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Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’

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Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’

#201

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

danso wrote: post #38
zeta0134 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still trying to work out what Sony's filter doesn't like about my username (zeta0134) which I've had for ages. The first bit is just the letter "z" in Spanish; there's no deeper meaning. To my knowledge it's not considered offensive in Spanish, but Sony would not let me have it no matter how many variations I tried. Maybe there's some political thing I'm not aware of? Anyway, I switched languages and I'm "zed0134…

That's very interesting. I just called their endpoint: curl -d '{"onlineId":"zeta0134","reserveIfAvailable":true}' \ -X POST https://accounts.api.playstation.com/api/v1/accounts/onlineIds \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" And got a response indicating that the name was both valid (i.e. not "improper") and available. Maybe at one particular time the word was flagged, but I can't imagine why. edit: As other replier…

Pablo is a very common Spanish name, and Escobar is a fairly common last name. There probably are thousands of people called Pablo Escobar who could want to use that name.

Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’

#202

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

interestica wrote: post #124
zeta0134 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still trying to work out what Sony's filter doesn't like about my username (zeta0134) which I've had for ages. The first bit is just the letter "z" in Spanish; there's no deeper meaning. To my knowledge it's not considered offensive in Spanish, but Sony would not let me have it no matter how many variations I tried. Maybe there's some political thing I'm not aware of? Anyway, I switched languages and I'm "zed0134…

This is making me think of elevators that deliberately leave out floor numbers (13 in north america, 4 in asia) because they are 'bad luck'. Numbers! As Mitch Hedberg would say, the people on the 14th floor know which floor they're really on.

And most planes don't have a row 13.

I don't know Mitch Hedberg, but that's also my reasoning. I'm not superstitious, but if I were and I had a problem with number 13, I totally wouldn't want to sit on row "14". There is a supernatural power that makes 13 bad and you can fool it by printing a "14" on top of what's clearly the 13th row? The spirit, deity or force of nature that causes bad luck looks at the labels? Come on!

Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’

#203

Post by orthoxerox »

mirimir wrote: post #146
klipt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Islam is almost a branch off Christianity considering Muhammad knew many Christians and was likely inspired by them. Muslims also view Jesus as a holy person.

The more interesting question is what he was, initially. As far as I can tell, he was a member of an Abrahamic sect that has since died out. But yes, one that accepted Christ as a prophet.

Islam accepts Christ as a prophet. A human prophet, though, not a part of God.

Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’

#204

Post by ginko »

danso wrote: post #16

Besides the humor of how Lyft's filter flagged traditionally Caucasian names like "Cummings" – in addition to the usual issues with non-Western names, e.g. Pimpong and Poon – I'm fascinated/confused how this made it into production? The user database already exists and was currently being used by the live application. Before deploying this new filter onto the production database, wouldn't you do a dry run to get not…

As far as I can tell, the name "Cummings" is Gaelic, not Caucasian.

http://www.comins.org/cummingsname.htm

Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’

#205

Post by dannyw »

jfoster wrote: post #188
danso wrote: post #16

Besides the humor of how Lyft's filter flagged traditionally Caucasian names like "Cummings" – in addition to the usual issues with non-Western names, e.g. Pimpong and Poon – I'm fascinated/confused how this made it into production? The user database already exists and was currently being used by the live application. Before deploying this new filter onto the production database, wouldn't you do a dry run to get not…

What's the upside of deploying this anyway? It's not as though it's similar to Facebook where these names are very publicly visible. It's just the drivers who would see the names. They could just generate the list of questionable names and get support to give them a call about it or institute a rider identity verification programme.

Wouldn’t be surprised if this was a 20% project by an employee group of some sorts.

The intentions can be noble, such as a Lyft employee seeing an user named “F* N*” and thinking, hey that shouldn’t be okay.

The actual consequences can be meh.

Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’

#207

Post by 6510 »

dschuetz wrote: post #195

There must be some very smart people behind Lyft making decisions, as if they have never met a person named "Cummings" or "Dick". I'm astonished by this. I mean, those people have degrees in CS and software engineering. What were they thinking? I suspect that they chose the easy solution, not the smart solution. In that case, because the "Community Guidelines" and the filtering system disrupt business operation, I wo…

yes, fire them.

Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’

#208

Post by dottedmag »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #116
9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely Semyon would be the more common way of rendering семён?

Transliteration is almost always a mess, rarely yielding good results. If I were him I would just demand the authorities to spell my name as Simon. Or, perhaps, keep it as Semen and make fun of that myself. I could even sue someone who would ban me for this.

Have you tried demanding something from Russian authorities? They have a transliteration table and Семён is Semen, no changes allowed.

Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’

#209

Post by [deleted] »

vernie wrote: post #171
manigandham wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " Obviously there must be some amount of people doing it " There's no data that this is true. It could simply be a project manager deciding that it's a good thing or the result of a tiny fraction of complaints.

Complaints about what

[deleted]

Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’

#210

Post by wutbrodo »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #202
interestica wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is making me think of elevators that deliberately leave out floor numbers (13 in north america, 4 in asia) because they are 'bad luck'. Numbers! As Mitch Hedberg would say, the people on the 14th floor know which floor they're really on.

And most planes don't have a row 13. I don't know Mitch Hedberg, but that's also my reasoning. I'm not superstitious, but if I were and I had a problem with number 13, I totally wouldn't want to sit on row "14". There is a supernatural power that makes 13 bad and you can fool it by printing a "14" on top of what's clearly the 13th row? The spirit, deity or force of nature that causes bad luck looks at the labels? Com…

> I'm not superstitious, but if I were and I had a problem with number 13, I totally wouldn't want to sit on row "14".

I imagine the way you're approaching this is not unrelated to the fact that you're not superstitious. That is to say, if you were superstitious, it's possible you wouldn't feel this way about the fake 14th row. Not having to see and think about the number 13 may be enough.

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