Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians • Hacker News Board

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#91

Post by saraid216 » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 6:31 PM UTC

chaz wrote: post #25

tarblog wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike when lists are written in such a way that the reader must mentally negate all of the statements the author is making. It's more difficult for me to quote or remember out of context correctly. I also feel like I learned a lot less than if the author had told me the things that are common problems and how to fix them or offered a model of names that is less-bad than the one most websites use.

It's satire. 12. People’s names are case sensitive. 13. People’s names are case insensitive. Edit: Let me explain ... I was responding to the parent post, and that it wasn't meant to be a logic list of rules. Individual points may be true, but the overall tone of the list and post uses humor to explain the complexity of names. 32. People’s names are assigned at birth. 33. OK, maybe not at birth, but at least pretty c…

Satire is a deliberate mockery of the subject material in order to criticize it. You don't call something satire just because one of its bullet points is kinda funny.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#92

Post by saraid216 » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 6:38 PM UTC

anon4 wrote: post #27

Interestingly, google didn't bat an eye when I put my nickname as my first name and the full stop symbol (.) as my last name. Yellow Horse? Totally made up. .? Obviously a legit name, why my best friend is named $. (I write too much perl).

They probably hardcoded it in as a stopgap when they were getting pushback on mononyms.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#93

Post by aiiane » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 6:44 PM UTC

anon4 wrote: post #27

Interestingly, google didn't bat an eye when I put my nickname as my first name and the full stop symbol (.) as my last name. Yellow Horse? Totally made up. .? Obviously a legit name, why my best friend is named $. (I write too much perl).

A period as last name is the way to enter a mononym of Google+, hence why that is supported. (The period will be dropped when the name is displayed.)

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#94

Post by Tohhou » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 6:49 PM UTC

aspidistra wrote: post #20

Tohhou wrote: post #3

"Discriminate" because this was obviously intentional prejudicial racism! Of course it's not malicious. This guy is not good people.

In the UK, at least, "discriminate" is the right word because it is possible to discriminate indirectly. This is defined in law. If you have rules that apply to everyone but disadvantage people who share a protected characteristic, you are discriminating, whether you intended to or not. http://www.equality-law.co.uk/news/106/66/Types-of-discrimin...

I don't like his post because he needlessly implies Google engineers are malicious when it's obviously not the case.

>staff are either incompetent, or racist. I hope for incompetence. Either is bad, but racism is much worse than incompetence.

>protected characteristic

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/4

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/advice-and-guidance/new-e...

Does that include names?

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#95

Post by fixermark » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 6:51 PM UTC

ZoFreX wrote: post #80

daphneokeefe wrote: post #55

Try having an apostrophe in your last name. O'Brien, O'Keefe, O'Dell and my fave O'Charley's. It is really simple to accommodate this in software and databases, but the problem is getting worse and worse. The pharmacy can't find my prescription, the cleaners can't find my clothes, my doctor's office can't find my appointment. My passport doesn't match my drivers license. Some of my credit cards have the apostrophe an…

> The sneering response to this is that I should change my name. REALLY? Computers exist to bend to our needs, not the other way around!

I would assume there were quite a few people of Japanese or Chinese origin utterly annoyed at the generation of computers that only had ASCII character representation.

... of course, that era was a long time ago. :)

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#96

Post by lstamour » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 6:52 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #45

chaz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's satire. 12. People’s names are case sensitive. 13. People’s names are case insensitive. Edit: Let me explain ... I was responding to the parent post, and that it wasn't meant to be a logic list of rules. Individual points may be true, but the overall tone of the list and post uses humor to explain the complexity of names. 32. People’s names are assigned at birth. 33. OK, maybe not at birth, but at least pretty c…

"It's satire" Absolutely not! Case sensitivity varies amongst countries. One very simple occidental example: in France names are usually written LASTNAME Firstname So if you type Lastname and your DB doesn't normalize the capitalization of names you won't match So for the last name the search is case insensitive but for the first name not so much. Another example is Turkish, where there are two capital I's, one with…

This is also why quite a few programs have bugs when running on Turkish phones if they use locale-default case changes. Always specify a US English locale if you need to send along a certain code in uppercase, or process other inputs in ASCII. Internationalisation is tough. My favourite part is when systems don't allow last names with "special characters" including spaces, hyphens and periods.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#97

Post by Tohhou » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 7:01 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #61

Tohhou wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will explain it. Google wants personal identity attached to posts on Google+ people Google thinks that people will value what they say when they are not posting anonymously. Some engineer wrote a thing to try to catch obviously fake names, and some kinds of real names, which actually are attached to real identity, get caught in the filter. They didn't target specific groups of people because they hate them ffs. I a…

It sounds like your understanding of racism is not very nuanced. Explicit statements of racial hatred are the most obvious kind of racism. But that's not where it ends. For example, consider the study "Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?" [1] They found that resumes with black-sounding names were less employable than the same resumes with white-sounding names. Is that because a large number of…

When everything is racism nothing is. For example, assuming Google is mainly white, mainly male, mainly white male when it's not. They go out of their way to ensure diversity in their organization.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#98

Post by ampersandy » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 7:41 PM UTC

nimblegorilla wrote: post #49

a3n wrote: post #4

> Google, pick up your act. It's getting really old. Frankly, the fact that Elaine Yellow Horse appealed your policy three times and it was only once the media got involved that you did the right thing shows that your staff are either incompetent, or racist. ... My guess is neither. They're probably very smart people, and they may just arrogantly assume that their specification of their algorithms are correct, are co…

I'm sure the programmers who did this had no ill intentions, but when someone tells you about a broken algorithm multiple times and you ignore it then you are no longer smart. A lot of very common names are also dictionary words (Jack, Jon, Dick, Smith, Smart, Baker, LARRY PAGE, etc...) so someone clearly sat down and figured out an algorithm to allow or restrict certain words. Whoever came up with that algorithm sho…

As if Google's naming policy is a check against a list of words... More likely; Google has implemented an algorithm that uses machine learning and several other heuristics to try and determine the probability that the name is real or not. Still sound like incompetence? Does a name like "Elaine Yellow Horse" seem real or fake? You simply can't win all the time when you deal with billions of people. Google's customer support and appeal process leave a lot to be desired, but calling them incompetent and racist is just silly.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#99

Post by aspidistra » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 7:56 PM UTC

Tohhou wrote: post #94

aspidistra wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, at least, "discriminate" is the right word because it is possible to discriminate indirectly. This is defined in law. If you have rules that apply to everyone but disadvantage people who share a protected characteristic, you are discriminating, whether you intended to or not. http://www.equality-law.co.uk/news/106/66/Types-of-discrimin...

I don't like his post because he needlessly implies Google engineers are malicious when it's obviously not the case. >staff are either incompetent, or racist. I hope for incompetence. Either is bad, but racism is much worse than incompetence. >protected characteristic http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/4 http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/advice-and-guidance/new-e... Does that include names?

You're right: it is wrong to suggest that Google is deliberately malicious here. But again, you can have the best intentions in the world and still be discriminatory. I think it's important to separate the two terms: malicious suggests a motive, while discrimination is about consequences.

> Does that include names?

IANAL, but the specific discrimination against Native American or First Nation names could fall under race. Race in terms of the Equality Act is more than just skin colour: it includes nationality, or ethnic origin.

Or even belief, which "need not include faith or worship of a god or gods, but must affect how a person lives their life or perceives the world", according to this page from the EHRC:

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/advice-and-guidance/furth...

Our names do "affect how we live our lives": we have to use them every day. They are a way of defining who we are.

I don't think it's a stretch either to say that many cultures place a great deal of emphasis and tradition on names. I'm no anthropologist, but variations on naming ceremonies exist throughout the world -- christenings, for example.

Also see the other six points under belief on the EHRC page above. They arguably protect the right of Native Americans to use their own names, and not be denied service because of them.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#100

Post by lmkg » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 8:17 PM UTC

There is a meta-issue going on in this discussion. Funnily enough, it has to do with nomenclature, but not of people. Specifically, the meaning of the word 'discrimination,' and how it can refer to two different concepts (intentional and indirect). I think this problem merits direct discussion on its own. I don't expect a comment on HN to solve the issue once and for all, but I would like to hear people's opinions.

So, I think it's a fairly common thing that people, with absolutely no intention of doing so, accidentally create a system that disadvantages some group of people compared to others. My question is, what term should we use to describe this action? I want to be able to bring this problem to the attention of the people performing it, without making it seem that I am accusing them of ill intent.

Quite a few people (myself included) are/were of the belief that "discrimination" is the correct term to apply in this context. (To us) the word "discrimination" is a description of effect, not intent. In a technical sense it only means treating two groups differently (it's a common term in systems analysis), without implying judgment.

Apparently, some people think that the word "discrimination" does imply intent. That's fine, words mean different things to different people, and I'm glad I learn that. But, that leaves me in a bit of a quandary: if discrimination is not the word to use here, than what is?

Right now I'm leaning towards compound terms like "accidental discrimination." I've seen "indirect discrimination" used elsewhere (as a UK legal term), but I don't like that one. If "discrimination" implies motive, adding "indirect" to me implies being sneaky about it as well.