Facebook Algorithm Detects Slang Before It’s Cool

For all you hipsters, trendsetters and teenagers out there Facebook may soon be keeping a closer eye on what you’re saying.

The social media giant has revealed its plans to trawl posts and messages for slang words before they get picked up by the rest of the crowd.

According to a US patent, Facebook plans to set its artificial intelligence to work searching for terms which aren’t associated with a known meaning.

• Facebook has been awarded a US patent for AI to recognise ‘neologisms’
• It would scan posts and messages for unrecognised or new uses of terms
• If the use is new, these neologisms will be added to a social glossary
• The approach could help Facebook better target its adverts to a wider range of social groups

It will even stretch to nicknames and words used outside of their normal context, such as someone using ‘sick’ to mean good.

Once these new terms, or neologisms – which are still in the process of being adopted by a group –are picked up on, they would be added to a ‘social glossary’.

With internet memes generating their own vocabulary, the social glossary would be a means of keeping on top of the language as it emerges.

One example is the term ‘owned’ which emerged from online video games in which has been used in games to taunt opponents, with someone badly beaten said to be ‘owned’.

This term is thought to have evolved into ‘pwned’, a misspelling of ‘owned’ used in the same context to taunt other players online: ‘Dude, you got pwned!’.

Once phrases such as these are discovered in Facebook content they would be checked against any known meaning.