Twitch streamers will be able to select from over 350 new tags | Hacker News Reader

Twitch streamers will be able to select from over 350 new tags

blog.twitch.tv

34 pointsixacto62 comments

Assuming good intentions here, but it is incredibly naive to not anticipate how this could lead to greater division and negative user interactions. If a user can sort by race they can also effectively create a suppression list for other races limiting exposure to new perspectives and ideas.

Humans have an inate desire to sort and categorize, but I find it backwards and dehumanizing to do so for people. I understand there is value for race and gender minorities and allies to find and support each other, but by creating labels you express your differences rather than comonalities. It is in our commonalities where we relate and find compassion for each other. When differences are highlighted in such binary terms we all become characitures of our true selves.

How deep in the political echo chamber must PMs be that they cannot possibly see how this could backfire?

It will take less than 72 hours for someone to have a plugin or script to filter people by these attributes, or worse, Twitch will allow filtering themselves.

Racism is on trend.

This is getting out of control. MLK said "Judge a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character." But more and more it feels like people and companies are trying to get us to judge people by their skin color.

I don't care what race someone is; I just want to watch entertaining content on Twitch. It doesn't matter if you are black or gay or trans or a martian when it comes to something like streaming. It does not make a difference to the content.

Twitch and other companies doing this nonsense need to stop. All it is doing is dividing us not unifying us.

MLK was pretty divisive figure tho. Quite hated and seen as disturbing the peace.

So? What does that have to do with anything.

You started by MLK quote and ended by complaining about divisiveness. The speech that quote is from is call for radical action that won't stop. It was not call for peace.

He was someone who pushed for what he wanted in multiple areas. Very outspoken, openly talking about race and powerty.

MLK wanted unity but because some people did not support such things MLK was considered divisive. He would almost certainly be against pushes like this and that was what I was trying to convey. He believed race was not an important attribute of a person. We now have people who think it is one of the most important thing.

> We intentionally designed that system for creators to be able to describe what they were streaming, not who they were or what they stood for. We have maintained this distinction since that time, and we were wrong.

And giving people a label such as "disabled" or "LGBTQIA+" somehow defines what a person stands for or who they are?

I think this must be a cultural gap because as someone who doesn't live in the US I'm seriously flabbergasted by what I'm reading. I seriously fail to see how labeling people is leading to a more tolerable and inclusive society. The blogpost also doesn't make case for it. It just pretends that it's "common sense" that it does.

It just groups people by similar experience instead of just content. People go to Twitch for personalities, not games, so this makes more sense to me.

If that were true, then they would add tags for Christian, Conservative, white, etc. This is obviously just pandering to a certain population for wokeness points.

It is pretty normal for French to watch French sport rather then Italian. And vice versa. That is not uniquely US phenomenon.

We have gone full circle, it is know OK to go ahead and say: I want to see only white streamers in my feed. When are we going to get the blacks only streaming platform? Or black only swimmingpools? That was such a great idea, segregating people by color and sexuality. What the fuck Twitch. This only helps to increase the divide between social groups...

If you sincerely believe that allowing people to browse by tags like this is segregation of any kind, especially to the level of those other things you said, you really need to calm down and think critically about this instead of saying something that absurd out of an emotional reaction.

Allowing people to filter by race is pretty much the definition of racism

No, it objectively isn't. Your objection to this might be easier to understand if you say something that isn't ridiculous or blatantly untrue

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/06/03/tech...

Funny that both Grindr and BLM disagree with you. I wonder which part of the political spectrum does find these kind of measures appropriate...

Providing features which allows user to have a prejudice (this race is more suited to my entertainment needs than another) based on race is not racism? Ok

Critics have argued that Grindr's filter promoted discrimination. Research from Cornell University found that dating apps that allow users to filter their searches by race, or rely on algorithms that pair people of the same race, "reinforce racial divisions and biases," while an Australian survey of gay and bisexual men found many participants to be "remarkably tolerant" of online sexual racism.

On Monday, Grindr framed the policy change as one motivated by solidarity with protesters in the United States. "We stand in solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the hundreds of thousands of queer people of color who log in to our app every day."

It's nice when common sense bears out in the research.

This is an incredibly dishonest argument imo. Ignoring the fact that Grindr saying #BLM while changing a policy doesn't mean "BLM supports it", it's an entirely different policy and situation. Grindr is a dating app that had a race filter. Not a video content website that lets users tag themselves by their race or sexuality if they want, a dating app that allowed people to actively exclude any and all members of a race they did not what to see.

Even if you disagree with what Twitch is doing here, you can't possibly suggest that it's the same thing as what happened with Grindr if you're actually engaging with this discussion in good faith.

The tags are made to facilitate filtering and allow users to discriminate based on race and sexuality

Ah, yes, I can finally filter out all normal streamers to see only erotic almost-porn content.

I guess this is for the hot tub streamers?

I can't even imaging filtering gaming streams based on the host's sexual preferences or skin tone.

Well if you're in the KKK you can now filter-out everyone but straight white people?

/s Congratulations Twitch, you just made it easier for racists to use your platform.

This!

"Today I want latina", said horny twitch hot tub streamer's viewer.

Yikes. I can see that this was done with the point of good intentions, as some people may want to see non-English speaking streamers, so sorting by nationality may make that easier.

But this is a huge can of worms.

Sorting by language has been around for years on Twitch

Just like the other replier said, it is sorting by language, not nationality. I know 4 languages and can speak any of them, this has nothing to do with nationality.

Can we finally get over the concepts of 'race' and 'ethnicity'? These are both neither helpful in understanding society nor do they have a footing in reality. I mean - what the heck - it's 2021 and we are still taking about race? Humans have less genetic diversity than two random tribes of chimpanzees, how the heck do you even get hung up on a concept like race that no one can even define properly?

These are flawed concepts and belong into the dustbin of history.

Seriously messed up.

Yes, race is a social construct (and whiteness is extremely arbitrary). But that doesn't mean it does not have real life consequences. The US is far far away from the legacy of segregation being washed away. From school district funding and presence of lead piping to studies where competency of equally qualified CVs is rated differently based on race, we still have more barriers for some.

I often wonder how forcing people to self-identify with one (and only one!) of these imaginary groups is supposed to help to overcome that. Why even ask about 'race' in the census form and why is 'Ñoldor' not an option?

Seems well defined to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)

I disagree. The very article you provided lists various different ways people have defined race, and it's certainly not an exhaustive list. Race is very much real, in the same way all social constructs are real, but it's by no means a consistent or scientific classification system.

Indeed. These are all completely arbitrary, made-up and imaginary. None of them have any scientific basis.

We should stop using these concepts altogether.

Are you arguing that racism doesn’t exist in 2021?

I assume that you are asking this question in good faith, although the mental gymnastics one has to make to come to the question you ask seems quite extraordinary. But I'll bite.

No, of course not. Racism - that is; discriminatory behavior towards other humans depending on their (now comes the important part) perceived or imagined membership in a totally made up group - is of course real. And bad. We should stop that. Putting people in imaginary groups and treating them different according to these imaginary groups should stop.

We should stop inventing arbitrary systems of human difference and to use them as justification for the unequal treatment of others.

Of course it's a good faith argument.

the idea that

>We should stop inventing arbitrary systems of human difference and to use them as justification for the unequal treatment of others.

Is possible in a world where racism exists is arguing in bad faith.

Of course race is made up and is completely arbitrary, but the idea that one can simply ignore racism that exists in 2021 is beyond ludicurous.

You are essentially saying that the idea that we can stop being racist in a world were we haven't stopped being racist yet is arguing in bad faith.

> but the idea that one can simply ignore racism that exists in 2021 is beyond ludicurous.

I agree. We could also stop acting like 'race' was a serious concept.

We already have business tagged with things like "black owned" or "run by women" and now this.

What's next? Bracelets according your race/ancestry?

I'm not going to play this game and I'll refuse to use any service that plays the identity card.

Maybe Hitler would be proud (hi, Godwin) but I'm not.

Genuine question: Who is the source of demand for this, and what do they want to use it for?

Data, personal account, and strong empiricism only please. I’m not interested in your projections upon ‘others’.

The trans community had a longstanding grudge on the word "trans" being banned not only from tags, but the title too.

People usually go to Twitch not to find one particular game being played, but to find community. Being trans is something most cis people seem to have issues relating to, so finding other trans people is the easiest way to avoid constantly repeating awkward conversations along a barrage of false preconceptions.

I'd imagine it's similar for other tags.

wait, I'm confused. why was trans banned from titles and tags before? and if it had been banned, why's it allowed in tags now?

was twitch assuming the only reason we'd tag our streams as trans because it's a porn thing? if so that's pretty messed up, though not surprising.

Your guess is as good as mine, the issue had over 12000 votes and a 2 year history on Uservoice.

https://twitch.uservoice.com/forums/310210-discover/suggesti...

Really all they’re doing is adding optional tags that people can optionally add to themselves so others can search for them. So the source of the demand is streamers that add these tags.

It’s not like you have to enter your skin color at signup.

Based on blog post, trans community persistently pushed for trans tag. So they added that one and 350+ tags more. Including veteran and disabled, they are not all about hot button issues.

I am mostly ambivalent towards this. The change seems to be in response to what a vocal proportion of twitch's users want which makes this a logical step for twitch to take.

Though I am worried that the mentioned "ally" tag will just enable cheap and pointless virtue signalling. I would prefer that the tags have the restriction that they be based on some verifiable categorisation such as nationality, physically identifiable race or similar.

It'd be great if the ally tag came with a set of higher standards than the Twitch TOS.

But no religion?

If you say this out loud, it does sound racist, no matter what.

I asked in another HN thread how the line "you sound like a middle-aged white woman" in the Pixar movie Soul, is not racist? (It got downvoted)

Im not really taking a stand either way, Im just trying to understand.

However the case, I believe the normalizing of selectivity by race (which I guess is the definition of racism) is not final nor is its demarcation really stabilized yet.

As far as I understand, the difference is “punching up” and “punching down”. But it is racist, for any useful definition of racist.

The punching up/down aspect is an important part of understanding what people mean when they say "racist". By some people's definitions, "racial discrimination" means differentiating by race, while "racism" means racial discrimination as a form of oppression. This is the definition a lot of people mean when they say the word. Some people don't make that distinction, but language is fuzzy and is just a tool. A word doesn't necessarily mean anything in it's own, the meaning comes from the speaker's intention and the listener's interpretation.

So if someone asked if that line from Soul is "racist", it depends on what definition you are referring to. Yes the line discriminates based on race. But, keeping cultural contexts in mind, does the line exploit power imbalances in our society against white people to denigrate them? I think a lot of people would say no.

I can see that nuance, but the way I grew up (90s,00s,USA,minority), I do not equate the use of the word “racist” as needing to describe an act of prejudice, because I do not think it’s useful. The aforementioned joke relies on certain stereotypes of a race, making it a racist joke.

I know times change, but when I was a kid, it was okay to make racist jokes as long as it was not mean spirited. We joked about all races, but the point was alway that it was a joke, similar to jokes of stereotypes about other characteristics of people.

Edit: Then again, I acknowledge that language/culture are in constant flux, and maybe I should use “racial joke” instead of “racist joke” if I want to convey my thoughts to the largest number of people and have them interpret it properly? Or it can be accompanied by paragraphs of explanations.

> But, keeping cultural contexts in mind, does the line exploit power imbalances in our society against white people to denigrate them? I think a lot of people would say no.

By this reasoning, minstrel shows are not racist, because the culture at the time did not see it that way.

I don't mean does the culture consider it racist, but is there a power imbalance in that culture against the race in question.

Positive discrimination is already enshrined in the laws of many countries.

Eg. When hiring, it is legal to discriminate on protected characteristics if the target characteristic can be defined a minority.

When considering school admission scores are dependent on your ethnicity to fill in quotas.

People who "stand up for minorities" are essentially bringing back segregation.

What you're highlighting is the joke equivalent of positive discrimination.

That said, there's definitely a tendency to call everything racist. Racism, by definition, implies the belief that one race is superior to others.

This joke can definitely be offensive but it's not racist (same as all the old jokes making fun of one or another country which nobody tells anymore because of wokeness).

> That said, there's definitely a tendency to call everything racist. Racism, by definition, implies the belief that one race is superior to others.

So if someone supports discriminatory policies not because they think people of other "races" are inferior, but purely because they would benefit from them (by finding jobs more easily, for example), you wouldn't consider them or their actions racist?

In such a hypothetical scenario, that someone would be just as likely to support policies that discriminate against people based on age, social class, language, the number of vowels in their last name etc. It being a race-based policy would be entirely coincidental. I wouldn't consider it racist, just being a dick.

It's totally racist and should probably not be in there. We should not proliferate racist ideas.

That said; we should also not to take ourselves to serious and give our interlocutors the benefit of the doubt whenever they say stupid shit.

Anyone saying this is some mad racist thing is really over thinking this. Its just going to be used to filter hot tub streamers by race, same as you can do on pornhub or anything else

I don't see the harm in giving streamers more tags to express themselves really. maybe some situation where a "X" streamer gets criticism from chat because they don't have "X" in their tags? implicitly forcing everyone to use them?

I can't really understand why a "Games streaming service" allows tagging/filtering/sorting streamers by anything other than games they play and the language they speak while streaming. Everything else doesn't matter. If someone won't like something, they will just leave.

It doesn’t seem like there’s a full list of tags provided in this blog post. I find it odd that they don’t just allow free form tagging. Do they have a “white” tag? What about “Israel” or “Palestine”? What about “gender critical” or “protect women’s sports”? From reading this post and the examples they shared, it seems like Twitch is yet another explicitly biased tech platform that accommodates progressive activists and no one else’s worldview. It’s a blatant (and successful) practice of shaping opinions artificially - in other words, propaganda.

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