Algorithmic power and African indigenous languages: search engine autocomplete and the global multilingual Internet

Abstract

Predictive language technologies – such as Google Search’s Autocomplete – constitute forms of algorithmic power that reflect and compound global power imbalances between Western technology companies and multilingual Internet users in the global South. Increasing attention is being paid to predictive language technologies and their impacts on individual users and public discourse. However, there is a lack of scholarship on how such technologies interact with African languages. Addressing this gap, the article presents data from experimentation with autocomplete predictions/suggestions for gendered or politicised keywords in Amharic, Kiswahili and Somali. It demonstrates that autocomplete functions for these languages and how users may be exposed to harmful content due to an apparent lack of filtering of problematic ‘predictions’. Drawing on debates on algorithmic power and digital colonialism, the article demonstrates that global power imbalances manifest here not through a lack of online African indigenous language content, but rather in regard to the moderation of content across diverse cultural and linguistic contexts. This raises dilemmas for actors invested in the multilingual Internet between risks of digital surveillance and effective platform oversight, which could prevent algorithmic harms to users engaging with platforms in a myriad of languages and diverse socio-cultural and political environments.

Indigenous Language Revitalization Movements: Resistance Against Colonial Linguistic Domination

“…The forced adoption of colonial languages contributed to the erosion of indigenous identities and cultural practices. Language serves as a primary vehicle for transmitting cultural knowledge, values, and traditions across generations [4]. By displacing indigenous languages with colonial ones, colonial authorities disrupted this transmission, severing indigenous communities' ties to their cultural heritage.…”

Cryptopolitics

“…Regardless, for Google to imply that this function constitutes a "prediction" rather than a "suggestion" of search terms seems to be a misleading obfuscation of a potentially more profound algorithmic power in an unstable context. Elsewhere, colleagues and I-while analyzing misogynistic autocomplete suggestions for gendered keyword suggestions in various East African languages-describe inequalities in the capacity and inclination of Western technology companies to adequately monitor the interaction of their tools with marginalized languages as a form of digital colonialism (Chonka, Diepeveen, and Haile 2023).…”