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

TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people and the poor

theintercept.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 356 posts

Re: TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people and the poor

#131

Post by lowdose »

chenster wrote: post #100
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #20

How is this different from nightclubs having a high bar to entry? I am not saying this is an ethical thing to do, I am saying these apps are no different from nightclubs and they gotta do what they gotta do to survive. And no matter what you may say, humans prefer non ugly people over ugly people. I am sorry but this is simply how humans work. If you disagree, then you are a hypocrite. So should high end nightclubs b…

Since we are feeding the trolls on the subject of discriminating by appearances, comparing against night clubs is flawed. A night club should not allow just pretty people to enter because simply it is not fair. There might be a hidden rule for some but it doesn't mean that is the right thing to do to begin with. Tiktok is a social network for anyone to join. If they allow anyone to join but only want the good looking…

You have to compare it to the Playboy model. Only A+ girls are on view but everybody can is allowed to fap. Its good old fashion content consumption.

Re: TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people and the poor

#134

Post by def8cefe »

whoisjuan wrote: post #110
def8cefe wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unattractive people, whatever that means, don't want to be part of that group. Neither do the elderly, the disabled, etc, but still they are legally protected from descrimination.

I guess I wasn't clear enough about that. Disabled people certainly don't want to be part of that classification but there's no subjectiveness when it comes to their disablement. Unattractive people don't want to be part of that classification and their belonging to that class is 100% subjective in any direction. Even them leveraging their status to get some sort of benefit. Also, where's the line? Does that mean tha…

>Unattractive people don't want to be part of that classification and their belonging to that class is 100% subjective in any direction.

The way these laws work would not necessitate that. People who are old, disabled or queer are not required to carry a card or get a face tattoo. You are simply unable to descriminate on that variable, whatever the value is (old or young, able or unable, etc).

>Does that mean that rhinoplasty should be covered by insurance under the same merits of sex reassignment surgery?

Age is a protected class in Canada/Ontario but they don't cover blood boys for seniors under OHIP either (although I will strongly lobby for it in old age).

Re: TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people and the poor

#135

Post by mr_toad »

arnaudsm wrote: post #36
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #20

How is this different from nightclubs having a high bar to entry? I am not saying this is an ethical thing to do, I am saying these apps are no different from nightclubs and they gotta do what they gotta do to survive. And no matter what you may say, humans prefer non ugly people over ugly people. I am sorry but this is simply how humans work. If you disagree, then you are a hypocrite. So should high end nightclubs b…

The "TikTok e-boy" and "Nightclub chad" are probably overlapping demographics.

Nightclub Chad is probably e-boy’s granddad by now

https://xkcd.com/2271/

Re: TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people and the poor

#136

Post by whoisjuan »

leereeves wrote: post #120
whoisjuan wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I wasn't clear enough about that. Disabled people certainly don't want to be part of that classification but there's no subjectiveness when it comes to their disablement. Unattractive people don't want to be part of that classification and their belonging to that class is 100% subjective in any direction. Even them leveraging their status to get some sort of benefit. Also, where's the line? Does that mean tha…

> Does that mean that rhinoplasty should be covered by insurance under the same merits of sex reassignment surgery? If someone's nose is causing as much distress as gender dysphoria, why not? Sex reassignment surgery isn't easy to get, and presumably coverage for "corrective" cosmetic surgery would also take some evidence. Patients couldn't just make an appointment on a whim.

> If someone's nose is causing as much distress as gender dysphoria, why not?

I definitely agree with you on this one.

But that's where I feel the line gets super blurry. This is not a white or black issue. Gender Dysphoria is an actual documented mental disorder.

Feeling ugly (or in the context of this debate, being classified as ugly), in general, it's not.

Re: TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people and the poor

#137

Post by solveit »

whoisjuan wrote: post #110
def8cefe wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unattractive people, whatever that means, don't want to be part of that group. Neither do the elderly, the disabled, etc, but still they are legally protected from descrimination.

I guess I wasn't clear enough about that. Disabled people certainly don't want to be part of that classification but there's no subjectiveness when it comes to their disablement. Unattractive people don't want to be part of that classification and their belonging to that class is 100% subjective in any direction. Even them leveraging their status to get some sort of benefit. Also, where's the line? Does that mean tha…

> Disabled people certainly don't want to be part of that classification but there's no subjectiveness when it comes to their disablement.

You'd be surprised. Being disabled is a spectrum just as being ugly is. It's not just perfectly healthy people vs people missing entire limbs. It's also the person with moderate chronic pain who can do anything they like but not everything they like.

And then there's the whole other subjectiveness that comes from bureaucrats having to classify people into discrete buckets based on how disabled they are. Sure you can't raise your arms above parallel, but does that qualify you for 4C coverage and not just 3D?

Re: TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people and the poor

#138

Post by jussij »

zapzupnz wrote: post #125
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, it IS a night club. The Web is not what it used to be decades ago. There is no elusive concept as "The Web", it's now just a different way for people to connect, just like going to a nightclub. It's been like that ever since the majority of the world got on it. You say "it's a place for people to put their content out on the internet", but you don't ask WHY they would do that. And I don't know if you have use…

What kind of night clubs do you go to where there's a high bar of entry — but everybody is still allowed in anyway? It's more like a strip club, where the beautiful people are unpaid strippers who don't even know that they are strippers. And even that's a poor metaphor.

The way I read the OP's analogy is just as the Night Club places restrictions on who can enter, TikTok is also placing restrictions on who can post content.

And why I think the analogy does have some merit, is because the metric used to decide on who gets restricted is the very similar in both of these cases.

Re: TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people and the poor

#139

Post by cosmodisk »

I only heard about TikTok probably a couple of month ago,as I 'checked out' from social media platforms long time ago. Now what they are doing is is awful, however, that's already the case across the board. The world celebrates handsome men chasing a ball, women that have more silicone and botox in them than an average lab. We somehow give more attention to someone,who's ass size falls within 9th percentile, than the scientist,who discovers cure for some nasty disease. We reward people with tons of cash for coming up with some nonse, science free absurd, while we are ready to throw stones at anyone who says that oil fried fries are bad for us. The same crap happens on youtube or instagram,where pretty faces push yet another cream from big name corp.

Re: TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people and the poor

#140

Post by mr_toad »

ALittleLight wrote: post #90
pjc50 wrote: post #6

The Russians call this "face control"; the practice of maintaining a club full of only good looking people by the bouncers. It's unpleasant, but a handy reminder that TikTok and other social networks don't work for you, but make you into a product.

TikTok is presumably doing this to create a better network for their users. Most of their users are watchers rather than content creators. I'd expect most watchers would prefer to watch attractive people over unattractive ones. To me, this seems most similar to movie producers hiring attractive people to be in their movies. TikTok creators are making content for the platform, and the platform is curating the content…

> In the same way movie producers select specific people to be in their movies because they think their audience will appreciate them.

Sadly, they’re probably right.

Post reply on HN