Or maybe don’t automate banning YouTube channels via nebulous black boxes? Or can advertisers stop being afraid of anything and everything?
How this somehow translated, in the era of online youtube videos, to the exact opposite is still a mystery to me. So what if your ad appeared next to something radical on youtube? So what if your ads appeared next to some weird sex segment of youtube? People who see it aren't going to confuse the ads with the video, just the same as people watching television isn't confusing the ads with the programme.
This is simply not true. If you go back long enough shows were often sponsored by specific advertisers making the link even stronger than traditional preroll YouTube ads (this practice goes back to radio, so it is even older than TV). It also ended up with bizarre pairings like "'The Flinstones' brought to you by Winston Cigarettes."[1]
Eventually cable TV came along and it didn't have the type of FCC oversight that broadcast TV does. However you generally only see swearing and nudity on premium cable and not basic cable despite no official rules preventing it. The primary reason for this is that basic cable still relies and advertisers while premium cable does not. Basic cable channels still fear advertisers dropping out if their ads are paired with objectionable content. And that is really all that is happening on YouTube. GM doesn't doesn't want their latest car ad to appear in front of a racist manifesto. I don't think that is a particularly unreasonable desire for an advertiser.
Transformers was only advertising for Hasbro. They licensed the toys then made a show around them to sell them.
And as a big Transformers fan as a kid I along with many others fell right for it!
When theories about child-eating democrats are freely stated as facts and picked up ans spun further in the recommendations so that a conspiracy theorist ends up in Congress (and a significant minority of the population is fine with that), then yes, I as a consumer want to execute on my free speech to hold advertisers responsible for sponsoring that.
Look at it like this:
Nowadays, the ads (and the videos) are targeted. Additionally, the algorithms are - no other way to put it - really fucking dumb and are constantly "overcommitting". E.g., I watched a few episodes of a podcast months ago and my YouTube recommendation has been 98% episodes of the same show since then, because the algo registered I spent a disproportionate amount of watch time for those (who knew, podcast episodes are long). Or look at Amazon grouping every single book I read the untranslated English version of in "International Books" because it determined that English ain't my mother tongue. Now I am constantly getting cultural, cosmopolitan and language learning stuff; because I read Ian Banks and software philosophy books.
I am aggressively ad-blocking, but I imagine ads are quite the same and I am sure you can recite similar experiences. Now based on this shitty, bizarro reality I would say that the fear of an ad bubble heavily overlapping with a content bubble (for absurd reasons) is not irrational. It is weird, it is dumb, and we could probably overcome it, but products would be associated with weird/illegal/controversial niches by...association.
This whole situation is a shit cocktail of misguided KPI's, straight up scams, questionable assumptions (we still don't know whether targeted ads do anything), cancel culture, bad software and US censorship (we can show you two passenger planes colliding and 700 people incinerating but we can't show you the pilot going "motherfucker"). But this specific choice, to aggressively ban to avoid bad association, is actually somewhat rational.
This isn't true. In the past, some viewers have always followed the money trail of a tv show which inevitably leads to the sponsors/advertisers that help fund it. Example of tv advertisers pulling out of controversial topics:
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/30/business/main-character-e...
As I've mentioned many times before, there is no media institution on the planet (whether private corporate or public government funded) -- that is immune from censorship because every piece of the chain (creation, distribution, broadcasting, advertising, etc) all require money and money is the ultimate lever to apply pressure via government decrees, consumer boycotts, advertiser boycotts, employee revolts, journalists shaming, etc.
Nobody has invented an implementation that can withstand any pressure to filter content but also be available to the mainstream masses. Google even with its billions has to tame Youtube to placate advertisers. Apple, even with its billions has to placate China. Niche/obscure "censorship-proof" tech like Freenet/IPFS is not for the masses and the desirable content creators can't monetize their effort there.
> For the second time within a year, the Coalition for Better Television is threatening a boycott of one or more companies that advertise on prime-time television, but this time without the support of its most prominent member, the Moral Majority.
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/28/arts/a-boycott-of-tv-adve...
I don't know much about TV, but in newspapers print and online, where to put ads has at least for a long time included considerations beyond of just what space is available.
At the news site I worked, the CMS had an per article option to white/blacklist ads from categories or disable them entirely. E.g. so to not show an car advertisement boasting their reliability under an article of an car accident where a child has died.
Or in print news papers (especially weekly ones) you often see that it is structured in a way that the realities about the harsh world and negative stories in general are in the first parts and the paper becomes more and more fluffy and feel-good as you turn the pages. It is in those later sections where most big brands want their ads to be placed.
Also, a lot of things that are pretty normal these days would have caused outrage and protests against the publishers not too long ago.
In my view, people were always easily offended/outraged. Just what causes it, and which views have significant followings and voice changes over time.
The ad breaks came later as TV realized that the ad was forever part of the show and so they didn't get more money when the did a rerun.
https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/23/verizon-and-att-latest-to...
Wrong. There are multiple points that come in play here, none of which are as simple as "the activists are protesting against Nazi and conspiracy crap":
First of all, linear TV, radio and newspapers had human reviews in the loop at every stage: client, producer, ad broker, station/paper. That meant that the chance of valuable ads appearing next to bullshit was somewhat next to zero - and also, that "fringe content" was restricted to unscrupulous (or from the same niche) advertisers. Essentially, there was a feedback loop: content that was not mainstream-worthy had no chance of being financed.
Internet advertising and especially social networks with monetization and targeted advertising however, turned up all of that. Suddenly, a Nestle ad could run as a front-roll of Alex Jones lunacy. The result was that an awful lot of really awful content creators had both the technical capability to reach out to millions of people (thanks to the Internet, which eliminated the traditional gatekeepers) and the advertising income that was previously reserved to mainstream-able content.
The result of that, in turn, was an explosion in numbers of these "content creators" and their content (simply because many of them could now actually afford to quit regular jobs)... and thus, combined with the explosion of followers of such content, meant minorities had to suffer from a constant barrage of both online hate speech and real world violence - including many acts of terrorism that claimed human lives, and culminating in the events of January 6th 2021.
What the "extremely small set of activists and journalists" is doing is attempting to rein in the hate and the violence that results of it. And yes, making brands and their advertising agencies aware of what is going on and where their money ends up is a good thing.
There's probably room in the middle somewhere.
Because these extremely small set of activists include the UK’s government and the newspaper The Guardian who pulled their ads due to YouTube placing them next to “extremist content”. Not to mention the numerous US government watchdogs who have been sniffing out a way to thwart google and Facebook for years now.
As far as actual extreme reactionary content.. I don't know what the solution is. I'd put "the middle" as stop promoting them because they hit your engagement metrics, but be much more cautious about banning them, giving them martyrdom points and an incentive to organize better.
Ultimately the villain here is engagement-optimizing recommendation algos. The current situation is a small reactionary channel will be promoted for engagement, until it's big and people notice, and THEN it's banned, with a maximum of negative impact. Worst of all worlds.
With every such news article, YouTube stepped up its game. It culminated with PewdiePie making an "anti-semetic" joke, and this resulted in the Adpocalypse.
So I'd say it was more commercial interests than activism interests, but at times these align.
I am sure that you believe it's true, but advertisers have been used to being able to control what content they were put next to for a long time. I don't know whether it matters, or is valuable, but I do know that they have cared for long enough that it has been one of the largest influences on literally what television programs got made (even if this influence appears oblique, it has been one of the primary motivations of the folks making these decisions).
You can make an argument that the Internet allows things to work differently, but I think it was simply a matter of what was practical - once it became ~ practical to start exercising some control over what you're associating your brand with, of course folks would jump to pull that lever.
Things did actually work differently. YouTube doesn't pay for content before it airs, and large amounts of the income for a show happen as it's left up. When YouTube demonitizes - and it can do this for an entire channel - it's not just a single episode either. Nor can the content be shopped around to other platforms as easily.
Even if the station wanted to take down your content, you at least got a station manager calling your production staff and not just a "We're sorry, but you violated our vague ToS." message with no response mechanism in it. It had some element of human review and wasn't susceptible to brigading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity_Big_Brother_(British...
These videos did very well in both view counts and watch time, driving perceived value (and thus CPM) straight up.
Your complaints about the specifics of the process are valid, and the dogshit content I’m referring to is absolutely YouTube’s fault. Massively popular channels called this content out for years but Wojcicki didn’t make a move until a newspaper called out PewDiePie for some jokes, go figure.
But the scale of what many advertisers would probably call click fraud was enormous. Further, this is probably the result of another YouTube decision to favor outside sales teams (such as Google) bundling views and selling them to advertisers like subprime mortgages.
Facebook is dealing with some fallout over misrepresenting (or maybe outright lying about) ad performance, YouTube has a parallel reckoning that may never come because the average business user on YT has never posted an ad. The other side of the coin is that many of the YouTube channels that get unjustly punished here presumably have a multi-social network audience that they can complain to.
Obviously advertisers also deserve blame for going along with ad spend that did not include a full breakdown of every video they spent money on, too.
But what we did see happens is that shows which were likely to provoke a negative response from audiences or advertisers were never produced, in large part for the exact same reasons.
The specific shape of events may look different, but that's the result of democratization, allowing more people to be part of the game where they spend money, make stuff, and get ads run against it.
In the cases where YouTube does pay for stuff before it airs or offers a guarantee on future ads, I am fairly confident the old TV dynamics are at play - they will ensure that the content they are funding will garner viewers and not offend advertisers.
News papers have long had a policy that the advertising department wasn't in control of what the news said. The advertisers didn't like it, but they went with it because they knew that it is what the eyeballs wanted.
There is a fine line though - some companies didn't advertise in particular outlets (playboy is an obvious example), which might or might not work out for them.
The question is where is the power. YouTube is acting like they don't have power here, but in fact they do: a large portion of video is on YouTube, and so if YouTube says "too bad, either give us your money or not", the advertisers will need to pay up. Of course there is a cost to youtube in doing that which they might not be willing to pay: some advertisers will say no. Others will tell youtube fine, but we are not willing to pay as much as you could get if we got more control who sees us.
The question isn't where the power is, the question is how much money does YouTube need/want?
As any student of history knows, this is hardly a new phenomenon, but it was never before so globally industrialised or automated.
> everyone was happy
"Everyone" ... except for all the people whose lives are made materially worse by the subsequent ease of disseminating hate material & misinformation. Also unhappy: anyone possessing the humanity to feel for others in distress.
> cowed or [...] ideologically sympathetic
Intentional or not, this came across dripping with derision, but it falls flat: the only "ideological sympathy" here is that of being a decent human being.
> an extremely small set of activists and journalists
This ratifies the well-known aphorism that a small group of dedicated individuals can change the world. It does not undermine the necessity for showing assholes the door.
>This ratifies the well-known aphorism that a small group of dedicated individuals can change the world. It does not undermine the necessity for showing assholes the door.
Wonderful. And the "asshole" designation that these Elect ("extremely small set of ..." as was put above) - how do they get to decide who's an asshole and gets shown the door, what are their criteria and what is the procedure for the rest of us to appeal or ratify their decision-making?
Can we at least agree that censors can make mistakes, or have their own biases? And shouldn't censors be policed as well, so they are accountable to the public?
Again, a statement dripping with derision, that is actually just sticking up for the rights of assholes.
> how do they get to decide who's an asshole
Peddling a message harmful to others.
> what is the procedure for the rest of us to appeal
"appeal" is for crooks, not wankers being thrown out of the pub
Your name-calling should be enough for people to raise their eyebrows at the question: who decides what gets censored.
Tip for idiots thrown out of pubs: yelling at the bouncers isn't going to get your name off the landlord's shit-list, and you don't have a right to make everyone listen to your drivel.
You actually want the algorithm to be a black box so that people don't know that you can trick it by only commenting between 5pm and 8pm on an IP in the Netherlands from Chrome, and avoid using words like "cactus."
The important part here is a transparent appeal process, not that ML is only pretty good at these problems.
I’ve yet to see a case of the hoi poloi get a manual review - you either are a well enough known YouTuber where they have humans dedicated to you, you know someone who works at YouTube and can intercede on your behalf, or you have to whip up a Twitter mob big enough that it hurts YouTube's image or stirs up people with contacts at YouTube.
Even then, sometimes that doesn’t work - look at the Terraria dev.
YouTube effectively has no manual review for 99.9% of people which is why its automated systems accuracy is so important.
As of 2018 youtube had 10,000 manual reviewers (and I imagine it's significantly more than that today), but at their scale, that realistically won't go that far.
Granted, there have been some issues with people getting banned from Google services for what appear to be wrong reasons and then not being able to get any kind of a human response. Those aren't great, but if you ask people whether they want to pay $10/month for YouTube so human moderators can stop this from happening or get it for free and have the .0001% chance that they get banned purely by accident, they'll take the latter. And that's putting aside the fact that there will still be errors with humans doing it, and there will still need to be the same appeal process to resolve those.
And that means you can't just say "If you don't like it, leave, it's a free service", because it's not that simple, as leaving in reality means "give up on your business", and most of people just can't afford that. Youtube has them cornered and thus needs to be careful, since it's not a game, it affects people's lives. For many accidental blocking of channel can mean they'll be living in their cars until the Gods of Google show mercy and fix the error.... and if they do it, since sometimes you don't even get a meaningful reply on what happened, just a template message.
The cost to a competitor is in getting a user to switch. Think of it in terms of paying users: how much would you have to pay someone to switch from Youtube to your site? Multiply the average by the number of users, and that's the advantage Youtube has over competitors.
> The cost to a competitor is in getting a user to switch.
Only if we're assuming that users and uploaders will only ever use exactly one service at any given time. No reason why that needs to be the case; nothing stopping people from uploading to YouTube and Vimeo and Twitch and DailyMotion and PornHub and LBRY and PeerTube and whatever other platforms, and nothing stopping people from viewing from those platforms, either.
Suppose YouTube disappeared tomorrow. Where would everyone go? Probably odysee. So why don't they go there now? That's why Youtube is a natural monopoly.
I named multiple said competitors. And they seem to get plenty of traffic themselves.
> So why don't they go there now?
Do people know about odysee? First I've heard of it (to my recollection at least).
The problem here is in the network effect, not in scarcity.
The cost to enter the video sharing market is extremely low, especially in this day and age where you can rent computing and storage capacity on the cheap around the world.
The reason I ask is because, despite all its flaws, YouTube is one of the treasures of the internet. And I wonder if we'd lose it by breaking up Alphabet.
I am not pro-Alphabet and 100% believe Alphabet needs more regulation, and quite frankly does need some trust busting, but I'd be really sad to lose YouTube. Yeah, there's vimeo but it's clearly not a direct competitor. I also fondly remember stage6 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage6).
However as I understand it the product itself isn't tied to the Google infrastructure. YouTube's main value is the user base, both of viewers and of publishers. It would be a technical marvel to move it off of Google's infrastructure however I don't think that there is any feature that they wouldn't be able to provide anymore. It would certainly be more expensive, but at YouTube's size you could probably work out similar deals with other providers (or with GCP) so I'm not sure that the prices would rise that much. (IDK, maybe 15% increase in cost between provider cut and raw cost increase?)
I mean , YouTube is huge, but we had moderation-at-scale before ML was a popular phrase to bandy around.
'ML' and 'Algorithms' are just convenient non-human bogeyman that any corporation can pin all their woes on without batting an eye right now -- a convenient explanation tool for when things go wrong.
I am going to take a bold stance with this next statement:
An algorithm cannot be at fault -- it is always the fault of those that implement such algorithms.
YouTube and their community is huge -- YouTube has revenue fifteen times greater than Yahoo. 'Too big to X' should not be a tolerable excuse from any industry -- especially so since YouTube/Google has been pushing the idea for years that being a YTer is an actual profession.
Imagine for a moment coming into work and being told that you're fired because an internal corporate policy checker decided that something you did in your past work history was worth of termination; and then 24 hours later being told to continue coming into work because a mistake had been made, but with no further explanation.
This kind of 'workplace' would be intolerable in any real 'work environment'. Just more evidence that YTers are not really treated like any other partner or employee anywhere else in the world -- and that they should probably curtail that language if they want expectations to match the reality that their 'employees' experience.
>People forget that they get these free services for free,
YouTube is not a free service. This fallacy needs to go.
To anyone still not convinced, YouTube takes 45% of all ad revenue generated on videos that YouTube had no part in creating.
Your work comparison just isn't valid because there is no employer with a number of employees within several orders of magnitude of the number of videos on YouTube.
At this point, I view YouTube like I viewed bars that allowed smoking--it was sufficiently popular that nobody could compete against it even though it was harmful. So, we needed legislation to move us to a different local minimum.
And, I find this very painful because I firmly believe that smoking bans have killed live music. But I also understand that nobody was ever going to do the right thing while doing the bad one was so profitable.
What's the connection?
It’s an extreme claim with very little rigor.
By almost all measures, it is. Number of artists, average age of artists, revenue, number of customers, etc.
> as opposed to recorded music becoming way more accessible through technology.
Except that by most measures the general public consumes VASTLY less music than they used to, so it isn't accessibility driving it.
Now, you could suggest that it's because of a bunch of changes: video games, social media, etc. That would at least be plausible.
Compared to when? 1800? 1970? 2010?
You can have a small venue (<100) and it will trundle along. You can have a big venue (>1000) because it probably reached self-supporting.
However, we lost a LOT of 100-1000 size venues from about 1990 to about 2005. And those are the ones that working musicians can make a living off of. But those need the stupidly profitable contingent that goes along with smoking and drinking. The single craft beer drinker isn't going to generate enough money to support such a place.
You could see this even before the smoking bans in areas which had sophisticated dancing (swing, ballroom, etc.) groups. If your venue somehow attracted the young dancing contingent, the venue was going to vaporize within 6 months. Everybody loved them--they tended to be polite, didn't harass the waitstaff, looked good, prevented highly skewed M/F ratios, etc. -- except that they spent next to no money compared to the general public so the owners HATED them. This was in stark contrast to the elder dancing contingent who smoked and drank like fish and could keep clubs alive long beyond their expiration date.
Of course, all venues make sure to have outside areas for smoking, because that's the sensible thing to do.
Although, if you say Nashville or New York, you're not helping--those are mega anomalies and all the musicians are already there which makes the situation untenable.
Side Note: WTF, people? Why downvote this person?
However, I am concerned that a lot of these smaller venues and promoters will struggle to survive the pandemic lockdowns, unless our governments pull themselves together and support cultural venues, instead of focusing so hard on sports. Culture isn't just something you play with a ball :-)
As for the downvotes, probably general disagreement or spillover from other discussions where someone has taken offense to what I wrote.
Same in pubs. The smoking-and-drinking crowd got edged out by parents who for some reason want to bring their kids to the pub. They will have brought their own drinks and snacks for the kids too. The mother will have a small glass of wine and the father will drink half a pint of "craft beer", stretched out over a couple of hours while their kids run around screaming and annoying the few remaining paying drinkers.
I loved pubs in the old days but even before COVID they were dying out because they just don't want their loyal paying customers any more.
I feel like it's the exact opposite: we're hearing about them because these are the ones that slipped into public awareness. The inadequacy of automated moderation without any real semblance of human oversight has been rampant and frequent for about as long as the concept has existed.
This would be true if youtube/google created the content as well. Youtube essentially gets the content "for free"... and then decides what to do with.
Also, I'd be really interested to know how much the Youtube team payed to build this classifier and how that compares to paying human moderators.
As such arguments about using automated systems are meaningless, they can pre-filter without having final decision making authority.
You’re off by orders of magnitude.
500 * 60 * 24 * 365 = 262800000 hours per year / 1.3x playback speed / 2,000 hours of work per person per year = ~101,077 people to watch every uploaded video.
Less if people are watching at higher playback speeds or working significantly more than a 40h week. I would personally be surprised if even 1 in 1,000 videos where flagged by ML at which point you’re talking ~100 people. Though that would be a truly terrible job.
When you have people watch the video at that fast speed and instantly make a decision, you might as well keep the algorithm - the failure rate won't be too different.
Additionally, these people need holidays, managers, infrastructure and an actual flag will probably not instantly be clear - you'll need to point out the specific offence and make a case. You might even need to look things up. Then you'll have to handle appeals and discussions, because changing the AI blackbox to an appeal-less human black box wouldn't improve the situation much[0]. Next, you need people who can understand the specific language of that video - most will be english, but what happens when a Nigerian video is flagged? So you need people from that country or at least familiar with it. Plus infrastructure.
Overall, you're probably looking at something approaching 400 or 500 people, with this very low flag rate. Assuming conservative 30k$/year [1], this is 15 million USD alone. Doable, yes, but its not the no-brainer you make it out to be.
[0] See this case with FB, which was a human error: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/facebook-under-fir... [1] Which is probably optimistic for reviewers, but we'll have managerial infrastructure to pull that average up.
Only averaging 1.3x assumed significant overhead and going back to re listen to segments, have an escalation queue for flagged videos, and randomly assigning multiple people to the same videos to ensure people are paying attention not just playing solitaire while the video is on. Plus other random crap, in other words ~30% overhead.
Google already has more than 10k people working on this: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/expanding-our-work-agai... . If 100 people solved the issue, it would have been solved.
You are incorrect about your assumptions in many respects. Let me list out a few:
1) There is a big difference between watching a 15 min video at 2X for fun vs watching 8 hours of videos a day while having to follow laid down policy with complexity. Videos are not taken down only for one reason and there is a lot of complexity involved with edge cases. Humans are not robots and this is not a task we are inherently good at. Give it a shot yourself for a day and see how easy it is.
2) Your overhead does not consider any additional complexity in terms of languages, specialty, regional expertise etc. This is not a simple problem either. Sure maybe you can hire 1000 reviewers in lets say Indonesia but you cannot find a native Kswahili speaker there. Its not cheap to setup an office for 2 people in Kenya. Scale this to the world which has 193 countries and 6,500 languages.
3) People dont work without any management overhead. You need frontline reviewers. Then you need a layer of experts above them. The you need managers to take care of the operations. The managers to manage those managers. Then recruiters to hire those people. Then HR to deal with their issues.
4) Turnover is a big deal. Very few people in the world can watch beheadings 40 hours a week. An even smaller proportion can handle child safety material. What happens when those people need to take time off? You need additional people. If you want a humane operation then you might have to get them to work only 2 hours a day.
Here is some more reading if you are interested in understanding this from the moderators / reviewers view: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/16/21021005/google-youtube-...
It continues to amaze me how some of the smartest and technically savvy people on HN either do not recognize or refuse to admit how complicated a problem planet scale moderation is.
It's probably a variation of the trivial-core-problem [0]. When looked at roughly, it seems very easy; only when you start implementing it, you'll see all the edge cases appear. I made pretty similar points above to the ones you made - but on a quick napkin calculation, Retric's math checked out, to be fair. And when you're not in the business, missing the inherent complexity is easy.
“Since we started using machine learning to flag violent and extremist content in June, the technology has reviewed and flagged content that would have taken 180,000 people working 40 hours a week to assess.”
That said, I am surprised Google isn’t using machine translation for obscure languages. Props to them that’s going above and beyond in my personal opinion.
Reading the article, "human error" really isn't a reasonable description of what happened:
> The Facebook furor began when the social network deleted the famous photo from Norwegian author Tom Egeland’s Facebook page, where it was part of a series of memorable wartime imagery.
This could be a human error, sure.
> When Egeland subsequently posted his shocked reaction to the removal of the “napalm girl” photo, he found his account suspended.
But not this.
> Norway’s largest newspaper, Aftenposten, published Egeland’s story on the censorship, only to find that its own Facebook posts were also quickly deleted.
Definitely not this.
> Espen Egil Hansen, Aftenposten’s editor, then took to the front page of his paper to slam Facebook in an open letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg
> Prime Minister Solberg joined the debate on Friday, only to find that her comments and posts about the suppressed photo were also deleted by Facebook.
This is a (ridiculously severe) problem in several of Facebook's policies, not a classification error.
I'm pretty sure to have read that the initial blocking was done by a contractor - I can find a better source, if you want.
> This is a (ridiculously severe) problem in several of Facebook's policies, not a classification error.
Yes, and that is exactly the point I tried to make:
>> changing the AI blackbox to an appeal-less human black box wouldn't improve the situation much
Said another way, having underpaid contractors with no time for consideration (and possibly strange policies) is exactly as bad. This is a pretty clear case: That photo should not have been blocked and the idea behind having a human do the evaluation is that he recognizes the historical relevance and, if not outright allowing it, at least consults the relevant authorities whether this is exempt. This could've been done by an AI all the way without a different outcome.
Obviously, just watching every video in real-time a single time is not an adequate review process. Things can be missed, misunderstood, or just take more time to process, so it is likely that more review would be necessary for non-obvious cases. But, on the other hand, it is not necessary to review literally every second of every video. If they only reviewed reported videos and reports were required to specify the timestamp, they would probably instantly reduce this total burden by a factor of 10x-100x (assuming they filter out obvious spam reports). This would allow them to allocate more independent reviewers to the actual non-obvious cases resulting in reasonable accuracy with a human appeals process while reducing their overall cost burden significantly lower than the previously stated ~50%. They could then tier their review process based on the amount of views to allowing them to limit how many resources they spend on unpopular and irrelevant videos to focus on more visible and profitable videos while still providing a base level of review. And, all of this is assuming that they do not have any automated mechanism to directly decide on cases that are trivially obvious, thus reducing their burden even lower to only the contentious cases where the automated systems can not create a clear-cut answer. Frankly, I could go on about various other potential mechanisms they could do to reduce costs while increasing efficiency and avoiding bad actors, but what I have already said should already be sufficient to handle the basic problem.
All in all, they could probably institute a reasonable human review process that could handle all reasonable cases for <5% of yearly revenue and frankly I would be shocked if it were anywhere near the high end of that estimate. Even without any automated systems I would put my median cost prediction at 1% of yearly revenue and with even basic automated systems probably close to 0.2%.
In addition you do not factor in significant complexities like the ones below:
You are incorrect about your assumptions in many respects. Let me list out a few:
1) There is a big difference between watching a 15 min video at 2X for fun vs watching 8 hours of videos a day while having to follow laid down policy with complexity. Videos are not taken down only for one reason and there is a lot of complexity involved with edge cases. Humans are not robots and this is not a task we are inherently good at. Give it a shot yourself for a day and see how easy it is.
2) Your overhead does not consider any additional complexity in terms of languages, specialty, regional expertise etc. This is not a simple problem either. Sure maybe you can hire 1000 reviewers in lets say Indonesia but you cannot find a native Kswahili speaker there. Its not cheap to setup an office for 2 people in Kenya. Scale this to the world which has 193 countries and 6,500 languages.
3) People dont work without any management overhead. You need frontline reviewers. Then you need a layer of experts above them. The you need managers to take care of the operations. The managers to manage those managers. Then recruiters to hire those people. Then HR to deal with their issues.
4) Turnover is a big deal. Very few people in the world can watch beheadings 40 hours a week. An even smaller proportion can handle child safety material. What happens when those people need to take time off? You need additional people. If you want a humane operation then you might have to get them to work only 2 hours a day.
Here is some more reading if you are interested in understanding this from the moderators / reviewers view: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/16/21021005/google-youtube-...
It continues to amaze me how some of the smartest and technically savvy people on HN either do not recognize or refuse to admit how complicated a problem planet scale moderation is. If it was a problem that could be solved by spending a few tens of million dollars a year, it would have been solved.
It seems more than likely somebody put in a very crude black box to process text without context. (Or should I say, opaque box, so the horde doesn't flag me?)
- Ultimately, any supervised technique will depend on some system that can provide ground truth, which in these applications must be from humans. You can't avoid some humans in the loop and still learn a fuzzy human concept like "is hate speech". But if your aren't gathering that ground truth info in a very deliberate way, you can end up with a range of gaps or artifacts.
- There's a broad swath of technical approaches which would consider multiple kinds of information, but ensemble them together such that a very strong signal from one can have a determinative impact. It would be easy to have a situation where if the video itself talks about white/black and attack/threat/defend many times, the score from some language model into a top level ensemble model is very high and the other components may not matter.
- But a lot of those other components may often be in agreement because of natural structure. A video says black/white a lot, several other videos on the channel do the same, and a bunch of interested users also look at other channels that have very similar feature vectors, suddenly a content level, channel level and community level signal are all in agreement, and your model can believe it found a subcommunity of hate speech.
Incorporating many kinds of info into an ML model isn't that hard ... But doing so in a way which is tightly integrated (eg I'm likely to use a specific meaning of a term in my video which matches a use in a video of a related channel linked in my video description, and that use of that word is also related to what's visible in the video at around that time) is pretty hard. Doing so in a way which distinguishes predictions from confidences is harder.
All of which is just to say that it's hard to build a really good black box for a complex problem, especially one based around subjective human concepts, and maybe both we and the black boxes would do better by attaching more uncertainty to their predictions.
If it's worth the channel owner spending many hours making videos, and viewers spending many many more watching them, I think it's not crazy to ask that if the model predicts that it's likely disallowed content, that a manual reviewer can take a quick look.
Just don't have an argument about a book or you could end up on death row. Gordon Dickson wrote a short story about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computers_Don%27t_Argue
"An AI erroneously banned the channel," shouldn't get any more leeway than "A support staff member banned the channel."
What would curtail the leeway then? Other than losing public trust in the product for this happening repeatedly anyway?
Personally, I think the AI is a total red herring.
Genuinely asking: what do you think profitable companies would do to their ML engineers over a product issue like this if there was no law under which they would be sued?
I think accountability without an enforcement mechanism is just a wishful suggestion.
Nothing. Maybe a reprimand at best, because the consequences of this are fairly minor. If a store erroneously bans you and them unbans you and says that there was a mixup with their policy, then what do you think should be the consequences to the store? If it's effectively a monopoly then I can see there being problems, but if it's just a random store then that doesn't really matter.
Either they automate removing content and end up removing some of the good with the mountains of bad, or they do it manually which costs a fortune and is too slow.
The local news is still ridiculing Facebook because they left the stream up for the NZ shooting for hours and their stated reason "No one watching the video had reported it". Well what do we want facebook to do? Hire thousands of people to watch every single livestream live?
IMO we should all move to some kind of self hosting where there is no central mega corp that takes responsibility for the content. You host your own content and you stand behind it legally. As long as its legal content, you have no risk of being shut down.
I think this is a false dichotomy; they could automate flagging for human review instead. This would address the cost though not the speed.
Content awaiting review could be disabled, or it could be disabled only if it is deemed sufficiently egregious.
I'm not sure this would save them in many cases. Most of the abusive content on facebook is not easily identifiable. I don't think the current AI systems are up to the task. They may be able to identify a human and a dog are in the video but not tell the difference between petting the dog or punching it.
Similarly they likely can not tell the difference between someone at a shooting range or committing a mass shooting.
Just like it is too much to expect police to stop all crime before it happens, I think it is too much to expect platforms to remove violating content before it is reported.
That this often looks like intelligence doesn't change the fact that it's incredibly far away from the real thing.
I don't receive many PRs. This is a real trend.
It only took one complaint from someone in Canada to get Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" cut in half on SiriusXM for an entire continent.
(Though you can still hear the full version on the deep tracks channel).)
Even after the decision was reversed[0]?
[0] https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/canada-lifts-b...
Then perhaps that's something the "opposition activists" should start doing...
Personally, if I had a GH account (which I don't), I might be inclined to change the "master" branch to "slave" just to fuck with the PC police.
Git 'master' branch derangement is another example of this BS.
If a process is directly commanding and telling another process what to do I don't see how calling it a master is wrong? It is one of it's definitions.
What would you think if the tool was called "concentration camp executioner"?
You might think I'm making an extreme example to make a point, and I am - you would have a viscerally emotional reaction and recognize that the accuracy of a word does not offset the negative connotations associated with it.
I use the word "gypped" in my vocabulary. It never occurred to me that it is a derogatory term towards gypsies. Until very recently, "jewed" was a perfectly appropriate term to use in professional contexts with the same meaning.
The definition of a word is not relevant to the reasons why people are asking for terms like master/slave to exit our ubiquitous technical vocabulary.
Your example doesn't make sense. Why would a tool be called that? You're describing a specific tragic event in event where as a monkey is.... a monkey....
Just stop. Your logic makes zero sense. Do not try and compare an animal to a historically tragic event to justify word policing. That is absolutely insane and is incredibly disrespectful. Your use of tragedies to justify your woke word policing is quite frankly disgusting.
The fact that you can't explain how it makes sense without comparing it to some random tragedy is no better than the people who call everyone with a conservative view a "nazi". Just knock it off.
Chaos monkey sounds completely fine and I can't see how any sane non-racist person would associate that with a black person. If that is what you are doing, I think you need to do some self-reflection on what that says about your own subconscious racist biases.
deanCommie was trying to get you to see that SLAVERY was also a historically tragic event that people are reminded of when they see terminology like master/slave.
> Chaos monkey sounds completely fine and I can't see how any sane non-racist person would associate that with a black person.
They weren't trying to say that. This whole discussion is master/slave. This is precisely the point - chaos monkey is a fine neutral term that describes what is needed without any negative connotations. "Concentration camp guard" isn't.
Primary/replica is a fine neutral term. "Master/slave" aren't.
Honestly, your outrage about the comparison to concentration camps exactly proves the point that language matters regardless of intent.
Pretty sure that'd just 'offend' (wannabe representatives of) Native Americans instead.
It's complete bullshit, though. This particular bullshit is awful since it trivializes all this historic pain to some inane game of word association.
There's no point arguing, though, just drag your heels until they get bored and go off on some other crusade.
I don’t doubt these hall monitors think they’re doing the “right thing” or being a “good person”. But really they’re only exploiting people for their own benefit.
Oh I don’t know about that. The “religious left” of today looks, acts, and smells a lot like the religious right of the ‘80’s to me. It’s the same instinct that’s being leveraged in people, just righteousness wrapped in a polka-dot cloth rather than a plaid one. Institutions clearly promote “right-thinking” whether it’s banning the use of words, doing mandatory internal critical race theory sessions, coordinated deplatforming, and let’s not even get started on the soft sciences in schooling and the state of what’s called “news”. The other day I skimmed a headline about a librarian burning their copies of books by Trump and Rush Limbaugh. In some ways the sheer weight of secular institutional support for today’s self-righteousness makes the American church of the eighties look like amateur hour.
> it trivializes all this historic pain to some inane game of word association
I think addressing one issue does not 'trivialise' everything else. It can be horribly overstated but changing small fry can help provide momentum to change something more significant.
> It's complete bullshit,
It is obviously associating racism with something not intentionally racist. But does it not strike to you at all problematic, at the moment, that 'black' is a synonym of 'bad' and 'white' of 'good'? Does it not occur to you that it might improve our language to change that? Given changing a metaphor 'black' into a meaning 'block' doesn't seem to me a generally bad idea.
I understand the logic of 'that's just what languages is.' But language changes when people use it differently. It seems to me very reasonable to say let's use this language a little bit less unfortunately.
I'm not suggesting this is 100% the same but re: language change. I remember that time not too many years ago when people would argue that referring to a 'man' or 'him' at work was non-gendered. And those women complaining that we only talked about business men were just being unreasonable. I'm sure there are still places like that but I'm very glad that my co's & clients changed.
Honestly, lately I feel like the opposite is the case. Everywhere I go anywhere online all I see is white people being shit on. I see incredibly racist things being said about white people everywhere online and there are zero consequences for it. In fact they often get praised for it. So no, I think what you're saying is far from being true.
The people who are looking at a word like "blacklist" and thinking it in a negative racial way are the ones that are the problem. They are the ones grasping at straws trying to find things to be offended by. It's a choice people make and it's only offensive because someone chooses to be offended by the word. You have to remember when being offended by words like this it means ignoring the context.
It's just silly is what it is. Language policing is absolutely insane.
I figured that would be the feel of the objection.
Maybe I should be grateful as a white person that that's not the world I find myself in. Happy to pick my variable names.
I can't help but feel that the antagonism here is very similar to the antagonism I mentioned about Gendered language. The anger seemed mostly caused by being surprised by being asked to think about something.
Just because you think and associate something with a negative racial implication when you see a word doesn't mean others are. I personally am able to look at a word and understand the context surrounding the word. I'm able to think about that word and know that calling my git branch a "master" doesn't mean that I am a slave driver and or that I agree with it. I am able to think on my own.
Please be a bit more careful. Please don't assume you know what or how much I'm thinking.
I think the situation isn't as binary as you seem to be presenting it. The context of the word is a metaphor. The metaphor is commonly used for 'good versus bad'. This being a common metaphor in western language might not be helpful to some people. It's not difficult to be more explicit or to use a different metaphor.
> you are the one who needs to think about ... I am able to think on my own.
:) You know the classic idea: "I know I'm right, therefore you are either less intelligent or haven't thought hard enough!"?
You know how easy that is to think and why our brain gets us to think that way?
What you are doing is using an old historical definition for a word that was used in a different context.
A word I use is meaningless if you exclude the other words around it. You exclude the context in order to feel offended by the word.
And you're using your subconscious racial prejudice to look at a word and feel offended by it. When I look at blacklist I think of the colour black and how the colour is darker. Darkness is commonly a negative thing. Thus if I don't want something I put it on a blacklist. Where as the colour white is the brightest option and is something normally associated with positive.
Do you complain when a movie uses darkness to create a scary atmosphere? Would a Slenderman that is white be as scary as a Slenderman that is black to you? No. Because colour is used to trigger different emotional and psychological responses. But this has nothing to do with race. Nowhere did I need to mention or think about race here.
You're choosing to associate a word with a negative when others who don't have these kinds of racial prejudices are able to look at the words context and instantly understand what it means without ever thinking about a race.
Trust me, your word policing is not going to fix a problem with racism. All it does is reveal how you feel when you see a word.
When I see blacklist I'm not thinking about race. When you see blacklist you are. To me that indicates a racist ideology.
Do you feel using the phrase "black market" is wrong? If so then what about "grey market"? "White market" isn't a word that is used so there is no opposing "positive" colour to "black market". So is the phrase still bad to you?
If somehow black market is okay with you then your logic against blacklist makes no sense. And if black market is not okay with you then it also makes no sense logically because grey market is not based on a race.
Interesting how you associate these words with race yet their origins don't relate to race at all but instead a colour.
We also only get change requests for the associations that point in one direction.
It's called "in the black" when you're making a profit. Is anyone trying to get accountants to stop calling it that?
Here are some synonyms my thesaurus lists for "white": blanched, bleached, frosted, pasty, achromatic, bloodless, chalky and ghastly. "White noise" is sound without meaning. "White flag" means to surrender. "White label" means you're too cheap for the name brand.
If it's a problem then it's all a problem.
Or, if we're going to change something, we could stop calling people "white" and "black". Where do I submit the pull request for that?
Unfortunately in todays society people policing words only pretend to care to get their woke bonus points. If it's not a current trending word of the day to hate then it doesn't get any attention.
I find the word policing hilarious because like your example illustrate, there is no logic to the hatred.
In this thread someone is trying to justify not liking the word "blacklist". By that logic "black market" should also be a bad word to use. Yet nobody uses the word "white market", but they do use the word "grey market". So what word here is bad? Is using "black market" bad? Then why would "grey market" be okay? It wouldn't make sense. It means they are for some reason associating black with the race, yet are associating grey with a colour. Logically that doesn't make sense.
Yet if "white market" was a thing I bet there would be trouble. Most scary things in horror movies use darkness to set the mood. A scary creature that is pretty much all black like the Slenderman would not look scary if they were almost all white. To us humans we associate different colours with different things. We also use these words as synonyms for different things.
Like you indicate, white is also used for "negative" things as well.
Overall I just can't follow along with the word policing culture. There is no way someone is going to convince me it is "correct" when it logically and consistently doesn't make sense. My mind can't understand why blackmarket would not be offensive but blacklist would.
It's just not worth it for me to engage like that anymore. How about bringing a discussion to what I said rather than asking for random proof of what I said. Look literally anywhere on the internet and you'll find it pretty easily.
Hell the AP News will capitalize Black but not White: https://apnews.com/article/7e36c00c5af0436abc09e051261fff1f
Stuff like that is just one of hundreds of examples. That article is what I'd consider more of a "casual racism" whereas I also see a lot more direct racism as well.
I'd personally rather be in a world where someone doesn't feel a need to specify someone's race before everything. People will add in race when it has no relevance or facts behind it.
I am sure you have heard the phrase "privileged white male" before. I can't even count on both my hands how many times I've been told that. And I'll be told that without the person even knowing my level of privilege, my gender, or my race. When you oppose the current politically correct fad you'll be called racist and people will assume your gender and race and use it as a derogatory/racist statement. It will be used to dismiss and invalidate an opinion.
For me personally my test is often pretty simple. If someone tries to dismiss an opinion by calling someone a "privileged white male" how would that be any better than dismissing someone's opinion for being black? To me they both are racist and just as bad in my mind. Neither is acceptable. Yet in todays society we know which one would be acceptable. As long as it's shitting on a white person or a male you're good to go.
Context matters... if you are in the position of privilege and saying things that you can only say because of your position. Then I can see why some people would dismiss it.
The difference is: if you try to dismiss someone in a minority position for saying things that would be okay to say in a privileged position. Then you are just doubling down on that privilege.
This isn't about "white privilege" vs "black privilege" this about privilege in general. Really empathy is the answer and understanding where they are coming from will help you not inadvertently offend them.
Whenever my opinion is dismissed using my race/gender/or perceived privilege it instantly creates divide. It naturally is going to make me feel more correct in my views and more correct avoiding those kinds of people. This is exactly why we see such a huge divide now in America. People are unable to discuss stuff. And this is also probably partially due to the fact that often times people don't actually have any stats to back up what they think. Often times people are just following trends now and copying what their favourite woke influencer does. I find little people I engage with actually grasp what they are talking about and just regurgitate the same lines over and over.
I've got to the point where I barely ever comment on any political sounding reddit post because I know the conversation is going to go nowhere and be filled with name-calling. And I hate that I feel like this. I want to be able to converse with people and try and understand their point of view. But unfortunately I just feel constantly attacked.
Hell I mod a couple subs over there. If I make a comment that sounds conservative leaning upset banned users will go post it on subs I mod on acting like I am a "racist mod". Now I have to delete my reddit history often and use alts a lot more. Nowadays you can barely say anything without offending someone.
It would depend on the content and context of the opinion itself, no? Why not just ask the dismissing person why they say that? We’ve come to the point where we generalize and characterize instead of understanding, then simply disagreeing.
> Yet in today’s society we know which one would be acceptable. As long as it’s shitting on a white person or a male you’re good to go.
White men are getting shat on but still represent or control nearly all economic and political interests (at least in U.S. and it’s empire). I’m really curious to why you feel this way? It’s not like women and Black people have been getting a pass in exchange. I just think social media has made it easier for white men to be (or feel like) targets of vitriolic, but protected speech. Welcome to the club.
From my perspective, it seems in finance, real estate and politics, going along with the “privileged white male” perception (even if an untrue of the person in question) still seems like the best way to take advantage of markets and institutions. And I suspect that’s why, given a megaphone and platform, everyone else is piling on.
You actually answered this question yourself with your next paragraph :). Currently being racist towards white males gives businesses, influencers, and politicians more power. And I fundamentally disagree with this notion. I do not think shitting on particular groups of people should make someone excel. I think it should show what kind of negative person they are and they should lose not gain.
Some of my problem stems from the fact that these phrases are used to dismiss peoples opinions. I am far from being conservative, and also wouldn't consider myself liberal. I hold many views that fall under both spectrums. Some may even be considered more radical on both ends.
If I made a conservative sided comment online how do you think it would fair? Now if I made a liberal based comment how do you think that would fair in comparison? I think that the liberal ideology would gain me woke points and give me praise. Whereas that conservative view would get shat on, may be called some "ism", and then likely also would be called a "white privileged male". This would of course be used to dismiss the opinion/fact despite how true or accurate it may be. It is also making assumptions on race and gender simply based on a single opinion on a topic.
My main issue is that this kind of thinking creates a divide. It's hard to have a conversation on many websites because people hurl insults and don't care to actually have a constructive conversation. I try and come into a conversation being open-minded. The problem I have faced lately is that I feel like I have been becoming more and more jaded and against the other "side". I really dislike this and have been working to try and avoid doing that. But everytime I hear these kind of rude comments it further affirms my believe while also preventing me from hearing what intelligent people on that "side" actually have to say.
For example, people quite violently oppose Trump and Trump supporters. What doesn't make sense to me is why people would rather attack the group of people instead of trying to share their opinion. If there opinion is based on facts/research/science you'd think they would want to engage with the other side and try and get more people to share their opinion. But instead social media and society lately discourages this. It always has to be them versus us. There is no middle ground. Hell people get called "alt-right" and "nazis" for some pretty tame conservative views. I personally think calling someone a "nazi" is very extreme, yet the word gets thrown around like it means nothing. As a side note I find it quite ironic that these same people using these extreme words also will try to police what words others can use that they deem "offensive".
FWIW I just see shitting on white men as some kind of catharsis for women and people of color. There is a lot more deep pain that needs to be expressed before any real racial healing. Ironically, to your point it may have the opposite of intended effect, but I don't think repressing the emotions that come with unpacking Western society's history of racism is a productive move either.
> FWIW I just see shitting on white men as some kind of catharsis for women and people of color.
What's funny is that half the time I hear it, it's a white male shitting on white males. I'll hear a white male podcast host complaining about white males. I often feel like it's less about people doing it to feel better about themselves, it seems more like they are doing it to "look good". Kinda like giving themselves a pat on the back for saying a "woke" line. Or I'll see people like A-list actors shitting on white males despite them being an incredibly privileged individual.
And now we even see females being given political position because of their gender and not necessarily their merit. Our Prime Minister in Canada when he got elected made the cabinet 50/50 male-female. The problem I'm starting to see with this kind of stereotyping is that it is starting to put gender over things like ability.
When a politicians first sentence about why they put someone in a position is "because they were x gender or y race" rather than "Because they had xyz skills and were the most qualified" it points to a problem in my books. In my area we had fire departments that had lower requirements for females than males. However the requirements indicate they are what a firefighter requires to be able to successfully meet the standards of the job and keep themselves, their coworkers, and the public safe. So it seems silly when the that "minimum" to get the job done suddenly gets lowered for a group. It's the same job, but one group doesn't have to meet the same standard? Luckily now I have seen these requirements have shifted to use new testing methodologies that better tests candidates against job requirements and is equal for all genders and ages. I got on a bit of a tangent with this, but my overall point is that because of these norms being pushed by the media often-times the politics and PR becomes more important than having the skills required. This is just one side-effect of many that is caused by this kind of weird PC culture that has been going on.
That said, if you're white in China/India/Kenya/etc... 100% there is a heap of racism directed at you and I feel for you
It makes sense for two reasons.
The first is that a huge amount of the "anti-white racism" is directed by "white people" against others nominally in the same group, implying that they aren't actually in the same social group and correspondingly that the targets don't have a majority. As evidence of this, notice that people can be canceled over petty nonsense, e.g. Gina Carano. How could this happen if there was actually a social majority which should nominally be exerting pressure in the opposite direction and winning?
The second is that there are plenty of contexts where the majority doesn't even exist on paper, e.g. only 40% of California is "white" so a "white person" who lives in California is a minority. That state is also the place where a disproportionate amount of the attacks happen. And the same is true of many major US cities, e.g. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston.
When someone calls me these names without even knowing my race, gender, or status it's pretty rude. Is it going to make me agree with them more? Is it going to make me support any of their causes more? Nope. It's going to increase my dislike for that "side". And if you get hammered with that enough it is going to create hate.
In my opinion I think the current woke landscape is actually creating more racism. I think it is counter-productive.
Does someone who is vegan yelling and screaming blocking you from getting a burger make you want to join their side? Or would it make you want further hate them and want to oppose them? Would a vegan sitting down and having a no namecalling conversation with you be more effective? I would think so. This is the exact same concept.
Also just because someone is a white male for example absolutely does not imply their status. I think that dismisses how much work someone may have put into life to get to where they are. That person doesn't know how hard they worked to get where they may or may not be, yet they are making that assumption.
If you view their reply as not productive and they view your statement as not productive... then maybe stop having that discussion until you can both bring more empathy to the table.
Facts don't always tell a story or explain the "why". Often times you have to form an opinion based on the facts and that is what you're bringing to the table when discussing stuff. I don't see why I need to explain this concept on a site like this.
Facts actually always tell the story and the “why” is more facts as well.
People also create factually incorrect opinions such as implying police are racist towards black people because they are arrested more. This is them deriving an opinion from a fact about incarcerations. Except the causation is already present, which is that lower income areas simply commit more crimes.
Now I'm not trying to argue about whether you think those facts are correct or not, but I'm using it to illustrate a point. A fact can also be wrong. Maybe the fact was derived from bad research. Opinions and facts can go hand and hand together. I don't know why you're trying to be so binary about it.
I also don't understand how this conversation is productive or is useful in anyway? It seems like we are debating meaningless semantics rather than the heart of the issue.
I'll take your bait though, see how hard you believe these falsehoods.
Yeah, Police in the US (in some states at least) are racist, now I don't mean individuals necessarily, though I'm sure some are, but institutional (dare I say systemic) racism exists in the system. Incarceration rates are a good correlative bit of evidence, arrest rates, court dismissals for whites at a higher rate than blacks... like take your pick. No evidence (or fact) supports your position at all. Happy for your to bring the data to prove me wrong here.
You can hide behind economics if you like and try to argue "poor people commit more crime" - but then how do you explain incarceration rates of blacks given there are more poor white people than poor black people in the US?
You haven't illustrated any point. Just that you have opinions, with little fact, and seem triggered by people referencing white male privilege.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad-Based_Black_Economic_Emp...
That's stage-2. I.e. after the "minority" becomes the "majority". Then different excuses and "historic" racism is used to justify persecution against a minority.
It's not just whites but east asians, jews as well. The whole idea derives from the notion that its okay to be racist if its upwards. People associate those groups as being affluent and automatically people think its okay to "punch up".
There are certain groups that we are not supposed to "punch down". There is a rise in anti-semitism, anti-asian, anti-white imho because wealth gap is increasing and people who are on the bottom tend to be not of those groups so they feel its justified and its okay to be racist not even being conscious of their actions and thoughts.
Like many Koreans during the LA riots knew exactly who were looting their stores but its forbidden and "racist" just like the victims of a subset of BLM rioters who decided to loot businesses that can't mention the demographic despite video footage evidence, anecdotes and that overwhelming group behind the protests.
It's getting ridiculous like when I was playing Battlefield and was permanently banned for saying "niggardly use of ammo packs" as the person was not cooperating and refusing to drop ammos.
The whole thing about master branch, master bedroom also has turned North America into a laughing stock. I can't wait to leave this puritannical shithole.
There is even research showing how in many different situations Asians actually have many more cases of hate crimes against them compared to black and Hispanic:
> In general, hate crimes are most likely targeting young adults at ages 18–34, male, and local residents in all three groups. Asian American victims however, have a higher chance than African Americans and Hispanics to be victimized in places where they are not local residents (24% vs. 16.8% for African Americans and 16.3% for Hispanics). Comparing with Black and Hispanic victims, Asian Americans also have relatively higher chance to be victimized by non-White offenders (25.5% vs. 1.0% for African Americans and 18.9% for Hispanics).
> With regard to the incident characteristics, Asian Americans have higher risk to be persecuted by strangers (39.2% vs. 30.7% for African Americans and 30.1% for Hispanics), are less likely to be offended in their residence (23.7% vs. 34.4% for African Americans and 29.5% for Hispanics), and are more likely to be targeted at school/college (17% vs. 8.9% for African Americans and 11.2% for Hispanics). The variables of time, weapon use, injury, and substance show similar patterns for the three groups.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7790522/
I personally do not think movements like BLM are progress inducing at all. In fact I think they do the opposite. I think movements like BLM put the blame on things like white people and police. It's easy for a politician to use the police as a scape-goat and reap in the votes for being a big BLM supporter. But talk doesn't mean anything. I have yet to see many politicians actually do anything to address some of the root causes of problems such nearly 3/4 of black babies being born to an unmarried mother (https://baylor-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/2104/9429/chad_sc...).
And there is a lot of research showing how huge the single-parent factor is on crime rates:
> States with a lower percentage of single-parent families, on average, will have lower rates of juvenile crime. State-by-state analysis indicates that, in general, a 10 percent increase in the number of children living in single-parent homes (including divorces) accompanies a 17 percent increase in juvenile crime.
Source: https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/report/the-real-r...
I find it wild how the blame will be put on police over-policing areas rather than the root of the problem which is the higher rates of crime in these areas due to factors like the one above.
Overall it seems like America (and some of Canada) is becoming super sensitive and easily offended. It makes it hard for anyone to ever bring up the serious problems affecting different communities. This data isn't racist, the same effects are seen across racial groups including white people. And this is exactly why I hate seeing the weird anti-white, anti-jew, anti-asian wars that are going on. Because the reality is that this is a problem that can affect anyone who ends up in these kinds of situations.
I'd love to see a politician who focused on the roots of problems rather then focusing on making the loud mouth Twitter users happy. It's sad that often times even just mentioning these kinds of stats would be considered a conservative view and probably would end up being called insults and some Twitter users trying to cancel you.
First, racism is not the olympics. Nobody wins. Even when its people "punching up". However, it is quickly becoming acceptable.
Take a look at Western Europe and the the level of anti-semitism from the Muslim, Arab and some local community. It's disgusting. You'd think that Europe would have rooted this shit out after WW2 but that isn't the case. Especially in France, people who lived there for generations are moving to Israel and other countries. When I look at that I think of the struggles of Asian Americans and other groups that haven't gotten as much attention because it doesn't fit the traditional racism.
This forced diversity and "punching up" movement like BLM and ACAB are only increasing animosity towards those represented groups. Many employers who used to hire people from the ghetto can't do it anymore because they've been A) looted B) minimum wage is forcefully raised to unsustainable levels C) refreshed animosity towards those groups as a result of the violence witnessed or experience
Lot of African Americans wonder where this racial tension comes from the Asian & other community are either willfully ignorant or incapable of accepting reality-its not racist to assume a a certain patron will steal or commit violence when the overwhelming demographic is responsible for it. It's called risk management similar to how you don't venture beyond a certain street in some American cities or walk into a favela in Brazil. So already trust was very low towards African Americans and other similar groups, now after BLM, its at an all time low. In fact, it has hurt progress. It's going to be hard for businesses damaged by the abuse of trust from those demographics to ever trust them again and it's going to lead to more underserved ghettos, more poverty, less jobs. This sucks for honest folks of those community who see their opportunities ruined because the uneducated ones suddenly were empowered by an asinine political movement.
People keep using poverty, intergenerational trauma due to slavery but these are just fucking excuses. Asian Americans have gone through all of those things back home from the feudal corrupt agricultural lordship of that only ended around 19th century (but some countries still have militant authoritarian power forcing people in squalor conditions in factories making goods for the West), regional war and poverty. Yet these hardships were never allowed to be used as an excuse to break bad, blame other race groups, and other external factors and NEITHER do successful African Americans.
In fact Charles Barkley put it so eloquently
"We as black people are never going to be successful, not because of you white people, but because of other black people. When you are black, you have to deal with so much crap in your life from other black people,"
"For some reason we are brainwashed to think, if you're not a thug or an idiot, you're not black enough. If you go to school, make good grades, speak intelligent, and don't break the law, you're not a good black person. It's a dirty, dark secret in the black community.
"There are a lot of black people who are unintelligent, who don't have success. It's best to knock a successful black person down because they're intelligent, they speak well, they do well in school, and they're successful. It's just typical BS that goes on when you're black, man."I think the Malcolm X quote is a very powerful one that accurately represents what is currently going on. I'll quote a snippet of it here but I think the full paragraph is interesting to read:
> “The white liberal is the worst enemy to America, and the worst enemy to the black man. Let me explain what I mean by the white liberal. In America there is no such thing as Democrat or Republican anymore. In America you have liberals and conservatives. The only people living in the past who think in terms of I’m a Democrat or Republican, is the American Negro. He’s the one that runs around bragging about party affiliation. He’s the one that sticks to the Democrat or sticks to the Republican. But white people are divided into two groups, liberals and conservative. The Democrats who are conservative, vote with the Republicans who are conservative. The Democrats who are liberal vote with the Republicans that are liberal. The white liberal aren’t white people who are for independence, who are moral and ethical in their thinking. They are just a faction of white people that are jockeying for power. The same as the white conservative is a faction of white people that are jockeying for power. They are fighting each other for power and prestige, and the one that is the football in the game is the Negro, 20 million black people. A political football, a political pawn, an economic football, and economic pawn. A social football, a social pawn. The liberal elements of whites are those who have perfected the art of selling themselves to the Negro as a friend of the Negro. Getting sympathy of the Negro, getting the allegiance of the Negro, and getting the mind of the Negro. Then the Negro sides with the white liberal, and the white liberal use the Negro against the white conservative.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8869214-the-white-liberal-i...
His quote so accurately describes what is currently happening it's kinda disturbing. I find it hilarious how a well educated and successful black person warns of exactly this kind of thing and yet we still see it happening. We see businesses, liberal politicians, and liberal supporters who spew BLM love everywhere they go and act like such huge supporters of BLM. Yet when Obama was president very little was ever done to help these black communities. Some even argue Trump's policy changes did more to help black people than Obama's changes did. But no liberal would consider that as it doesn't fit the narrative.
It's easy for a politician to make big talk, but when they ignore the stats and the root cause of the problem then it really is just talk and it's useless.
People think that by pointing out things like we have mentioned that we are racist. But in reality we are just able to see the factual/statistics that demonstrate the real issues. And we can see how the politicians and companies utilize racial justice to increase their wealth and power. I personally would love to see all races treated equally, but current BLM movements have not shown any factual progress and have only shown further negative effects such as more incidents of hate crimes.
What people often don't realize is that calling something a ghetto or low income is not racist. Just because one particular area happens to be made up mostly one particular race doesn't make it racist to address that it is a problem. People like to act like police are the problem and that black people are being arrested in higher numbers because of racist police. When in reality black people are often in low income areas and low income areas are well researched to have higher levels of crime. Thus of course there are more arrests in such areas. But I don't know why people need to blame it on race. Why can people not identify that the 1% bleed everybody dry, and particularly take advantage of the poor. Why can we not fight against the root of the problem, why does it always have to be this race against that race?
I just find society now so disturbing with how someone can shit on one race in order to pump up another race and that somehow makes them gain more power/wealth. Someone should not benefit from being racist, yet that is exactly what is happening. People should benefit from actually making change and addressing the real problems.
It's funny because you see people like Jordan Peterson get called and "alt-right nazi" yet I have never seen a video of someone actually making a valid rebuttal to anything he has said. Just listening to videos of him talk you can tell he has a pretty high intelligence level and knows very well what he is talking about. I find in today's society when someone makes valid and factual statements it has become common to just dismiss them by calling them something rather than trying to debate/discuss what they said. Nobody is open to addressing the actual concerns and would rather do hand waving and police people from saying certain words. It's only free speech when it's for a woke liberal movement nowadays.
One day maybe sanity will come back, but I can't see that happening for awhile. It makes me curious if there are any countries that do have some more sanity and operate on a more statistical based playing field rather than an emotional based one.
I will have to read/watch more documentaries on Malcom X. It's sad that many African American youth have abandoned the warnings of MLK to not descend into violence and break bad because he knew that would be used as tools for oppression.
Also I don't disagree with BLM in it's entirety I do think it started out of good faith but its evolved into something totally unbecoming.
They are fighting each other for power and prestige, and the one that is the football in the game is the Negro, 20 million black people. A political football, a political pawn, an economic football, and economic pawn. A social football, a social pawn. The liberal elements of whites are those who have perfected the art of selling themselves to the Negro as a friend of the Negro. Getting sympathy of the Negro, getting the allegiance of the Negro, and getting the mind of the Negro. Then the Negro sides with the white liberal, and the white liberal use the Negro against the white conservative.
The virtue signaling industrial complex in North America is getting insane in North America. It is big business and in fact its destroying and moving us away from progress.
I think that one day where everything returns to normal is a distant future and its better off living in another country where they don't tolerate the vilification of critical thinkers.
As a non-native english speaker, if I didn't look up the word in dictionary, I would likely assume it was a derivative of that other word. I can see how that would lead to a ban if moderator didn't bother checking, especially if they are moderating 13 year olds mostly.
> it is not just not intentionally racist -- there is no way any normal person would construe the term 'blacklist' as racist. it is as logically coherent as banning 'black pudding' for racism. it is purely an arbitrary exercise in power, making others submit to show them that they must.
Exactly this. Addressing one issue does not trivialise everything else. 'Addressing' something that isn't actually one of the issues at all[0] trivialises everything else.
0: And there are plenty of actual issues to pick from!
Edit: HN seems to be bugging out, so reattaching reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26219976 here. Edit again: Parent seems to be back at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26220021 - id change on edit? shrug.
Really? Regardless of what you think about racism, I don't want to be funny isn't it obvious that one is a metaphor and one isn't?
This is not a racism question, but would you think 'Concrete' in 'ConcreteList' is functionally the same as in 'Concrete road'?
I can't imagine how a blacklist is the colour black. Blood sausage is. Except the Irish version I know. Which is called white pudding.
It's not just a language thing. It's an extremely deeply rooted symbolic system. You can't arbitrarily change it, and even if you did... what improvement does shifting the symbols around yield ? That's just increasing the noise to signal ratio.
Even then, isn't the real problematic part assigning elementary colours to skin tones ? Can't you just try to change that instead of contorting the deepest part of a culture on a Procustean bed ?
No. That's how it's always been in European culture and it doesn't have much to do with race. It's probably true of many other cultures as well, although I can't say for sure.
Your point is completely correct. As is the other comment here at about night and day. The lists are frequent. And not unique to European cultures.
But it's also not reasonable to say that in our particular culture, meaning as a political and social context.
Because I'm trying to make a bigger point than just race, I could imagine reading a similar things to what you're writing back in the late-C20 saying that 'Man' has been nongendered for centuries and in many cultures and in all kinds of language. Hi wouldn't disagree.
But then the next step: so women shouldn't have been worried about companies wanting to hire businessmen. That just doesn't seem ok.
So I definitely think that 'Black equals bad, white equals good' Has all kinds of historical significance, non racist links, and would not have been considered weird until very recently. But in our context I'm not offended that it would be something we find alternatives for.
Consider why white moves first in chess. They literally did this two years ago: https://en.chessbase.com/post/carlsen-and-giri-campaign-for-...
Anyway, in many religions the light illuminates things while darkness is the absence of light. So it’s not just about people’s race...
On the other hand, white needs 6.5 less points to win (komi). Does it make go racist?
Yes, it does. On my Twitter I have "racism" and "race" including many other trendy SJW keywords blocked. The reason is I simply don't have the time and energy to tend to every single accusation of racism or whatever-isms is out there. And most these accusations have nothing to do with racism. It's just some bully has found a new target to harass.
The inverse solution to this stop calling people with darker skin "Black"?
I kind of agree with what you're saying, but also it isn't true:
- Blacktie
- Black friday
- Blacktop
- Back in black
- Orange is the new black
- Men in black
All of those use black in a positive connotation. In my head black/white list has always been a metaphor for light/no light. As in black list can't see, white list can.
In asian Culture white is often associated with the colour of ghosts / the dead... So it'd get awkward if we keep modifying language to suit cultural references especially as English is a global language and while slavery was(is) a global problem it persists only really in the US as a current popular cultural issue.
In replying to you I've convinced myself at least the solution here can't possibly be to change all of the possible references of black to something else... it verges on new speak.
Black is associated with the night and darkness and death in many cultures. Fear of the darkness is common to all humans.
If I'm going to spend my energy on something it seems like there's bigger things to tackle than pushing back against branch renames.
As someone not a U.S. citizen, the impact of PC is ridiculously huge. I know slavery and how bad it is. It appeared in my culture, and it is still there in some form too. However, the ENGLISH word "master" means not much to me. It is just a multi-purpose symbol, like many other words. As the meaning being a main branch, why bothering the renaming?
You claim that you are just spending your energy on something else, but in reality you are giving up the right to use your own language and to maintain the definition the meaning of a well-understood and frequently-used word.
That is why I just ignore or reject such PRs. I do not believe that enabling it is a good idea. It is not my job to improve their context-awareness either.
I've been having to unfollow a ton of podcasts recently because no matter how far from being related to politics some podcasts are, they just love to make sure a chunk of the episode is devoted to calling white people privileged and talking about different groups burdens. I was listening to a podcast episode talking about Skyways in a city and somehow half the podcast ended up being about how the skyways affected certain racial groups. It's a podcast that is supposed to be focused on the cool architectural features and infrastructure of cities. Somehow it ends up being a political podcast about racial inequality.
Sometimes I just want to be able to relax, but I feel like wherever I go whether it be TV, Movies, Podcasts, or even the news, I feel like I am being attacked wherever I go and that I have to be afraid of offending someone with what I say.
Even just making this comment I'm afraid it's going to be downvoted because of mentioning races in a somewhat negative sounding way.
But that feeling of walking on eggshells is more related to a surveillance state coming from social media.
More explanatory than I could be: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-07/social-cooling-are-yo...
We see people losing their jobs simply for sharing a more conservative view on Twitter. I've seen cases of actors losing jobs for sharing an edgy conservative meme, but than someone sharing almost the identical meme but liberal sided being completely fine.
Nowadays it seems like even things like jobs can simply be determined by how outraged a group of random people feel. Actors lose jobs because people who probably don't even watch the show get upset by a single tweet they made.
The world is starting to not make sense to me and just seems so illogical lately. No matter how factual and objective something is that you say, if it doesn't align with the current politically correct fad people will try to cancel you. People who make perfectly valid and factual claims get shut down by people who just simply call them a "racist" and say "you just don't get it". Instead of trying to help them understand and trying to use facts to logically debate someone they react with emotion and outrage. And then they get dogpilled into submission.
I see why it's hard to find people opposing the current PC culture. As soon as anyone does they get called some "ism" and get cancelled.
I've even seen sections of TikToks with people pretty clearly faking mental disorders for attention. It's honestly kinda sad. I guess I am kinda glad I just missed the explosion of social media in school. I'm sure social media just creates so many more issues in young adults. And the weird things you do when you're young will forever be stored somewhere online.
It’s a purity cult.
I just named something "blacklist" a couple of days ago. It has nothing to do with races, nor slavery. The only thing they have is a person in-between who connects the two because s/he is a troll, or because lacks context-awareness or whatever.
I do not enable them.
No, they are very much aware of the context. Most of these people are just bullies, who have found a new way to mask their toxic behavior in the name of a good cause.
I have seen bots, too. I remember there was a bot that sent pull requests to over 1000 projects if I remember correctly. All the pull requests involved changing words only, such as "blacklist" to "blocklist" or whatever. You know what is funny? Many of them were merged.
What's hilarious to me is that I think the people who find there to be a problem with these words are the racist ones themselves. They are taking a word out of context and being offended by it out of context. They are the ones looking at a word and thinking negative racist thoughts.
When I use the word "master" or "blacklist" it has nothing to do with any old historical context or usage of the word. I am quite clearly using the word in a technical context as per the dictionary definition of the word. Anyone who thinks that is offensive is the true problem in my opinion.
That is what I believe as well. I am not that preoccupied with races to make such associations. In all fairness, I still have no clue what "blacklist" has to do with races or slavery, even after having been "shown" this association, because it makes no sense given the context.
There might be people out there who genuinely do not know what the term means in the context of CS/IT, but then instead of assuming that everyone using the term is racist, they should try to figure out the actual meaning.
Killing a child or a parent in the context of computer science is something completely different than... actually killing a child or a parent. :) I can imagine "just kill the child" being misinterpreted, but that can only be the case if someone takes it out of context. Once the context is known, there should be no confusion or mystery.
I have seen and listened to a lot of race-conscious content over the last few years. As a white man, I can't say I've taken any of it as a personal attack. I'd be happy to talk more about this out of thread.
I didn't notice them providing any statistics in regards to the racial issues. All I noticed was anecdotal evidence and an incredibly biased account of a single police encounter that happened back in 2014. They are using one guys story and a single incident involving police in order to talk about the negatives it had on other races. These are bold claims with little backing given.
This is why I don't like when podcasts like this try and tackle these issues. Because they end up being incredibly biased and one-sided. They didn't provide the whole story on the police incident, nor did they provide any other points of views or statistic on the racial issues they mentioned.
I like hearing well-researched and articulated pieces about racial inequality. What I don't like is hearing a biased opinion/anecdote filled podcast episode about it.
It seems every Podcast I listen to now always has some weird need to make it political. This never used to be the case even just a couple years ago. Now we even see sporting programs taking sides in politics and it just seems so unnecessary.
I often spend too much time deep into the weeds on these kinds of topics much like I am now. Sometimes I just want to consume some media without politics being involved. However it rarely seems like I am able to anymore. Even TV shows I watch now are starting to feel ruined and lack the good script writing they used to in favour of shoehorning whatever current PC thing is trending.
The problem with this line of thinking is that everything is political. If they had chosen not to address the possible racial implications, other people who felt strongly about those may have felt that the negative social impact that they perceive was being deliberately ignored, and they would have been right to the same extent that you are.
It is similar to the choice of making or not making global warming a game mechanic in the Civilization series of games: either option will be seen as "political" by some people and "apolitical" by others. It's a distinction without a difference.
Not saying something is not inherently less political than talking about it.
Note: I have no idea or even opinion about the actual political implications of skyways. Perhaps they are a real problem, perhaps they are a fringe idea like opposition to the word "blacklist" (a word which existed in the English language since Prince John).
Eggshells?
If you're with someone you know or you don't know and you make a perceived or actual faux pas in their eyes.
Say ..... "sorry" .... "I didn't know that. Tell me more".
How hard is that?
I try to be pretty inclusive, but I'm nowhere near perfect and you know what, when I might have got it wrong this is what I do. And I'm not special for doing so. It's called interacting like a normal human being with another human being.
And you know what, it opens the space for understanding and debate and the chance to reject if you really believe it is wrong.
And as for you unfollowing podcasts because of mentions of priviedge and so forth ... well ... I wonder why that would be recently. Do you unfollow all topics which make you uncomfortable? Do you complain about cancel culture and then cancel podcasts you don't like?
I'm going to be harsh here because your post is very representative of many I see so maybe it needs to be said.
You feeling like you're being attacked everywhere you go is your problem, not those you think who are doing the attacking.
Change the language, change the outcome, came the activists of the 90s and 2000's. This stuff somehow spilled out of literary theory in academia and started becoming a political force for understanding power dynamics. You can get a taste below, where the commenter is comparing black and white concepts, and how we view one as good and another as bad.
Do these folks (like the commenter below) have a point? Yes, sure. But submit your point to the marketplace of ideas instead of trying to force people's hands through censorship. Not everyone has to buy social constructivism. We're allowed to believe that racism has material and economic causes, and changing it has minimally to do with language. So no, don't make me change my git default branch or the way I talk.
Nobody can know for sure, but I suspect if Foucault were still alive, he'd likely be rather critical of a lot of contemporary social justice activism.
But as you say the whole thing is a giant metanarrative times ten, and these language police types are running over everyone who gets in their way. It's making so many people nervous, I think it has a shelf life. What scares me more is the open embrace of postmodern social theory by corporate America. That will lead to a backlash that makes me even more nervous.
Language and culture generally moves in one direction.
Hoping to put the genie back in the bottle on "blacklist" and "master" is like wishing you could go back to the 90's when guys in high school would casually toss out "fag" in relation to each other.
You can disagree, and dig your heels in, and pitch a hissy fit, but the world and society is moving on and leaving you behind.
Maybe we should develop a central spamlist.
The usage of black in “black box” means opaque, not bad.
So these aren’t the same.
I had never thought about the connotations of blacklist and whitelist before it was pointed out to me. In retrospect, blacklist and whitelist are unnatural meanings of the words black and white, and blocklist and allowlist make much more sense.
Consequently, I changed the code I’m responsible for at my company to use block and allow.
It just so happens that it might not map to skin colour very well, but I don't think it's appropriate to change them because there is no connotation.
I buy that in some cases, there is language that can affect people and perception, just not in this case.
Personally I think it's the skintone names that are weird. White to mean a certain shade of pinkish beige... Black to mean a whole range from beige to brown to dark blueish brown.
Our brains are very good at differenciating skintones, unlike shades of cyan for example. But for some reason the skin tones names are caricatures.
Point being, what’s easier to fix?? Color associations with people or overturning thousands of timeless metaphors across many cultures?
>
> The usage of black in “black box” means opaque, not bad.
> So these aren’t the same.
Why did this line of reasoning not apply to the name of the default branch in git? master in that case could easily mean master copy.
It's not like the word "black" is just used with blacklist. We also use it in other places like black market, black hat, and black site. None of these are related to black people, but instead all relate to a shady dark/scary side of things like you mentioned.
When someone pictures a black market they are not thinking something that looks bright and colourful, they are thinking something that is dark and maybe grungy/sketchy looking.
The word policing is something I am really getting sick of.
If it had been black list and green list, I'm not sure anyone would have made a racial connection.
Isn't it the other way around though? Black people skin is not of color black as in actual black. And white people skin is certainly not white.
It's the naming of skin tone that is sloppy and figurative. While the association of white with light/visibility and black with darkness/unknown is natural.
Overall I think the logic of opposing words like "blacklist" just falls apart logically in multiple areas and I think your explanation is a good example of why.
Black holes do not allow matter to escape and white holes are theoretical constructs that admit matter to the universe.
The color Black is the lack of visible light and white is considered to be the color of "all" light together.
In all cases discussed, black correlates to absence and white to admission or presence. Now I guess it could be asserted that these terms are also racially tinged but again I am not aware of any sources making those assertations. Feel free to link me.
Here's some more extensive reading from an earlier article when Maven did this: https://www.adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/no-more-inf...
The key bit:
> It reminded me of an iconic BBC interview with Muhammad Ali in 1971 where he recalled that all the positive things he grew up with were white, from White Cloud tissue paper to the White House, while all the negative things, from the bad luck of a black cat to the term blackmail, were black. Nearly 50 years later, that linguistic measuring stick is alive and well.
He's right. Lots of English therms equate black with bad and white with good. Blacklist and whitelist fit into that pattern, and changing it takes a small step in the other direction.
Blacklist's etymology isn't racist, but if black folks prefer that we use something else, and something as similar as blocklist is there and easy to use, it seems like an easy fix.
Which black “folks” prefer the term “blocklist”? Black people are not a monolith. It seems like you’re just injecting an assumption of what certain people prefer.
Having been at now 3 different orgs implementing the [blacklist->blocklist, slave->replica, etc] routine, it’s always done for the same reason: the unquestionable brand of modern identity politics, diversity & inclusion, whatever you want to call it that is infecting pretty much every tech company (and indeed pretty much every company in general).
It’s an ideology that treats races as monolithic and only recognizes a certain set of opinions as valid. Racial blindness is implicit racism, we need to implement affirmative action policies over the dimensions of the 4-tuple (sexuality, cis/trans, rage, gender) - these are the types of beliefs they enforce.
The colour comparisons are also dumb, because "black" skin is actually more like dark brown and "white" skin isn't white at all, unless you're albino or incredibly sick (which again, points to how stupid it is to make comparisons like "white==good").
Is that anywhere near true? I'm just guessing, but I'd be surprised if there are 10% as many.
I think that language goes back eons. I think the black/white metaphor is employed in the book of Genesis/B'reshith for instance. People have been scared of the dark for more of human history than not. Nighttime is black, when things putrefy they turn black. Uncorrupted snow is white. The examples from nature are legion. What’s weird is using these terms for people.
Maybe the more sensible way to address the language issue is to stop calling people “black” and “white”. Why don’t we focus the scorching blast of social condemnation in that direction? The colors are silly classifications for people’s heredity or skin tone. Seems like the more elegant fix. Even today using the terms black and white can be “problematic” - some people don’t like being referred to as a black man by the wrong person, many white people consider “white boy” to be a racial epithet. So if we’re doing language surgery, let’s just ditch that part of the language and stop obsessing over the natural metaphors from time immemorial.
"According to a 1968 Newsweek poll, more than two-thirds of black Americans still preferred Negro, but black had become the majority preference by 1974." https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/question/2010/octo...
A nonsensical "racial" hierarchy based on nominal colours is the SOURCE of the problem.
For what it's worth, the labels "white" and "black" were NOT chosen randomly by the architects of racial hierarchy (see Bacon's rebellion).
It was a very effective use of symbolism, to assign and label one part of humanity as the untermensch, and thus justify their enslavement and exploitation.
Changing branch names and policing language is akin to bandaid on a festering wound.
I don't plan to edit and rename things within my existing software as it would add needless churn, risk, and the risk-benefit analysis just doesn't support it for me. Not saying that my analysis is the same for everyone else.
I don't use it to mean "black" or "white." I use it to mean things that aren't black or white. Blocklist and allowlist don't exist because they are things. I don't think about the "Black" and "White" in these words. I think about what they mean to people. This is why you don't hear that many people complain that the use of these words in games has changed or changed. The people complaining, I think, are the people who have changed the way they think about these words.
I am in favor of denylist, though. I have never liked blacklist as far as I remember. I could never remember whether black means let it through or stop it.
I get similarly confused with "in the red" and "in the black" - which one means I'm losing money?
Don't even get me started on the CIA's black phones (which are green) and red phones (which are black). At least I think I got that right.
Colors are not a good way to name things.
"block" sounds too much like "black", your intrinsic racism is still showing...? This is probably what's coming next.
This is everyone's story with these words. This movement was not driven by POC taking issue with the word "blacklist". It started with some white dude's shower thought that because "blacklist" was a negative thing, and because "black" also can refer to skin color, that the term was thus racist [1]. Then a bunch of other white dudes ([2]) were like "oh yeah for sure that makes so much sense" and here we are--everyone goes along with it because they (rather patronizingly) think that someone else will be offended.
The word "blacklist" is many hundreds of years old. It does not have a racial origin. It's just a word. Nobody actually makes the association between "blacklist" and "black people" unless you tell them to! Our brains aren't nearly so stupid!
[1] https://twitter.com/andrestaltz/status/1030200563802230786 [2] https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1032050325513940992
Please don't hyperbolize about this stuff. If you want people to take you seriously about real censorship you need to not fly off the handle with accidents (which have ALWAYS been with us, c.f. buttbuttination).
Another commenter here pointed out the Markiplier case. They banned entire Google accounts for spamming emotes in YouTube chat and those bans were un-appealable. They unbanned the accounts only after the public outrage on Twitter.
Besides, people don't take it seriously anyway, because they actually agree with real censorship and they dismiss it with the "private company" argument.
The details of this particular case were in the linked article. And they show that this wasn't unfixable or unappealable or otherwise beyond relief. It was a fuckup and they fixed it.
Characterizing it "un-appealable" is hyperbolic by definition. It's not helpful. And it happens almost every time something like this comes up, and people like you end up redirecting to something else, like that emote spam thing. And per your text it seems like that was resolved via appeal too!
It's just very tiresome to see everyone screaming so loud about something that doesn't seem like a big deal. I mean, if they really wanted to be censoring you, don't you think they'd come after threads like this first?
I feel like this about many attempts to make language politically correct, but I really do wonder, was there actually anyone out there sitting there being offended by this usage of those words before someone told them they should be?
Like was there actually someone sitting there, using an app, seen the term blacklist and immediately started thinking it was an insult to them?
My belief is absolutely not. It comes from an ideology that ascribes simple moralistic explanations to things. “This word has man in it so it must mean it excludes women”. “The word ‘master’ reminds people of slavery”, etc.
Good luck speaking out “publicly” about it in the modern corporate environment. You have to not just accept it as true but actively parrot its talking points. Everyone has to be a believer. That’s how the whole thing works.
There are actual race issues genuinely affecting people every day. Making a big deal out of what are essentially non-issues i'd be willing to bet 99% of people never think about or genuinely care about is just going to make the average person roll their eyes and not bother caring.
Which again, is counterproductive. If you want the average person to care about the actual systemic issues, violence and actual racial oppression, forcing them to adjust their language and take time to address issues like the gp's comment is not the way to do it.
Policing every word people say and making them feel guilty for using the wrong ones will not make them care, if anything it's going to make people who are otherwise neutral, who would maybe care, turn hostile.
It pushes people to extremes and leads to places like 8chan or Parler, where people take their language to utter extremes and the opposite extreme where people are finding offense in nearly every little thing.
Both are unreasonable.
I want to think I personally wouldn’t be insecure enough to be concerned by something like that, but I have to agree that some might feel uncomfortable even if the intent behind that term was benign.
Whether getting rid of that term entirely is worth it or not is another question (how far should we go? do we spend human-months rewriting all Git histories to replace this term with an alternative currently in fashion? what if it changes again? etc.), but just stopping using it in new codebases might be relatively low-effort.
I've also met enough people from different places in the world to understand it happens to everybody for different reasons. Hell there's racism in the world I bet a lot of people don't even realize is an issue. An old Iranian coworker and a chinese coworker of mine hated eachother, for absolutely no reason other than racism.
I also live in a place where the prevalent racism isn't the black/white stuff that goes on in america and where generally black and white people get along reasonably well.
You're right, it's about culture and perspective.
And that's what bugs me most about PC culture. It doesn't take into account culture and perspective. It doesn't take into account the fact that prejudice and racism depend heavily on where you are exactly in the world and it doesn't take into account the fact that a good majority of the things PC culture would consider racist isn't.
All I know is, i've had a lot of great conversations that started with me or someone else asking.
'Hey, where are you from?'
I can't think of one time when either me or someone else was offended by this yet...
https://othersociologist.com/2017/07/15/where-are-you-from-r...
> 'Hey, where are you from?'
Once in Hong Kong I asked a taxi driver of Indian descent where he’s from, and felt awkward when he responded “Hong Kong”.
This was a failure of applying the golden rule on my part, as I hate when others ask me that.
I’m personally starting to think that, when strangers get together, crowds where there’s less profiling going on are where more interesting conversations tend to happen—and I really tend to take “where are you from?” as a fundamental profiling question (some don’t use it this way, but too many do).
At the same time, perhaps paradoxically, the individual self-confidence that allows one to easily respond “yeah I might look X but I’m actually Y, yadda yadda” is also a great thing.
But, to tangentially riff on your point, white straight cis males could never be recognized as even being capable of having such feelings, even if they had them. Only systematically oppressed peoples can feel that way, so it is said.
I'll give you a concrete example from the world of finance. In options there are two main forms of exercise. You can have options which can be exercised at expiry and options that can be exercised at any point.[1] When the economist Paul Samuelson started to work on Wall street he was told that he would never truly be able to understand options because he was American and therefore the maths would be too complicated for his mind[2]. So when he came up with the first pricing model that could handle warrants that exercise at any point he named the simple case (at expiry) "European" and the complex case "American" as a dig at his detractors. For that reason to this day we have European and American styles of option exercise.[3]
[1]You can also have options that can be exercised on a given set of dates which are sort of a half-way house but that is a more exotic and recent phenomenon. It is called "Bermudan" because Bermuda is in the ocean between Europe and America.
[2]When I worked in finance (2000-2008) some of this bias still existed. Our swaps desk was almost entirely French.
[3] Reference for the story although it is well known and there are many others https://www.macroption.com/american-vs-european-options/#ori...
I do suspect that the fact that the US doesn’t have a recent history of being oppressed might discount it a little (if one is considered a dominant power, one can afford the luxury of taking some mild negging in stride).
On the other hand, in case of e.g. “blacklist” — it meaning a list of people or entities to deny service — color of skin being unalienable phenotypical trait — history of black skin color used as basis for discrimination and oppression (and indeed denial of service) not long ago (or even now) — it could be a little trickier.
I have no personal experience with either case, though, so who am I to judge.
Likewise "hysterical" derives from "hyster" (Uterus) and stems from the idea that the female reproductive system made women mad and incapable.
I feel like one of the things that people miss often in discussing these topics is the asymmetry of power. If you're one of the people who has historically been discriminated against you may well have different feelings from people who has historically doing the discriminating.
We should listen to each other more and if these terms are a barrier then there really is no harm to using other terms. I think using friendly language is the least I can do from the point of view of being courteous to others.
> We should listen to each other more and if these terms are a barrier then there really is no harm to using other terms.
Agreed.
I’m personally torn on this issue. On one hand, the fact that these words rub people wrong is an indicator of a deeper problem—in an ideal world, no one would take a term personally because they’d know it denotes a technical concept and isn’t intended to put anyone down; on the other hand, it’s not really that difficult to stop using some terms in new codebases.
On one hand, we should get input from those directly affected by this; on the other hand, those affected may choose to stay silent despite possible discomfort and treat it as a problem with their insecurities rather than the industry.
At least 50% of the drama about these language shifts comes from people who can't handle making decisions that make people unhappy. Just put your big kid pants on, make a decision, and deal with the response, without hyperventilating about "cancellation".
Ha! Never thought about that one. Imagine if it had been Woman In The Middle though, the outrage!
Is this from actual developers or just activists spamming people wherever they find them?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc1zGRUPztc
Can't make this stuff up.
Maybe the advertisers are doing this on purpose? Deep down they know they would lose almost nothing by pulling from those platforms for a short period of time (the quality of online advertising has been in doubt for a long time), while pleasing the vocal minority.
At the same time, by playing moves like this would absolutely bring Google/Youtube to their knees, making it clear who is paying the bill.
Notice how there’s tons of product placement in PG-13 movies, but far less in those rated R?
They can't, because there were a number of high-profile media storms blaming companies for advertising on YouTube when some of the content was distasteful by chance (like videos by terrorists). It's great that you're an adult about it, but the media and media consumers love getting upset over things like this. Advertisers used to be more accepting of YouTube as a platform instead of a curator of content, until the public outcry against it. This is why we can't have nice things.
Or maybe we should stop supporting a monopoly pressured by everyone and switch to distributed PeerTube instead.
This is what I don't understand. If my memory serves, the whole demonetization debacle started when some activists at a newspaper wrote an article about big brands having ads on Alex Jones' content, in which they reached out to the brands and asked "are you happy with your content being seen next to XYZ?"[1][2] It struck me as just another article in a long list (that continues to today) where a legacy media giant lashes out at new media because they're worried about ad revenue being taken from them, the 'rightful' recipients.
If people are watching a video, regardless of the content, they are almost certainly there because they enjoy that content. Isn't this the point of all advertising; you want your brand on display when someone is enjoying something to (sub-consciously?) associate your brand with the enjoyment the viewer is experiencing? I wonder if there is a case to be made for loss of earnings for shareholders if the pool of eyeballs seeing their brands messaging is continually diluted.
I suppose the counter-argument is that the brands don't want their advertising funds to go to an organization they have moral disagreements with, but that certainly hasn't stopped them in the past. Is the income from a washing machine sale any less valuable if it comes from someone not politically aligned with you, or if they saw it while browsing a porn site? (I'm not interested in discussing Alex Jones). It seems to boil down to not wanting to be 'cancelled' and have the twitter-mob making waves and threatening boycotts.
[1] Mashable article about the advertising pull out - https://archive.is/6LkmL
[2] The hit piece from CNN - http://archive.is/4yHMF
At least make all figure look alike, gender-less and class-less and color them in random rainbow colors.
However to me this does not negate YouTube's good-faith responsibility to clarify what kind of product they are and what they intend to do with their service as the years go by. These mistakes are extremely costly and potentially offensive to the end user, no matter how rare they may be in daily practice.
YouTube made very foolhardy decisions to encourage the ingestion of any and all video content from just about all kinds of people. This had the impact of normalizing video content production practices, giving AI-directed content moderation a false sense of success in its early days of deployment. As content has grown more complex and nuanced on these platforms, the AI systems deployed have miserably failed to accommodate these changes in the ecosystem. It's all in an (IMO) futile effort for YouTube to make good on their reckless company roadmap without specific people having to take personal responsibility for their blunder.
Would be great but it's never happening. They'll continue shaping the internet by threatening to pull support unless everything is changed to match their sensibilities.
That’s the perception - but usually it’s at most a few hundred busybodies on Twitter, out of Google’s billions of users.
People just need to start ignoring these people. They are a tiny minority of people. (It just so happens that seemingly half of them are journalists at the nation’s biggest newspapers.)
The solution for those wanting unfettered culture in the Information Age, not beholden to big finance and big techs whims, remains free and distributed software, such as running your own blogs, peertube, etc