Youtube and the “S” word
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I’m spending some leisure time to navigate in the stream of documentaries and pseudo-documentaries on Youtube. General Relativity, the Twin Paradox, history of philosophy, Isaac Newton, lectures by Nabokov on Don Quixote, you name it.
This is how I found “Daily Life in Ancient Greece” which attempts to bring ancient Greece alive with 3D animations, smugly narrated by a man with British accent. Seemingly wooden figures, computer-generated, stumble around in markets, agoras, theater stages and travel on ships. Those ships are constantly threatened by pirates whose agile boats are hidden in the bays of the rocky coast line. Socrates is ubiquitous and even his wife, a regally dressed Xanthippe, makes her appearance without drawing a mention of her proverbial temperament.
But amid all this spectacle I was stunned by a comment by the narrator as he mentions the people owned and held in forced labor, which we know was essential for the economy of the Greek city states. He says “Youtube won’t allow the “S” word so I will refer to them as ‘domestic helpers.'”
Translation of “slaves” into “domestic helpers” is a breathtaking insult on the dignity and memory of all slaves held as chattle in history. It particularly strikes a nerve because of the Republicans’ attempts to re-write history of slavery as something benign, as a harmonious mutually beneficial arrangement with their employers-owners.
The term “domestic helpers” even goes beyond “domestic employees” in its insinuation as it suggests a friendly service by a volunteer who has other choices in life.
I stopped the video at this point to look up “Who owns Youtube?”
Here is the answer in GOOGLE: “YouTube is an American online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States. Accessible worldwide, it was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google and is the second most visited website, after Google Search.”
So it is Google that is ultimately responsible for this Sprachregelung. With Google’s Generative AI ambitions in mind, I fear we are seeing the beginning of an avalanche.
You might say that considering the richness of English language, with its over 600,000 words, the loss of one isn’t much of a deal. But if the trend continues, the entire fabric of history and culture will become undone.
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