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

theintercept.com

271–280 of 356 posts

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

#271
Ugly fat poor. 3 strong words repeated over and over in the comments. I hope people realize that there is a pretty large demographic that may identify with this.

As for TikTok, it’s a Chinese app and things we consider discriminating may be a bit normalized there. I constantly get surprised how much the CPC gets away with, but asking my Chinese friends, they’ve made peace with it “it’s for the greater good”.

So like Facebook’s unofficial motto “growth at any cost”, this doesn’t surprise me coming from TikTok. I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook did/does this too.

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

#272
post #4

Geez, I thought this might be an overblown piece about algorithms unwittingly optimizing for the wrong things, but the headline is pretty accurate. Discussing how moderators choose content to recommend to people in the “For You” section (not a user — I assume this is something highlighted to users): > Under this policy, TikTok moderators were explicitly told to suppress uploads from users with flaws both congenital a…

Tinder does the same thing too right ? Attractive people are matched with attractive people At the end of the day when it comes to eyeballs, sexiness sells. The rules of attraction are very much gamified at this point.

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

#273

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…

They should probably make an exception for rich ugly people.

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

#275
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rights don't involve being given "free stuff", they exist to prevents it from being taken away. Which is a super popular misconception (or at least misuse) all on its own.

Positive vs negative rights [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

If you read that Wikipedia you linked it supports my position more than negates it. Positive rights are rarely if ever imposed on individuals or organizations of a country and almost always involve some sort of significantly limited contract which outlines the government's responsibility to fulfill them.

For example, there's a massive difference between saying "everyone has a right to healthcare" in a country than saying "the provincial governments of Canada has to provide a public health insurance option to tax paying citizens and temporary visitors".

When I walk into a doctors office as a Canadian citizen or enter the ER I'm still at the whims of the system. All that I know is that the financial costs of the what care I can find will be covered, care which is provided by a limited set of doctors, care the doctors decide to provide me often based on their perceptions of need and a broad definition of 'cosmetic'. If the doctors office is busy and all the ERs are full, or they don't believe what I say or that my symptoms don't require care, there's no one I can go to about my "right to healthcare" or right to spend the health insurance.

Proposing these limited arrangements as if they are positive rights does more harm than good. Once you add enough modifiers to make it accurate, you might as well not say it at all.

I know this matters little during political campaigns and all promises are non-binding so they might as well lie through their teeth as much as possible, up to the point people call bullshit. But it still significantly influences how we debate and discuss important topics, and it's a type of thinking which filters down into a lot of things which have little to do with political campaigns.

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

#276
post #4

Geez, I thought this might be an overblown piece about algorithms unwittingly optimizing for the wrong things, but the headline is pretty accurate. Discussing how moderators choose content to recommend to people in the “For You” section (not a user — I assume this is something highlighted to users): > Under this policy, TikTok moderators were explicitly told to suppress uploads from users with flaws both congenital a…

Instagram does the same thing; my 'Explore' tab is full of beautiful people even though I don't follow them. From a business standpoint it makes sense to promote the best looking content since it'll lure in more young users. The young kids probably think something like "Hey look at all those beautiful people. I want to be like them and they use Tik Tok so I'm going to use Tik Tok too."

No, having worked on explore sourcing and ranking I can tell you with certainty Instagram does not do the same thing.

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

#277
post #98

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…

> So should high end nightclubs be publicly shamed for doing what they do (when what their "users" want is exactly non-ugly people) TikTok users aren't aware of filtering yet, so telling them is a social good. Humans may prefer to see beautiful people, but filtering out ugly people means the majority of users will be below average compared to the content they view. They should at least know it's happening. > and driv…

Some of the other people may have insightful, informative or otherwise useful things to say/show.

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

#278
post #272
post #4

Geez, I thought this might be an overblown piece about algorithms unwittingly optimizing for the wrong things, but the headline is pretty accurate. Discussing how moderators choose content to recommend to people in the “For You” section (not a user — I assume this is something highlighted to users): > Under this policy, TikTok moderators were explicitly told to suppress uploads from users with flaws both congenital a…

Tinder does the same thing too right ? Attractive people are matched with attractive people At the end of the day when it comes to eyeballs, sexiness sells. The rules of attraction are very much gamified at this point.

not the same thing, no

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

#279
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I run a extremely small website and I have never had an issue with being found on google. This is with questions to visitors as to how they found us, and google is a consistent answer. Do you also have anecdotal evidence supporting your claim that google does not host niche content?

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

#280
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the same result. Ugly/fat/poor people can make engaging content and that will be recommended on Instagram. The content you see depends on your interests. Making this up: if you regularly engage with topics that have a majority of fat people posting, say weight loss strategies, you will see a lot of fat people in Instagram Explore. It's the difference between: - Instagram: "I mostly see beautiful people" (bec…

> It's not the same result. Ugly/fat/poor people can make engaging content and that will be recommended on Instagram. That's not what happens to me. Instagram consistently pushes model-type people to me even though I hardly ever interact with those types.

It might seem related, but your example doesnt discredit what above poster said.
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