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

theintercept.com

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

#311

Post by jessaustin »

wastedhours wrote: post #303
miguelmota wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

And my Explore feed is pretty much just pictures of cute bunnies as that's based on the content I interact with (who doesn't love cute pictures of bunnies?!). I'd say that's very much not the same thing - algorithmic interpretation of what I like, vs a moderator deciding to only promote certain things.

What about the ugly bunnies? Don't be so heartless!

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

#312

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

"TRUE JUSTICE If you really want diversity & protection of minorities suffering workplace prejudice, stop chromo-categorizing -- that fake unempirical business.

Hire unattractive people. They are the one suffering the most, & deprived of attention." [0]

[0] https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1231359316147478528

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

#313

Post by lowdose »

miguelmota wrote: post #220
papeda wrote: 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."

Not everyones wisdom grows by age that's a privilege. A lot of people plateau on a level before they are twenty, its not just young people doing this.

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

#314

Post by kovac »

miguelmota wrote: post #266
pedrosorio wrote: post #262

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…

Let's say there's 10 people on Instagram and 5 are ugly and 5 are non-ugly people Suppose 10 users on average interact with 2 non-ugly persons and 1 ugly person. People like commenting on the non-ugly people's content with "wow so pretty!" and "that's awesome! ", etc, etc while ugly people don't get as many comments and maybe even receive neutral to non-positive comments. Now a new person signs up. They get recommend…

You've got some insight there. But what can we do if humans just like to see and interact with beautiful people and avoid the ugly? It makes things a bit bleak for me personally, but I guess people want what they want :B

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

#315

Post by wastedhours »

jessaustin wrote: post #311
wastedhours wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And my Explore feed is pretty much just pictures of cute bunnies as that's based on the content I interact with (who doesn't love cute pictures of bunnies?!). I'd say that's very much not the same thing - algorithmic interpretation of what I like, vs a moderator deciding to only promote certain things.

What about the ugly bunnies? Don't be so heartless!

No such thing as an ugly bunny!

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

#316

Post by Summershard »

scarmig wrote: post #289
mgraczyk wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Implementation is different, but passes all the same test cases.

Maybe it works that way, because users prefer to follow pretty people.

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

#317

Post by SzamarCsacsi »

jjcm wrote: post #32
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…

Or news stations, which hire presenters based on attractiveness. Or fashion products, which hire models based on attractiveness. Or the music industry, which puts forward pop stars that are attractive while keeping ones that don't have sex appeal off the air. Or the film industry. Or the literally any other industry that tries to survive via popularity and getting eye time. Attractiveness sells. What TikTok is doing…

It's not the same though, is it? On Instagram and TikTok and the likes, you don't need "ugly filters", because there's instant feedback: clicks, impressions, likes, hearts, comments, whatever. In the film industry, for example, you won't know whether the product will be a success or not until after the fact that you spent a ton of money on it.

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

#318

Post by GarrisonPrime »

dang wrote: post #244
avocado4 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China exporting its culture to the world.

Since you've ignored our many requests to stop doing nationalistic flamewar on Hacker News, I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you can email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. Maybe you don't owe a country better, but you owe this community considerably better if you want to post here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'll assume you know better than I, but while browsing the past few weeks of that account's comments I didn't see any "nationalistic flamewar" talk. Just a few mentions of Chinese authoritarianism and the stiffing of dissent and open discourse.

...oh.

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

#319

Post by asdf9240 »

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…

This whole comment basically says, "it is how it is, so you can't criticize it." It is like saying, "racism will exist. Humans are just racist. Should businesses be publicly shamed for being racist if it is what their users want?"

Now as for how we should treat businesses that treat people better based on their looks is not something I have a strong opinion about, but my two cents is that looks should not be a factor of how people get treated because it is possible that representation of "ugly" people in media could make many diverse looking people "attractive" to younger generations. This would be beneficial because it means that talent would have more priority over looks than before.

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

#320

Post by lordgrenville »

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…

Really good analogy. I guess the answer is that it isn't ok that the nightclubs do it either, but they get overlooked because no-one has to be there. TikTok, being so widespread, gets closer scrutiny.

A lot of things are like that. One example that comes to mind is that the New York Times, which frequently runs articles criticising tech companies for invading their users' privacy, loads a million trackers every time you access its website. When you're bigger (and more lucrative), different rules apply to you. Maybe that's not a bad thing.

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