(NewsNation) — Online activists are using the keywords “music festival” to spread the word about protests in Los Angeles, Portland and Washington, D.C., in an effort to avoid social media suppression.
The phrase is an example of algospeak, in which users replace flagged words — such as “protest,” “riot,” or “ICE” — to avoid being shadowbanned, which quietly reduces a post’s visibility, particularly in search results and curated, user-focused pages.
In this case, “LA Music Festival” has become a moniker for demonstrations against the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.
In Los Angeles, “music festival” has been used online to organize resistance efforts against immigration raids, and in D.C., to rally against Trump’s federal takeover of the district.
Organizers have shared protest details online using terms like “performers” for protest speakers and “venues” for protest sites.
TikTok prohibits threats, hate speech, harmful misinformation and extreme violence, but does not include protest-related content. Still, worried their posts are being hidden, activists on the app have turned to using coded language, and the approach has spread to Instagram, X and other platforms.
Users have used other phrases, such as “cute winter boots,” to discuss the presence of immigration officers, Axios reported.
While the codes have helped organizers bypass algorithms, they have been met with some confusion.
“So is it all protests, or specifically ICE-related? That’s what I’m confused about,” one Reddit user wrote.
Protests are set for this weekend nationwide as demonstrators continue to push back against the Trump administration’s policies