YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#101

Post by tp3 » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:43 AM UTC

tacitusarc wrote: post #69

vecplane wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political correctness run amok! My company has now official guidelines that discourage 'whitelist' and 'blacklist' in new features, but I wonder how long before they make everyone go back and refactor these names. Git 'master' branch derangement is another example of this BS.

My company has mandated all of this. Change blacklist and whitelist, change the git master branch name, don't use master-slave, there's a list of "racially charged" terms and the replacements we're supposed to use. It's all a corporate virtue signal mask so they can lay people off and increase exec compensation and still claim to have some moral high ground.

It's amazing how much of the world operates in this manner. People are stupid and think they're acting on the right course by banning names they don't like and encouraging them to take action. And because their moral positions are so thin, they don't want to be held accountable and they want their money back.

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#102

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

js2 wrote: post #75

lwouis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kid but i've received 2 pull-requests on my open-source project, which only goal was to replace "Blacklist" with "Blocklist" in the app preferences. I don't receive many PRs. This is a real trend.

Black list and its opposite, white list, associate black with bad and white with good. 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. Conse…

[deleted]

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#103

Post by jariel » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

js2 wrote: post #75

lwouis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kid but i've received 2 pull-requests on my open-source project, which only goal was to replace "Blacklist" with "Blocklist" in the app preferences. I don't receive many PRs. This is a real trend.

Black list and its opposite, white list, associate black with bad and white with good. 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. Conse…

Blacklist and Whitelist are not 'unnatural' just the opposite, that's why we use terms, because they are natural. 'Darkness' is after all 'opaque', at night we can't see, 'light' is one of the most ancient metaphors for knowledge etc..

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.

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#104

Post by pushrax » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #72

lwouis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kid but i've received 2 pull-requests on my open-source project, which only goal was to replace "Blacklist" with "Blocklist" in the app preferences. I don't receive many PRs. This is a real trend.

"Contributed to [x] open source projects, having 95% of my [y] pull requests accepted" is becoming common on resumes at the younger end of the labor market. This kind of PR is easy to automate and serves to boost those numbers on the resume. They don't even have to care about the issue at all, it can simply be a way to market themselves with little effort.

I’ve also had people spam “approvals” on some projects I maintain to pad their stats. Incredibly annoying to get 100+ notifications for that. I reported one particularly bad offender to GH and they were banned for a day, at least. Their profile readme still brags about how active they are.

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#105

Post by deelowe » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

karmasimida wrote: post #87

andrewzah wrote: post #5

“ The researchers now suggest that social-media platforms should incorporate chess language in their algorithms to avoid future incidents like this.” Or maybe don’t automate banning YouTube channels via nebulous black boxes? Or can advertisers stop being afraid of anything and everything?

> Or can advertisers stop being afraid of anything and everything? 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 th…

That's exactly it.

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#106

Post by lmm » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

raarts wrote: post #67

Isn't the biggest structural problem with ML that it can't explain how it came to a specific conclusion? Anyone knowledgeable on this subject?

ML absolutely can, if you bother to implement it that way. And non-ML systems can be just as opaque. The problem isn't ML per se, it's lazy organisations that don't care.

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#107

Post by tp3 » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

ben509 wrote: post #50

lwouis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kid but i've received 2 pull-requests on my open-source project, which only goal was to replace "Blacklist" with "Blocklist" in the app preferences. I don't receive many PRs. This is a real trend.

A lot of language-fixing slacktivism easily becomes a trend because it's highly visible and requires no genuine effort. 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 think you're right, there are far too many people trying to do good and being led astray by the self-righteousness of a few. Not in the sense of being brainwashed or being influenced by some external force - like the religious right - but simply by the fact that they can't see through the nonsense the rest of us are talking about.

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#108

Post by ttt0 » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:46 AM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #80

vecplane wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political correctness run amok! My company has now official guidelines that discourage 'whitelist' and 'blacklist' in new features, but I wonder how long before they make everyone go back and refactor these names. Git 'master' branch derangement is another example of this BS.

We were told to no longer call free time between meetings “white space.”

What about the whitespace character?

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#109

Post by frongpik » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:46 AM UTC

throwawayboise wrote: post #9

andrewzah wrote: post #5

“ The researchers now suggest that social-media platforms should incorporate chess language in their algorithms to avoid future incidents like this.” Or maybe don’t automate banning YouTube channels via nebulous black boxes? Or can advertisers stop being afraid of anything and everything?

Your comment has been moderated for racist language ("black boxes").

In addition to that, the "Social Justice 2.0" system has added a negative mark to the commenter's IP address, lowered his credit score and increased the mortgage payment's social justice tax by 200 bucks that will go to support the underrepresented minorities (after paying the private jet bills for the minorities fund's manager).

Re: YouTube blocked chess channel after mistaken detection of racial slurs

#110

Post by gedy » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 1:46 AM UTC

js2 wrote: post #75

lwouis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kid but i've received 2 pull-requests on my open-source project, which only goal was to replace "Blacklist" with "Blocklist" in the app preferences. I don't receive many PRs. This is a real trend.

Black list and its opposite, white list, associate black with bad and white with good. 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. Conse…

That's true but the good/bad association is (Western) cultural, not racial.