I am skeptical that an “algorithm” has anything to do with this at all. I don’t think a computer program has anywhere near the competence to analyze sentences and their intended meanings without context, and I don’t believe they can understand context competently. If it can’t detect “Stop acting like a faggot!!!”, a nasty phrase in any context, then it surely can’t detect “typical white lady”, or even “why are you still breathing then?” and flag them. I would think that the very first step in developing such an algorithm would involve the recognition of words that are considered slurs in most contexts.
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Spot on. When your moderation routine doesn’t flag “faggot” for review, it’s clearly a design failure. Or, perhaps it did flag the comment for review and the reviewer needs looking at. I don’t really know if Twitter uses reviewers for flagged comments or if it’s fully automated but to seems to me a review of flagged comments by an actual person is still needed at this stage. Perhaps one day we will develop a system capable of understanding context but that day seems a bit distant right now.
That’s a very fine point indeed, and makes Twitter’s total silence on the topic of why her account was suspended even more suspicious.
No, it’s specifically picking on gay people (calling someone a “faggot” is fine), and specifically privileging white supremacists, by also allowing their (barely) coded phrases and dog whistles to go unchallenged. Asking someone why they’re breathing when they threatened to hold their breath, unacceptable, but telling a Jewish person they’re going in a gas chamber, unchallenged. The system is entirely asymmetrical and it was built to be that way by, you know, a bunch of Twitter employees who are overwhelmingly white. What a coincidence!
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If they merged this with the facial recognition AI, to which black people barely exist, it might almost break even.
Or, maybe just burn the stupid idea to the ground and teach future generations of the folly of using AI as this years fall guy for institutional racism.
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So the inference you are making is that because most people who work for Twitter are white that they are “picking on” and “privileging” specific groups of people rather than simply failing to protect some and police others.
I find that an unsatisfactory argument. There is no question that some groups are being let down but I don’t think that it is due to some rich-white-straight-cis-ablebodied-male conspiracy, it is simply that the current policing methods are easy and cheap to provide. Going the extra miles to develop nuance in catching dog-whistles is massively expensive - who’s going to pay for that? All the twitter users that enjoy a free service?
If we start an argument based on obvious failures like not stopping openly descriminatory language, you’d get my full support. I’m certainly not defending twitter corp but I’m wary of the escalation to make them all opressors because they have a common attribute. It ends up sounding the same as the basis of the complaint.
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No, it’s that they do not see structural racism as being a thing that could possible shape the work that they do. They aren’t impacted by structural racism, so they don’t really understand what it is, and how it privileges them. Like for instance, they can call the police and more often than not, they won’t get shot.
In many cases, it’s not a conspiracy. In many cases, it’s just pure color blindness that leads them to not understand that they end up with particular privileges that others do not get. And of course, if they think that literally everyone else is on the level playing field, why would they work to change the system that they are in part replicating?
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I really don’t understand your reply.
You start with a “then” but it isn’t clear what point you are responding to.
I think the statement you have quoted is controversial in as much as it is a baseless generalisation.
I think you are simply wrong about needing a specific context.
Racism/chauvanism/homophobia isn’t exclusively about making one group inferior. As soon as one makes a generalisation about any group of people, that one assigns a characteristic to its members globally it leads to an objectification, it dismisses indivduality; “you’re just like all the others” is precisely the problem.
I’m certainly not setting out to defend twitter but I think we need to avoid intellectually lazy arguments that vilify a whole group rather than challenging the decision makers. Otherwise this discussion turns into a group of placard wavers picketing the wrong place.
Accepting for the sake of argument that her comment exhibited racial prejudice, I still don’t think you’re right.
First, if we take her at her word, she was responding to a racially charged comment. Snapping back in a similar vein may not have been ideal, but it was understandable.
Second, on the scale of racial insults, it was pretty minor. It may well have been one of the worst ones, possibly the only one, the target had been subject to; but if we consider, as several people in this thread have urged us to do, the equivalent white-to-black insult (“typical black lady”), I can imagine it wouldn’t feature in the top five worst things a black woman had to deal with in an average week.
Third, I submit that there is a moral difference between racial prejudice towards black people and that towards white people. The former feeds and encourages a narrative that depicts black people as lazy, stupid, feckless, dangerous, etc. and that has very real economic and social consequences for them, sometimes fatal ones. There is no such narrative for white people.
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an eye for an eye leaves the entire world blind.
Scale doesn’t come in to it. You have either exhibited prejudice or you have not. If you have, then you can expect people like me to call you out on it. But let’s be very clear here, I did not enter this conversation to vilify Lauren. I entered in to this conversation to counter certain posters comments that attempted to normalized defamatory stereotypes as acceptable for certain races to use but not for others and to counter the idea that the phrase “typical (insert race here) behaviour” is anything other than simple prejudice no matter the source or the target.
Only for very weak values of “moral”. In fact, employing the word moral here is interesting because morality would inform us that prejudice against a race of people is a wrong no matter who does it or to whom. To suggest otherwise would be to employ a lack of morality as a positional pillar. That one caused more harm than another is irrelevant here. There is no acceptable application of racial prejudice. Wrong and more wrong are still both wrong.
Yes, the racist white lady is a terrible person who should be vilified. This vilification should never take the form of doubling down on racial prejudice.
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But you did explicitly condone her vilification.
A deontologist morality, perhaps.
Acceptable and understandable are different things.
But the difference in wrongness still matters.
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The issue isn’t that the behaviour is called out. Of course it should be.
The issue is the way she went about it. It groups people together based on race, it’s antagonistic, and from a place of superiority. The golden rule seems to apply.
Even if you believe you can’t be racist to a white person, comments like this continue to perpetuate hatred.
If my black waiter brings the wrong meal, should I say, “typical black man…”, or “this isn’t what I ordered”?
One of those is racist, and should rightly get your food spat in, the other will correct the issue.
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Again, is it really the same thing as perpetuation of white supremacy? It’s a false equivalency, because a black person saying “typical white person” doesn’t have the backing of a violent, supremacist system.
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Never send a machine to do a human’s job. I really wish developers would push back against automation where it utterly fails.
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Yes… and? I also explicitly vilified her attacker.
It’s not a matter of any rule. It’s a matter of right and wrong. You seem to have confused morality for effect. There is an effective difference between racial prejudice from black people and racial prejudice from white people. That’s obvious on its face. The effect is greatly different. What is not different is that racial prejudice is a wrong and an abusive act. That one has more effect than the other does not make it a righteous act.
Which I characterize as a difference of effect which does indeed matter. However, let’s not normalize abuse in any form.
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The problem is that people want to act as if it’s the same damn thing or that black “racism” is somehow as bad or worse than structural racism that privileges whites. They want to equate the two, and act as if 500 years of history have no bearing on our language and structures.
I hate to bring up Louis “let me whip my dick out” CK, but his bit on white privilege is still pretty damn spot on. It’s worth looking up, because he lays it all out. Being called a derogatory term for a white isn’t even all that terrible.
So, sure, being called a name sucks, But the context is different depending on the person doing it and how they get called out for it.
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Well, I have consequentialist sympathies.
I don’t think anyone has argued it does.
Yes, racial prejudice is wrong. Some forms are worse than others. I’ve said it and you’ve said it.
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White supremacy is a massive problem, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore everything else. The message you are sending them by making statements like that is that it’s ok to do so. It’s never ok to make comments like, “typical (member of demographic)”. If a black guy is homophobic, is it because he’s black, or because he’s a man? Answer: neither. It’s because he’s an asshole.
Ahhh, but they didn’t argue that it was a righteous act, only that there was a moral distinction! Two acts can be bad, but morally distinct nonetheless because one is worse than the other.
Then we must be vigilant and remind them of the truth. As a white person, I don’t think I’m going to get shot if I’m pulled over for speeding. That’s just one of the many ways I benefit from the luck of my birth. And you are right that being called honkey or any other term will not harm me in the same way as using derogatory terms towards a black person in America.
While the context may differ and the effect is not the same, the act itself is a wrong. These kinds of prejudiced words are intended to harm, to extract a bit of pain. They are a wrong done to another person and that should never be ok no matter who you are or what society has done to you. Do I understand why it happens? Yes of course and I feel empathy towards the people we continue to oppress. However, we should strive to be better instead of equally wrong.
There can be no moral distinction between two immoral acts. Moral distinction only comes in to play when at least one of the acts can be viewed as moral.
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