TikTok Told Moderators to Suppress Posts by “Ugly” People and the Poor | Hacker News Reader

TikTok Told Moderators to Suppress Posts by “Ugly” People and the Poor

theintercept.com

87 pointsbalola21 comments

I left all social networks when Facebook apologized for having done psychological experiments on its users. I recommend you all to do the same.

Mainstream social networks no longer connect people.

When did they ever?

I got off of Facebook in 2008 and even then there was no ambiguity that FB, Google, etc. were going to data mine the hell out of you.

They have utility -- like opiates, or guillotines -- but only in very specific use cases.

Distillation of Chinese / Tik Tok model:

1) Maintain political serenity via suppression of fringe politics.

2) Hide "embarrassment" which is distinct form merely promoting glamour.

It's a algorithm for stable mass appeal, you don't get much fringe representation, but you also don't get Arab spring. For many countries, that's the pragmatic priority.

Yes, but doesn't Instagram by natural vote (based on views) also punish ugly people?

Whataboutism doesn't help the conversation

Edit in response to commenter: Whataboutism is a Meme? It a logical failure and when used it should be dismissed since it highjacks the conversation which is about what tiktok did (which is different from what insta and friends do).

Neither does dismissing things with a meme.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

In particular: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21854822

"tiktok didn't say it, because..." is a counterexample. "Yes. Also at Instagram" is extra information. "Yes, but doesn't Instagram also ..." is still whataboutism.

The whole point about whataboutism and how it got used politically is not that it's false. It's just used to distract and redirect conversation.

Are you responding to the wrong person? I don’t have a horse in this fight.

Only pointing out that finger pointing “whataboutism” isn’t popular here.

I meant that the "in particular" link just doesn't apply to this situation.

Yes. I guess it's no secret that the influencer economy is dominated by people who you could call conventionally attractive or people with lifestyles that young people would want to emulate.

This is of course not news as people in entertainment have always set impossible (and rather shallow and conventional) beauty standards, but I think apps like tiktok with their engagement drive it even faster.

You see a lot of discussions these days about dating behaviour on Tinder as well as people being obsessed with height in their profiles and whatnot, and we seriously have to wonder what this interaction through apps is doing to our social life.

Not getting upvotes naturally is different from being suppressed by the platform. Specifically tiktok seems to remove the opportunity for success early. Lower votes on Instagram mean just lower votes - smaller communities can still get organised around the "undesirable" profiles.

You can't actually "punish" anyone on IG using voting, because as far as I can tell, you can't downvote.

There's no 'but'.

Companies that sell products for the disabled are not 'discriminated against' by the pretty and able-bodied who don't buy their products by virtue of the fact they don't want them.

There are no hairs to be split here: discriminating against the disabled is reprehensible if not illegal, moderating against those who are 'poor or ugly' is at least reprehensible, and suppressing those who don't support the Chinese State is deeply problematic, though it might not be illegal, it should be, at least for users within non-Chinese jurisdictions wherein the can establish regulations concerning this.

To boot, if it can be demonstrated that TikTok receives direct or indirect state aid, then they're violating WTO rules [1].

[1] https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/statra_e/statrad.htm

A better analog is television, where such practices are completely ingrained in the system. This is also broadly true of their guidelines on political and sexual content as well, making it seem like TikTok was trying to become something like CBS.

Not sure about that. Rednecks, hoarders, botched plastic surgery, fat people failing to lose weight, popping pimples and abscess. This is pretty much 1/3 of Discovery Channel lineup. Rest is pseudo history, alien abductions and gun shows.

Do you think poor or "ugly" people think being a star of a freak show is the highest form of entertainment they ought to participate in?

All those people are on TikTok too, they just aren't broadcast to every phone. Buying extra channels would be like searching on other sites for TikTok videos.

Life in general punishes ugly people.

The faster you accept this and move on, the more time you'll have to focus on what else matters.

Indeed. Stoicism is the key to happiness.

Yes, I feel for them.

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