Content moderation and the case of the forbiden dance

Who can say what is the meaning of a word?

Free expression

You know when someone makes a pun about an ambiguous word and we think it’s funny? That’s because we know that word has more than one meaning, and we can understand what the person means because we have the ability to analyze the context in which something is said. This is a capability that machines cannot always imitate. So, unfortunately, sometimes the algorithms used to detect inappropriate content limit content that most of the time is offensive but, in a given context, is fully legitimate. And it’s even sadder that this has the potential to only propagate the offensive meaning of that word, erasing its legitimate meaning. In today’s post, I’m going to tell you a fact that might seem trivial at first glance, but helps illustrate the problem.

The content

A few weeks ago, I was looking at posts on the Instagram feed and suddenly realized that one of them had the hashtag “boogaloo”.

When I clicked on that hashtag to see what that content would be associated with it on a larger scale, Instagram resulted in a blank screen, which read: “This hashtag is hidden”, in bold letters, and below in gray: “The publications with #boogaloo were limited because the community reported content that may not comply with Instagram’s Community Guidelines”. In other words, contents that have the word are excluded from the recommendation page or from the search for hashtags – in a type of shadowban, which hides certain contents without taking action on its source. The person who makes the post does not receive any notice.

The measure of moderation used, moreover, does not explain its context. On the same screen that claims to have limited posts, you can click on a “learn more” link, but it just takes you to Instagram’s general community guidelines page. However, the post I was looking at had nothing to do with issues that violated community policies – it was a choreography video.

The context

For starters, it’s worth explaining that boogaloo is a social dance style; a form of funk dancing under this name is reported, originating in an African American community in Chicago in the 1960s, and there are also several references to boogaloo as an urban dance in Oakland, California. The style is still practiced today in urban dances, and names different steps. Its movements comprise illusions, muscle restriction, freezes, robot or swing, and have an aspect of entertainment, fun and musical expression, without any offensive potential – here and here, some steps are shown by its practitioners. The profile that made the post I referred to at the beginning, inclusive, is of a dance and movement teacher – whom I thank for sending these references (thank you, Vini!)!

So, it would be very strange for this term to become a “forbidden hashtag” just based on this information. But more context is needed to understand what happened on social media. Last year, due to the project on transparency in content moderation here at IRIS, I became a subscriber to the columns of Casey Newton, a journalist who writes about social media. When I saw the hashtag, I remembered a text by him about Facebook’s race to limit the far-right group, associated with arms and white supremacist ideals, self-called “Boogaloo”.

At least since 2012, the group gathers supporters of anti-government and far-right ideas and propagates them on social networks under that name. Any page with the word was even allegedly removed from Facebook’s recommendations in 2020 – when the company noticed the existence of numerous groups containing the term and supporters of similar causes. This occurred in the midst of violent and criminal actions by people who had a relationship with the cause and with the said movement – which involves the murder of a public security agent in the United States.

But why would an extreme right-wing movement with white supremacists in arms be using that name? In the media, there was the popularization of the expression due to the dance movie “Breakin’”, from the 1980s, which has a sequel called “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo”. Since then, the extension “2: Electric Boogaloo” is considered a way of pejoratively parodying sequels. Thus, the movement appropriated the term “boogaloo” for the idea of defending a Second Civil War in the United States.

The meaning

Thus, a word that has been used since the 1960s as an expression of a type of dance linked to a black community in the United States has been moderated on Instagram for its association, in events that began in 2012, with a white supremacist movement.

Without having all this context in mind, I would never know why a dance teacher, by assigning a hashtag to a choreography, was considered to be infringing content policies in any way. And more: when I click on the hashtag to see more content from that dance, I just have access to the information that the word violates guidelines, without an explanation, and I don’t have access to the intended meaning of the post. There is, on that page, that explains that “boogaloo” is a restricted hashtag, what it originally meant.

That is, by restricting the hashtag because it considers it offensive, Instagram gives weight to this meaning, implying that this is a word to be avoided. It does not bring out its full cultural meaning in the midst of dance or the possibility that, in different contexts, it is legitimate and carries with it the expression of a culture totally different from the violence that it seeks to restrict. In fact, the meaning around the dance, which is erased by the restriction, is created by black people, in a context of resistance to the violent and oppressive environment they experience.

With that in mind, original boogaloo artists created Boogaloo Day in an attempt to reclaim the hashtag that names their dance and culture. The solution is complex, as there is still a long way to go before the control of offensive content on the Internet does not also reach legitimate expression. Still, the case makes you think. It is as if content moderation, in this case, only propagated a pejorative or offensive use of a word, erasing the sense of community and expression that it has had for many people for decades.

This is one case among many – like the one reported in this post by our guest Tatiane Guimarães on expressions from the LGBTQIA+ community – that can illustrate how content moderation actually intervenes in reality. When contents have more than one meaning depending on the context, it is dangerous to make a uniform decision for everyone, as this can make that one the only meaning, eliminating the others. In order for us to guarantee diversity of expression, intervention procedures must be public and open to criticism, and the greatest possible transparency must be adopted to inform decisions, as they also create and pass on meanings.

The views and opinions expressed in this blogpost are those of the author. 
Illustration by Freepik Stories.