“Genderless nipples” account throwing off Instagram's algorithm | Hacker News Reader

“Genderless nipples” account throwing off Instagram's algorithm

papermag.com

92 pointsors72 comments

I was just reading this article on smaller nipples being fashionable. And Instagram's nipple blurring is one of the factors contributing to this fashion. - https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jan/15/what-do...

That is a very good point. Same as with female genitals in Hollywood movies - if they have to show a front shot it is an innie or nothing.

That article is press release churnalism. There is no evidence of any small nipple craze. Here is the source press release: http://pressreleases.responsesource.com/news/92308/from-bust... The plastic surgery industry tries to drum up business this way on a regular basis.

I'm pretty sure it would be impossible to take a "genderless" photo of my nipples because of all the chest hair in the way.

Shave it, put it on Instagram, let us know how it went.

A comment I thought I'd never see on HN.

I think more people should post that comment on HN. :)

Some women do have hair there, so the presence of hair is not a guarantee you are looking at a 'male' nipple.

P(A|B) = P(A)P(B|A)/P(B)

https://www.bustle.com/articles/66705-is-nipple-hair-normal-...

They have guidelines for the submissions, you can go for it: https://goo.gl/XLGaqy

The double standard around nipples always baffled me, for this exact reason.

Where I live (New York), women have the right to be topless anywhere that men do. So that makes all beaches effectively "topless beaches" - the same goes for parks, or even just walking down the street.

Edit: Autocorrect!

> The double standard around hippies always baffled me

Whether autocorrect or a Freudian slip, I think we're on to something here.

That's a pretty recent thing. IIRC going topless is still technically illegal in NYC. A court case from the late 80s or early 90s carved out a narrow exception (nakedness is not automatically lewdness) without voiding the entire law.

A lot of this back n forth has to do with how patchworks of private or local arrangements get vaulted into the global arena by the internet. Instagram is forced to define and enforce (via programming!) a clear social norm for everyone everywhere, where previously there was not and could never be one without making someone upset.

Ditto the previous hyperventilation about what is and is not a "real" name.

> That's a pretty recent thing. IIRC going topless is still technically illegal in NYC. A court case from the late 80s or early 90s carved out a narrow exception (nakedness is not automatically lewdness) without voiding the entire law.

No, being topless in NYC is definitely legal (specifically: women can be topless anywhere men can be topless), and that's been the case for a couple of decades, if not longer. It's generally not practiced except at certain events like the Pride March. Public nudity, though, is not permitted.

For example, note that the issue in this case is not whether they have the right to be topless in Times Square, but whether they have the right to solicit money in Times Square while being topless: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/21/nyregion/topless-in-times...

The issue is that Times Square requires performers to be licensed, but performance art is also protected by the First Amendment, and there are laws around working while topless (e.g. strip clubs, which are very strictly regulated in New York - they can't serve alcohol, for example, though there's a loophole some use).

We're saying the same thing. 80s/90s == "couple of decades, if not longer". Granted, 20 years is "recent" to me but is most of a lifetime for others.

Here's the seminal case from '86 protesting the law against female toplessness, which in '92 secured the exception to (but not voiding of) the law in a ruling by the state court:

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/12/16/nyregion/judge-dismisses-c...

Yes, so it's not "technically illegal". That's how courts work when deciding law.

You can argue that it's impractical or misogynist, but does it really baffle you? The double standard exists because (in American society) female nipples are sexualized in a way that that male nipples are not.

That's circular. They're treated differently because they're treated differently. But why do we put so much effort into maintaining it when it seems pointless?

They're treated differently because western culture treats women and their bodies as objects to be consumed and nothing more.

"Western"? So in the middle east, they are all relaxed about female nudity?

Arguably, almost all cultures and religions have rules related to nudity, sex and in particular, females bodies and their sexual behavior.

That's pretty irrelevant though, because we're talking about NY.

Since men and their bodies aren't treated as "objects to be consumed and nothing more", how does that explain why its illegal for men to be nude in public?

Or are we just saying that women's breast are disconnected objects from the woman, and its those that we treat as objects to be consume? And in contrast, mens breasts are not disconnected objects from the man and thus are not to be consumed.

It's not circular. Culture does not operate in a logical vacuum, you need to include the time component: culture evolves over time. When you consider this, you realize it's just a feedback loop, not a circular argument.

Isn't there in the US a formal obligation of gender equality? In other words is it legal to state that a man can do X but a woman cannot? Or state that, say, a site will only accept pictures of men and women are not allowed? I was under the impression that at least the formal part of non-discrimination was strongly in place.

There was supposed to be an amendment to our Constitution for that (look up the ERA), but it was killed by conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly.

It was actually killed many, many times. From Wikipedia:

> The amendment has been reintroduced in every session of Congress since 1982.

The 14th Amendment provides for equal protection of everyone. It was the basis of abolishing slavery and of the recent Supreme Court decision requiring gay marriage to be recognized. New York state is the only place in the US that I'm aware of that's applied this principle to nipples.

Supposedly.

But then again, the law they would probably be violating is indecent exposure or other such laws - and since different bits are seen as indecent/lewd, you can apply the law fairly while still treating the sexes differently unless you adjust the wording of the law.

This is something I was wondering about in regards to the US Constitution and law.

Say I have a website. I collect male nipple pictures. I reject female ones.

Am I required to provide equal opportunity?

I'd say it's my decision, because it's my website. Would the site being a business (even making just ad money) make a difference?

(I'm from Europe, so I have some blanks in understanding the US system)

Sounds like a job for a good machine learning algorithm.

...At which point we would get a series of think-pieces about whether the AI was implicitly misogynist.

No, we wouldn't. We might get a debate about whether programming such a feature is misogynist (which it pretty much is), but I can't exactly imagine the debate would be centered around an AI doing what it's programmed to do.

Expand your imagination, it is a predictable dynamic.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opinion/sunday/artificial...

https://www.propublica.org/article/breaking-the-black-box-ho...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/09/19/amazon-echo...

I'm not saying it isn't a valid debate, I'm saying in this instance the premise is already misogynistic before a single line of code is written, so the debate doesn't apply here.

It sounds like you don't think that is a question worth asking. Why?

Well, surely it would be explicitly misogynistic.

I'd imagine the current one already is one. That's the whole point of this article, that it is being thrown off by this technique since there's no definition for the gender.

I wonder if there are actually enough anatomical differences for it to learn? Like chicken sexing[1].

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-intuition-of-p...

If the nipple is unrecognisable then why ban it? If you strive to ban it you should also strive to ban all close ups of unrecognisable patches of skin that come from butt or genitals while letting through similar patches that came from somewhere else.

This is clever, but it's kind of a case study in pedantry - ignore the surrounding context in favor of hyperfocus on one element, the focus level being largely irrelevant to the surrounding context.

But who is being the pedant? The owners of the account, or Instagram, or the unexamined cultural norm?

In my point, I'm saying the owners of the account. I'm personally appreciative of the point that our cultural standards are hypocritical along these lines and need to evolve. But I also recognize that from Instagram's perspective, it's not really the nipple all by itself that needs to be flagged. I think that's easy for others to recognize too, which is why I think this is pretty much pedantic and pointless.

From Instagram's perspective, the display of the female nipple is a rather accurate signal (aside from this account) that the female breast is also being displayed, most likely in a manner that the US culture would interpret as sexualized - and that, even if the poster posts it in some sort of empowerment kind of way, it can also simultaneously play into objectification and sexual violence, as a depersonalized thing for others to sexually enjoy, etc. I'm also aware that it's quite possible to do that with breasts without showing the nipple, and that those photos are allowed, and that's silly overall - but Instagram's silly distinction there reflects the same silly distinction that American society has overall.

Instagram's exceptions are consistent with those views, as well - breastfeeding pics are allowed, as it is clearly a depiction of breasts being functionally represented as something other than sexual. Same with most pictures of art, sculptures, etc.

A closeup picture of a genderless nipple is actually more valuable in helping culture desexualize the nipple than it is in pointing out any kind of hypocrisy on Instagram's part. Instagram probably just rolls their eyes at this since they don't see these photos as contributing to sexualized objectification or violence. So I wouldn't see it as pedantic if this weren't chiefly about attacking Instagram. If their chief goal were to contribute towards desexualizing US culture's interpretations of women, then there's probably all kinds of things they could do.

Seems like it needs a simple tweak.

This is really funny.

However protesting against Instagram's policy is really dumb. This is simply just a 'gotcha' loophole. The struggle for equality is a lot bigger than this.

Such things are not mutually exclusive.

You can protest more than one thing at the same time. One person can work on protesting something less important, while 50 other people protest more important things. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

If one were to follow the logic you're suggesting, absolutely nothing can be protested at any given time, except for the single most important thing (and how is that going to be decided exactly). Otherwise, it would always come back to: hey wait, this isn't our best use of time, because there is something more important to focus on.

This isn't really a protest, you're missing the point.

If Instagram actually changed their policy to allow female nipples there would be thousands of novelty pop up accounts that just post women's breasts. Instagram already has a problem with borderline softcore porn. Why in the world would they walk down this slippery slope?

This 'protest' isn't really proving anything. It's just a funny mockery of the rules.

There's no reason Instagram have to allow male nipples. They can just update their policy to ban nudity, including ambiguous nudity.

Good luck banning almost every beach photo ever...

Also most swimming photos of men or workout photos.

Beach photos wouldn't be ambiguous because you can see the person's gender.

But bodybuilder community would be so mad, bro.

Women's breasts are considered to be nudity in our culture by majority of people. Men's "breasts" are not considered to be nudity in our culture by majority of people. There are biological and cultural reasons for those things.

If women would complain they are seeing nude males in Instagram then it's completely OK to ban male nipples too. But we haven't seen those complaints.

Same argument could apply to slavery. The point is that cultural conventions are not always right.

But this convention is right. And I guess even most women don't want to free the nipple because they are happy with this cultural convention.

Not sure what's your point. Or why you used quotes around the word breasts.

Since you assert that complaining is a valid way to get companies to change their practices, then certainly you're in support of an account which is designed to complain about Instagram's practices, right?

It's ok to complain, I don't support their cause though.

Maybe this discussion should have been about cool image recognition algorithms anyway but It didn't seem to be when I looked at the comments. :)

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