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

theintercept.com

221–230 of 356 posts

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

#221
post #176

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…

The web is still there, you can still dump some HTML in IIS on your crappy windows laptop from bestbuy and plug it into your router and have it show up on google (not that that’s a good idea.) Heck you can dump your html files on github pages with the same effect, you don’t even need to know git. The web is still the web, most people still don’t bother using it.

Getting a domain on google is not as easy as it used to be. If your domain has few inbound links don’t expect to appear on google at all, no matter how unique your search keywords may be.

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In offices, managers are taller and more handsome than the average. What we reward as a society in the west is beauty, not merit and hard work, unfortunately. Study after study shows the same trend in a huge variety of ways, from believing in social mobility to thinking job performance is about job performance despite the often opposite. But I also think this level of anti-intellectualism is temporary.

There is correlation. Someone who cannot take care of themselves is probably not suitable to lead others. In work, "beauty" regards more what you can alter on yourself than what you were given at birth.

There is some correlation, but it's not perfect.

I've thought a lot about this and I think beauty is both shorthand for "that looks like someone healthy and very functional" and also is something that can be faked, so it's not a reliable indicator.

For this reason, I think it will always be both valued and controversial. To whatever degree it genuinely signals something of underlying value, like health and competence, it's useful shorthand. To whatever degree it is a signal that is hackable, it's shorthand with a poor signal-to-noise ratio.

I don't think we will ever completely solve it. We will always be caught between those two facts.

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

#224
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what a lot of nightclubs end up doing is definitely discriminatory and we should not tolerate that.

unattractive people are not a protected class

It depends why they are unattractive. If it is due to a birth defect, dwarfism or some other condition that is also a disability then it is a protected class.

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

#225
post #86

This is what happens when you mix utilitarian morality with a desire to stop online bullying. You just stop letting the most likely targets of bullying be seen. This is much cheaper and easier than trying to get rid of everyone who has ever been mean online, because that's everyone.

A look, a theory contrary to all evidence!

Quoting from the article:

'Regarding the policy of suppressing videos featuring unattractive, disabled, or poor users, Gartner stated that the rules “represented an early blunt attempt at preventing bullying, but are no longer in place, and were already out of use when The Intercept obtained them.”'

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

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately ? We're promoting keeping body healthy and proprotional and fit.

And taller?

Maybe tall people have more confidence on average, which in certain leadership roles, could be a legitimate aspect of merit.

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

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how can you objectively establish that somebody is unattractive? Assuming the world moves into this hypothetical society you're describing nobody wants to be part of that new protected class. If you're by some semantic classified as unattractive, you will automatically feel segregated and marginalized. This is not like sexual orientation where non-heterosexual people actually have a desire to express their sexual…

I can assure you that most gay people don't want to be gay either. There is nothing substantial that differentiates these attributes. It's just two features -- some have it, some don't and some have both. It is not "natural" for one of the features to be negative but not the other.

“ I can assure you that most gay people don't want to be gay either”

That sentence is super ambiguous.

Do you mean “Most gay people have a desire to be not gay.”

Or “Most gay people lack any desire with regard to there orientation.”

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

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what happens when you mix utilitarian morality with a desire to stop online bullying. What in TFA indicates that these policies were intended to stop online bullying? Just as plausible to think that they were intended to create a saccharine user experience in order to promote growth.

The Chinese solution to "disharmony" is to simply erase anyone who is different. LGBT people are allowed to exist so long as they don't draw attention to themselves. Also the ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang. I don't think these were intended to stop online bullying as much as they are just another bullying tactic themselves.

Is this all that different from Apple's walled garden? You want a porn app on your iPhone or a Political app, both are banned and no user oriented way to side load. (geek only solutions don't count).

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

#230

Although this ruffles sensibilities, isn't it kind of expected from an entertainment platform? Any traditional teen magazine from 20 years ago (seventeen, tigerbeat) wouldn't be scolded for heavily policing what photos go in the pages. Not only that, they heavily post processed everything. There's superficial and arbitrary gatekeepers for what is called news, what is played on the radio, basically everything. Even so…

We're moving past allowing this kind of manipulation and distortion of reality.
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