Trolls and Online Racists Have Started Speaking in Code
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That obviously isn't enough for some people, though, as a few days ago someone tweeted a list of all the terms. They include Google, Skype, Yahoo, Bing, skittle, butterfly and car salesman, and no, I'm not going to directly repeat what any of them mean, you can see the full list here.
Some of them stem directly from past stories, like using 'Google' as a derogatory term for black people, which stems from 4Chan's 'Operation Google', an attempt to trick Google's Jigsaw filtration AI system into flagging the name of the company as a racist slur. Similarly, the use of 'skittle' to describe Muslims or Arabs calls back to the 'poisoned skittle' tweet posted recently by Donald Trump Jr, comparing Syrian refugees to sweets.
While there is no direct link between the tweets using these terms and Trump's support network, he is mentioned in some of them. Sadly, cracking down on racist language is only a small, largely ineffectual part of the fight against online abuse.
Context and intent are malleable, rather than being tied to only certain words, so even if you stopped people using code, they would find other ways to expel their bile. The fact of the matter is that in order to prevent online abuse, you have to look at the people doling it out, not the terms they use.
Callum is a film school graduate who is now making a name for himself as a journalist and content writer. His vices include flat whites and 90s hip-hop. Follow him @Songbird_Callum
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Trolls and Online Racists Have Started Speaking in Code
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Thursday, October 06, 2016
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Reviewed by Unknown
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Thursday, October 06, 2016
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Unknown
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