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

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

#161

Post by Bayart » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:22 AM UTC

sago wrote: post #131

ben509 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm disagreeing with this thread. So I guess prepping for the down votes. > 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 in…

>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?

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 ?

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

#162

Post by wincy » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:24 AM UTC

ttt0 wrote: post #108

nostromo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What about the whitespace character?

If your computer is running in dark mode it’s now darkspace.

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

#163

Post by Retric » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:25 AM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #121

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?

Setting this case aside because it's sloppy reporting based on what another classifier found, this is a hard problem. Youtube gets too many videos and comments for humans to manually review them. Flagging helps, and Google likely uses ML more complex than just text and classifier (who is commenting, is the post trending, patterns in comments, etc.) When things do reach manual review, remember that humans make mistake…

Actually watching every YouTube video uploaded would take ~100,000 people which is possible, but quite expensive. Actually watching every video that’s flagged for banning might take ~100 people and seem like a reasonable effort.

As such arguments about using automated systems are meaningless, they can pre-filter without having final decision making authority.

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

#164

Post by Fogest » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:25 AM UTC

10000truths wrote: post #113

js2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don’t see the association as particularly unnatural: black = dark = scary because we cannot see, and white = light = not scary because we can see. The use of the term ‘black’ as a negative modifier predates its use as a descriptor for race.

This is the problem. People will choose to ignore context and other grammatical history because of their own personal incorrect views.

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.

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

#165

Post by mahathu » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:26 AM UTC

ignoranceprior wrote: post #124

JshWright wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta include Gotham in that mix (personally I'd rate Gotham over Amadgator).

I personally like Eric Rosen, because he's got that calm and relaxing Bob Ross energy.

oh no my queen!

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

#166

Post by __blockcipher__ » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:27 AM UTC

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #119

metiscus wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't read heavily into this debate so this comes from a position of ignorance of the arguments. Feel free to link me to a reference if this has been analyzed along these lines already, I would like to learn. The convention seem to me to follow several similar motifs from the sciences. Black holes do not allow matter to escape and white holes are theoretical constructs that admit matter to the universe. The color…

I disagree with you on the light metaphor. Black things admit photons. White things reject photons. 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 t…

> 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.

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

#167

Post by ttt0 » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:27 AM UTC

sago wrote: post #131

ben509 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm disagreeing with this thread. So I guess prepping for the down votes. > 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 in…

> 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'?

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.

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

#168

Post by Bodell » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:28 AM UTC

afavour wrote: post #3

Not sure what a thinly resourced piece like this is doing so high up on HN. There’s really very little evidence that this has anything to do with racial slurs. From a quick read: last June, the channel was banned for “harmful and dangerous” content. The ban was removed in under 24 hours. YouTube has not confirmed the reason. And yet: > Experts suspect that it was the usage of words like "black" and "white" that confu…

This article does contain very little information.

But this channel is one I watch a lot of. It is dedicated to in depth chess commentary with some bits of chess history and I highly recommend it if you play. This it not the first time this has happened to Antonio. He even discussed it a bit the first time, 7 months ago. In that instance it was a single video that was removed. In that video he says “white will always be better” while analyzing a specific position (interesting to note that in the starting position of chess this is also always true). YouTube said it was removed for “harmful and dangerous content”. Without anything else to go on I’d say it’s a fair assessment the it was banned for racial content. I’m not sure what else could be “dangerous” about chess analysis.

https://extra.ie/2020/07/02/news/world-news/chess-youtube-vi...

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

#169

Post by aksss » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:29 AM UTC

tp3 wrote: post #127

metiscus wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't read heavily into this debate so this comes from a position of ignorance of the arguments. Feel free to link me to a reference if this has been analyzed along these lines already, I would like to learn. The convention seem to me to follow several similar motifs from the sciences. Black holes do not allow matter to escape and white holes are theoretical constructs that admit matter to the universe. The color…

It seems we are using black for bad and white for good in English, which is strange since we had never used them before. Also, I feel like blocking and allowing makes sense when it comes to language, because bad and white mean the same. But when it comes to code, which the rest of the world uses black to mean bad and white to mean good, I don't know if that makes sense.

> we had never used them before

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.

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

#170

Post by Fogest » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:30 AM UTC

azernik wrote: post #70

reaperducer wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See also: Master and slave in device controllers.

That one's a bit more understandable in that it's actually referencing a master/slave relationship. "Master" as in "master copy" is... not that.

Yes, a master/slave relationship in technology. Don't drop the context to support policing words. Context very much matters when dealing with words yet for some reason the context is dropped in order to make it seem like a word is being used in an offensive way. Except it's not, you're just forgetting the context to make it that way.

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.