Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

404media.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 191 posts

Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

#141

Post by morbicer »

bilalq wrote: post #69
alephnerd wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's translating "alhamdulillah" to "Terrorist". "Alhamdulillah" is Arabic for "Praise be to god" and (edit: to my ear at least) is used by Muslims (edit: by Arabic speakers more often) nowadays as an alternative to Allah u Akbar, Takbir, or Narai-e-Takbir because (edit: I think) those 3 terms have increasingly been co-opted. This is the equivalent of translating "Praise Jesus" to "I love god and hate abortions"

> "Alhamdulillah" [...] is used by Muslims nowadays as an alternative to Allah u Akbar, Takbir, or Narai-e-Takbir because those 3 terms have been co-opted by Jihadists. This is not correct. Almost all of those phrases are commonly used in daily speech and prayers by Muslims globally. No group could possibly co-opt them. They are deeply rooted traditions.

No one can co-opt it but it's like Pepe frog...

Once a group that you don't want to be affiliated with starts to using it and the "outside" world associates the the symbol primarily with the "baddies", you rather look for another symbol

There definitely seems to be a trend of people abandoning Allahu Akbar

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Alhamdul...

Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

#143

Post by Viliam1234 »

Nathanba wrote: post #129
jrh3 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are the same God though, for Christians and Muslims. The God of Abraham.

muslims deny the divinity of Jesus and therefore do not have the same God.

So do Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses.

How do you distinguish between "having a different God" and "having different beliefs about the same God"?

Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

#144

Post by bilalq »

morbicer wrote: post #141
bilalq wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Alhamdulillah" [...] is used by Muslims nowadays as an alternative to Allah u Akbar, Takbir, or Narai-e-Takbir because those 3 terms have been co-opted by Jihadists. This is not correct. Almost all of those phrases are commonly used in daily speech and prayers by Muslims globally. No group could possibly co-opt them. They are deeply rooted traditions.

No one can co-opt it but it's like Pepe frog... Once a group that you don't want to be affiliated with starts to using it and the "outside" world associates the the symbol primarily with the "baddies", you rather look for another symbol There definitely seems to be a trend of people abandoning Allahu Akbar https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Alhamdul...

No, this is not at all comparable to the Pepe frog meme. No one is going to look for another symbol here.

That trend graph is for search interest. It's not surprising that we're past peak searches for that from non-Muslim majority countries and regions.

With all due respect, you're just wrong here. There is no trend of people abandoning this phrase. This would be like trying to say crosses were co-opted by the KKK so churches are getting rid of them and people are going to stop wearing jewelry with them. It's part of the call to prayer, part of the five daily prayers, part of supplication and dhikr, and part of many other Islamic traditions.

Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

#145

Post by gampleman »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #143
Nathanba wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

muslims deny the divinity of Jesus and therefore do not have the same God.

So do Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. How do you distinguish between "having a different God" and "having different beliefs about the same God"?

Depends if you believe it's the same god or not...

But if we both claim to know a guy called John Brown, but I say he's kind, generous, hard working but a little dim and you say John Brown is hedonistic, self-entered and brilliant, are we talking about the same person?

Normally if our descriptions are similar enough that we can chalk it up to perspective, we might think it is. But if our descriptions of the person become strongly contradictory, we must conclude that we are talking about a different person.

Now if we both claim that there is only one John Brown in existence, then we might be willing to overlook slightly more of the inconsistencies, because the alternative is that one (or both) of us is misguided/wrong/a liar.

Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

#147

Post by selimthegrim »

matteoraso wrote: post #105
zogrodea wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a couple of things to say about this comment. 1. Instagram (and Facebook) are well known to suppress pro-Palestine voices (can pull up many examples but [0] should work because of that person being named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, clearly having some influence though I don't know her), so this seems like something consistent with what the company is known to do. 2.…

>2. The Arabic words for "Praise God" have already been made fun of a lot and acquired different connotations by English speakers (like associating those words with a terrorist who is about to bomb some place) so, again, doesn't seem inconsistent. You're probably thinking of "Allahu Akbar". What the Instagram user wrote was "alhamdulillah", which isn't something that you hear everyday outside of a Muslim-majority cou…

No, but’s it’s a very common interjection even among Muslims living outside of those countries (response to sneezing whether or not someone says equivalent of “Bless you”, response to when someone asks how you’re doing, etc)

Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

#148

Post by VeninVidiaVicii »

matteoraso wrote: post #105
zogrodea wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a couple of things to say about this comment. 1. Instagram (and Facebook) are well known to suppress pro-Palestine voices (can pull up many examples but [0] should work because of that person being named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, clearly having some influence though I don't know her), so this seems like something consistent with what the company is known to do. 2.…

>2. The Arabic words for "Praise God" have already been made fun of a lot and acquired different connotations by English speakers (like associating those words with a terrorist who is about to bomb some place) so, again, doesn't seem inconsistent. You're probably thinking of "Allahu Akbar". What the Instagram user wrote was "alhamdulillah", which isn't something that you hear everyday outside of a Muslim-majority cou…

Wait what? Even when I ask my elderly Iraqi family friends how they are doing, they usually just skip over the “good” and just say “alhamdulillah”.

Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

#149

Post by morkalork »

8organicbits wrote: post #136

Any ideas what software they are using? Alhamdulillah is a very widely used expression. My guess is that they used an LLM, which translated it correctly but then decided to hallucinate more text. If so, that says that lot about their training text...

Imagine going through customs in a foreign country and they screen your social profiles with an LLM translation like that.

Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations

#150

Post by nonethewiser »

morkalork wrote: post #149
8organicbits wrote: post #136

Any ideas what software they are using? Alhamdulillah is a very widely used expression. My guess is that they used an LLM, which translated it correctly but then decided to hallucinate more text. If so, that says that lot about their training text...

Imagine going through customs in a foreign country and they screen your social profiles with an LLM translation like that.

Imagine going through customs in a foreign country and they screen your social profiles
Post reply on HN