The digital language police

Rhys Laverty has an entertaining Critic piece on how WhatsApp changed the word “turkey” to “Türkiye” when he meant the bird and not the country. 


Resist the language police!

Why are my words being censored by WhatsApp?

Given my severe phobia of birds, and farm birds in particular, I am the last person who should be writing about turkeys. But hey ho, cometh the hour and all that.

This week, whilst typing on WhatsApp Web on my laptop, rattling off what I though was a mildly amusing joke about Jamie Oliver’s war on turkey twizzlers some years ago, I found myself censored — yes, dear reader, censored I tell you. Before my very eyes, the word “turkey” was rendered “Türkiye”. I hadn’t even written it with a capital letter; I was mid-sentence. Cue some furious backspacing and de-umlautification.

A familiar trend but the piece is well worth reading as a reminder of what is a political and social trend, not merely a static feature of digital 'assistance'.

If you notice any of this, if you mispronounce a name, or if you fail to observe the quietly revised spelling of anointed words, even in the sanctum sanctorum of your own mind, you are exposed to both the world and yourself as Entirely The Wrong Sort. You are not Respectable. You have missed the latest episode of The News Agents. Gary Lineker is very disappointed in you. The interference of WhatsApp is particularly egregious because it intrudes upon my private communications. It is a Foucaldian policing of private desire, a life submitted to the progressive digital panopticon. It is multiculturalism working as intended.