Clbuttic
Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
21–30 of 307 posts
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#22It's always funny (not) when companies don't slice realize that there is a certain overlap between "bad" words and last names (many because of a shift over time wrt. What words are bad, and differences between languages and dialects).
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#23Maybe the Danes are on to something here.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-strict-name-laws-of-...
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#24Tell me again why anybody cares? Is it because the Church is so central to our lives? We're masters of rationality and technology, who believe in a retributive super-ape in the sky? Is it because we're medieval scribes and we really want to use the Latin faeces to indicate our scholarly intentions, instead of the Anglo-Saxon shit that everyone around us uses? There is no reason I can think of that comports with a tec…
Words have meanings. These particular words have offensive meanings, in the sense of them being used to intentionally offend others. There's no word I'm aware of that is only ever used to offend and they all have (and generally have stated with) inoffensive meanings.
In pretty much every community, we seek to reduce the friction between members, and as a part of that, different communities would often choose a point on that chance-to-offend spectrum and discourage use of anything more (potentially) offensive than that point. Despite myself generally preferring more open (and more offensive communities), I find it very rational for others to set the bar at other points.
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#25It seems like tech companies have been doing DIY profanity filters. Apple has a profanity filter for engraving text onto a device in the online store ( https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/1213188371452841984 ); intended to be your name, so terms like "Dick" have to not be filtered. I learnt that Apple has a validation endpoint. Since the engraving service was recently updated, I took a profanity wordlist and checked…
The Apple endpoint, inconsistent as it was, was a little more permissive than I expected. At least compared to something like the Sony Playstation ID filter; for example, 'hitler' is fine for Apple, whereas Sony seems to block out any ID containing the literal string of 'hitle', e.g. `hitle123987` [0]. Meanwhile, Apple manages to block some of the more esoteric sexual profanity that Sony's filter can miss, e.g. `bunghole`.
[0] curl -X POST https://accounts.api.playstation.com/api/v1/accounts/onlineI... -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"onlineId":"hitle123987","reserveIfAvailable":true}'
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#26Its funny to me how they try to apply christian values like avoiding vaguely sexual sounding words while also making significant amounts of money off late night debauchery, picking people up from clubs at 3am.
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#27It seems like tech companies have been doing DIY profanity filters. Apple has a profanity filter for engraving text onto a device in the online store ( https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/1213188371452841984 ); intended to be your name, so terms like "Dick" have to not be filtered. I learnt that Apple has a validation endpoint. Since the engraving service was recently updated, I took a profanity wordlist and checked…
The profanity filter in the Apple App Store was [0] amusingly wrong, but fortunately also a soft filter rather than a hard filter. What happened was, the German localisation of the app description included the word “Knopf”. Knopf is not a rude word, according to any German I’ve discussed this with — it is one translation of “knob” in the sense of “button”, but Apple’s naughty word detector clearly thought it was “kno…
Honestly if filter try to filter out euphemisms all is lost because:
1. People who use them for that just come up with new ones all the time
2. People still use the word in the regular sense, like would I now have to come up with a euphemisms to describe a door knob ?!
3. How I wore is my decision. As long as I don't hurry anyone intentionally or knowingly no person and even less company had the (moralic) right to constraint me. (Through wrt. Minirs, Y least younger ones, their parents opinion matters, too.)
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#28The US has a serious problem with saying normal things like fuck, cunt and shit. I find it extremely offensive to hear beeps in series and even the verge author self censors his article. Fucking stop being hypocrites.
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#29It seems like tech companies have been doing DIY profanity filters. Apple has a profanity filter for engraving text onto a device in the online store ( https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/1213188371452841984 ); intended to be your name, so terms like "Dick" have to not be filtered. I learnt that Apple has a validation endpoint. Since the engraving service was recently updated, I took a profanity wordlist and checked…
The Apple endpoint, inconsistent as it was, was a little more permissive than I expected. At least compared to something like the Sony Playstation ID filter; for example, 'hitler' is fine for Apple, whereas Sony seems to block out any ID containing the literal string of 'hitle', e.g. `hitle123987` [0]. Meanwhile, Apple manages to block some of the more esoteric sexual profanity that Sony's filter can miss, e.g. `bung…
I'm still trying to work out what Sony's filter doesn't like about my username (zeta0134) which I've had for ages. The first bit is just the letter "z" in Spanish; there's no deeper meaning. To my knowledge it's not considered offensive in Spanish, but Sony would not let me have it no matter how many variations I tried. Maybe there's some political thing I'm not aware of?
Anyway, I switched languages and I'm "zed0134" on their network. The whole thing struck me as a bit odd.
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#30A german user was banned on Twitter for writing "Die Boomer" = "the boomers" https://www.dw.com/en/german-grammar-in-ok-boomer-tweet-gets... Also my all time favorite when Facebook banned people posting about faggots which is a traditional food in the UK Midlands https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10419598/Man... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faggot_(food)
I have to say, when I first moved back to the U.K. after a long time in the states, I absolutely could not control my shock followed by giggling when people asked if they could bum a fag off me at a pub or suchlike. (Fag is slang for cigarettes for those outside the U.K.)