Word of the Week · Issue 016 · Week of 26 October 2026

UNSEARCHABLE

What it claims: A phrase the platform will not look up, because it may be associated with hateful behavior.
What it does: A museum in Kansas City is named for the Negro Leagues. Type that name into TikTok and the platform answers that the phrase may be associated with hateful behavior.
The receipt: The platform prints the name in its own results. Then it refuses to accept it as a question.

Black-and-white photograph of an older Black woman standing in a paneled room, smiling toward the camera. She wears a short-sleeved dress in a light patterned print with a small pin at the left shoulder. The edge of a framed picture hangs on the wall behind her at left; a draped curtain and a venetian blind fill the right side of the frame. — Dorothy B. Porter. The Library of Congress gives the date as June 2, 1970 and places the photograph at the Library, with the qualifier probably, and its record notes that both the title and the date were devised by Publishing Office staff. Porter was a librarian and curator at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University. Photograph by the Library of Congress Photoduplication Service. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USP6-5936-C, digital id ds.10194. No known restrictions on publication.

Unsearchable sounds like a fact about the words. The phrase is the problem, so the search stops, and nobody has to say who stopped it.

On TikTok the phrase is the name of a museum. Search Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and the platform returns no results and a notice that the phrase “may be associated with hateful behavior.” The same notice answers United Negro College Fund. Search the museum’s handle and the account comes right up, with the museum’s name printed on the result card. Search Buck O’Neil and videos load with no warning at all.

The name was never unsearchable. The platform declines to search for it. We ran the same searches again on September 16, 2026, and the screen had not changed.

Read the file UNSEARCHABLE WR-FCT-030