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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

#341

Post by ryandrake »

noobermin wrote: post #286
ViViDboarder wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if it’s the same result does it matter if it’s human or artificial moderation?

I think this is striking at the root. Many people in tech have explained away things that where is a selection that occurs algorithmically even if it unsavoury because the black box is a black box and thus has no ill intent. However, the moderation policy does have intent. It just matters whether you value intent vs. actual consequences when you decide whether something is moral or immoral.

There is a school of thought (not sure if I agree with it) that if the outcome of a process is x-ist (racist, sexist, ageist, etc.) then the process itself is x-ist, regardless of whether there was any intent to make it so.

It kind of makes sense. Bad results can and do come out of well-intentioned decisions. In other areas (business, legislation) we judge policies by their actual effects, not by their creators' intentions.

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

#342

Post by leereeves »

kharak wrote: post #340
leereeves wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a meaningless statement. Bigots of the past all felt their personal prejudices were absolutely relevant, and didn't find the discrimination they practiced at all irrelevant or abhorrent. Society made progress only because people fought against that. They were all accused of fighting against nature, but over time, more people realized those old standards weren't as "natural" as they were once thought to be. Do…

Let's agree to disagree. I'm talking about physical discrimination being not simply valid by the standards of our time, but unavoidable, depending on the context. Short people can't play in the NBA, because they can't compete with bigger players. The only progress that could push society past that, is genetic engineering. Everyone on equal footing or so different, that sport as we know it ceases to exist.

I agree that we can't end all inequalities anytime soon. Men still can't bear children, and women still bear the burden of doing so. Etc.

But that's no reason not to eliminate discrimination when we can.

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

#343

Post by stjohnswarts »

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."

Hmmm I never used that feature before, I just go through my feed. I checked and yes indeedy if it was a person I would say 9/10 were very attractive humans.

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

#344

Post by miguelmota »

kovac wrote: post #314
miguelmota wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That why I don’t understand the outrage; it’s human nature to like non-ugly things.

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

#345

Post by miguelmota »

czardoz wrote: post #291
miguelmota wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What's your point? Are you saying that TikTok having these guidelines is okay? (I work at IG, but not on Explore)

The point is that at the end of the day people will always prefer looking at beautiful people over ugly people, so TikToks practices aren’t really all that absurd.

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

#346

Post by paulddraper »

dmix wrote: post #275
paulddraper wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

Politically, I don't disagree.

I do find this nomenclature helpful when trying to convince people.

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

#347

Post by arendtio »

continuations wrote: post #75

TikTok has a long history of doing shady things: * TikTok's local moderation guidelines ban pro-LGBT content - Chinese-owned social media app bans such content even in countries where homosexuality has never been illegal [1] * Revealed: how TikTok censors videos that do not please Beijing - Leak spells out how social media app advances China’s foreign policy aims [2] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/se…

Actually, I wondered why this article was news. I was under the impression that it was common knowledge that tiktok was doing that kinda stuff.

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

#348

Post by arendtio »

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…

Using the word 'survive' suggests that nightclubs are living beings. A better wording would be 'to stay in business'.

The individuals who they reject on the other hand are living beings, more specifically humans. And that is the point where it starts to become a moral issue because the business interest of an organization is directly linked to the discrimination of a group of humans.

Yes, that is the way that kind of business works, but it should also be valid to consequently judge it as immoral.

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

#349

Post by dang »

GarrisonPrime wrote: post #318
dang wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe in order for it to fully make sense, you have to understand that we'd warned that account four times already, as well as some other things that aren't public.

But even apart from that, there is a litany of comments that broke the site guidelines. It's not like these were hard to find:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22321296

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22313537

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22447855

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22291539

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22251922

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22209247

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

#350

Post by chenster »

lowdose wrote: post #131
chenster wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The difference is Playboy models are expected to be pretty not by hidden rules.
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