how people are experiencing censorship and online rights’ violations in their work and lives, and how this censorship affects them on personal and professional levels. Further, we want to use participants' knowledge to collaboratively strategise solutions, and crowdsource terminology used to circumvent automated content removal and censorship. By working with participants, we hope to facilitate an exchange of strategies, tools, and terminologies to ensure that positive SRHR information continues to flow online. Key outcomes include; Crowdsourcing terminology used to circumvent automated content removal and censorship, sharing and collecting experiences of censorship, sharing knowledge and tactics used to combat censorship, questioning what is the mental-toll of keeping up with AlgoSpeak, discussing how tech is shaping the present and future language of (already stigmatised) SRHR content, sharing how folks can get involved in fighting digital suppression as broader calls-to-action

To help participants stay in touch and connect, we will compile an opt-in mailing list/database of attendees to facilitate future networking and keep the conversation going (via QR-code link to a database mapping participants, their projects, and desire to connect/collaborate after the session). Using our participants' crowd-sourced AlgoSpeak examples and flagged-terms we’ll create an ‘AlgoSpeak thesaurus’ for publication online, which anyone can submit more terms to and develop. Utilising knowledge gained from the session, we’ll create a social media campaign that will be shared with all participants, and disseminated online by the facilitators’ organisations, participants, and anyone else who wishes to share info on SRHR content censorship. After the session, we will compile a mailing list and opt-in database of session attendees to facilitate future networking and connections, ensuring we keep this conversation going. This will allow us to share ongoing strategies to enhance our AlgoSpeak literacy, as it is an ever-evolving tactic to bypass algorithmic biases and reach as many people as possible with accurate education.