Using African American English on social media

African American English (AAE) is a dialect of English spoken primarily by

Black Americans.

Using African American English negatively effects blacks on social media:

African American English (AAE) negatively impacts Black social media users primarily through systemic algorithmic bias, digital redlining, and linguistic appropriation. Automated tools and AI models often misclassify AAE as "hate speech" or "toxicity," leading to unjust content removal, shadow banning, and disproportionate account suspensions. Source

Studies show tweets using AAE are up to two times more likely to be flagged as offensive or toxic compared to text written in standard English.

Non-Black creators are often praised or monetarily rewarded for using the same dialect.

X/Twitter and Facebook as the platforms where African American English (AAE) speakers face the most intense linguistic profiling and algorithmic bias.  Source

X/Twitter and Facebook flag likely African American posts as abusive or hateful at much higher rates—in some cases more than twice as frequently. Source

These sites are significantly more likely to misclassify AAE as "hate speech" or "offensive" compared to identical messages written in Standard American English. Source

Non-Black users frequently appropriate AAE terms as "Gen-Z" or "internet slang". When Black users employ the same language, they are disproportionately penalized, shadowbanned, or suspended due to automated bias. Source

Read also: How Automated Tools Discriminate Against Black Language, Social Media & The Decontextualization, The mislabeling of AAVE as internet slang