Facbeook Caught Racially Discriminating Again Banning Some Native Americans
-
@MattSpeller said:
Is it at all possible this is a hard problem to solve? I'll grant that for a huge smart company they're certainly taking their sweet time about fixing / solving it, but come on - racism?
It is a very difficult problem to solve if you want to be inclusive about who you let into your system. Only certain cultures use naming conventions that can be automated easily. Hence part of the problem. Northern Europe legally enforces existing names, for example. But many other cultures do not. Some cultures use common words but not common "names" and others use made up words for names - those can't be managed using the same kind of technology.
Not fixing the automated system is one thing. But not manually allowing people to use names once they know that there is a problem is something completely different.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
That's their claim. But they are banning people FROM using their real name. And even knowing that they are doing that, they refuse to change. So the claim that they want people using their real name is unfounded. They want white people to use their real names, sure, but they don't want native Americans using any name at all. If real names was the real intent, they would allow real names once they knew that they were blocking them.
I think it would be far more accurate to say "they want people to use names not found in the dictionary as that is currently how they appear to be filtering it"
I'll grant you a billion dollar company could afford to setup a call centre to help manually change names. Even having granted that, this does not smack of racism.
: poor treatment of or violence against people because of their race
: the belief that some races of people are better than others
-
I think its ridiculous to believe they implemented this policy to attack a particular race. NO matter what policies you have, you are going to step on someone's toes. Society is teaching us to quickly point out racism whenever its convenient. Its really stupid and it actually creates racism where there was none intended.
-
@IRJ said:
I think its ridiculous to believe they implemented this policy to attack a particular race. NO matter what policies you have, you are going to step on someone's toes.
Allowing everyone to use real names or no one would not step on someone's toes. Here they are selecting, based on racial norms, who can and who cannot. I think that they are sticking to the discrimination now means that it is pretty absurd to think that they didn't intend it from the beginning.
Intend here means nothing more than "put effort into the naming conventions of some races and didn't bother to address others." Having a racially biases system because you can't be bothered or don't care about some races is implicitly racist rather than explicitly. Everyone makes mistakes, that's not the issue. It is how they are handling it now that has made it an issue.
Would you have the same feeling if you were unable to get common services that are often used to communicate with your friends, contact family, be found by others, find a job, etc.? We live in an age where things like Facebook matter a lot. Being banned from having an account based on your race is pretty harsh.
-
@IRJ said:
Society is teaching us to quickly point out racism whenever its convenient. Its really stupid and it actually creates racism where there was none intended.
I agree, but I think it is also caused by reality. Racism is very strong in the US, insanely so, and we can't defend overtly racists activity by stating that we are too sensitive to it. Someone here is being harmed, maybe at first by accident but now intentionally, because of their race. I don't see any way where race isn't a factor here.
-
@MattSpeller said:
I think it would be far more accurate to say "they want people to use names not found in the dictionary as that is currently how they appear to be filtering it"
Which is just another way to write "they want people to use names from racial norms that the management likes."
No different than saying that we aren't racist, we just like certain accents, languages or whatever. Things like names, accent, skin colour, etc. are tied to race.
-
@MattSpeller said:
The most respected English language dictionary says this...
"Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior"
-
The problem here really comes from Facebook having an insane desire to force people to use real names. That's not a reasonable thing to do in this day and age. They decided to implement this policy but decided not to do what was necessary to enforce it. So they are enforcing it at random. They've run into a lot of issues, including ones of safety, because of this.
There is no real reason for them to force the use of real names. It causes all kinds of security problems. They do it, we assume, because somehow they use it to make more money by selling personal data to advertisers. It's a crazy path that they have decided to go down and will not back down on it. But, there is a price to pay for doing that and having a very complicated verification system is a part of that. They are unwilling to do what is necessary to support their own policies.
They could back down and allow other names. Problem solved. The could have a working verification system. Problem solved. What they can't do is what they are doing now.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
They could back down and allow other names. Problem solved. The could have a working verification system. Problem solved. What they can't do is what they are doing now.
The most respected English language dictionary says this... "Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior"
Agreed on both points. It's a dumb policy likely motivated by profit. Where I think we disagree is the intent is not racist in nature. Call them greedy malingering wankers if you'd like, but my objection in this is based on the abuse of the word "racist".
-
@MattSpeller said:
Agreed on both points. It's a dumb policy likely motivated by profit. Where I think we disagree is the intent is not racist in nature. Call them greedy malingering wankers if you'd like, but my objection in this is based on the abuse of the word "racist".
Here is the issue... they make a policy and then violate their own policy to block certain people. They block her for "being". That's racist. When confronted with it, they don't care. They aren't following their own policy to block her, they are actually violating their own stated policy. That crosses a line that makes it very clear that their actions are no longer accidental. Facebook's initial behaviour is a grey area, they action now, TTBOMK, is not.
-
This has been a good discussion! As a result I think I will be me deleting my FB account shortly.
-
@MattSpeller said:
This has been a good discussion! As a result I think I will be me deleting my FB account shortly.
Definitely makes me unhappy to have one. This would have been SO trivial for them to fix. But instead, they are willing to face a firestorm of bad press rather than let a few people be manually verified in order to maintain their own corporate policy. At this point they are making far more effort to block than to allow!
-
I can't fathom why they would not just let it go. It takes some serious passion to be willing to be go through this just to block a small number of people. How this can be worth it I just can't imagine. And it completely undermines their previous claims that the need people to use real names. Their recent battle with one community was that they would not allow them to use fake names even when it was needed to protect them from bullying and even real life attacks. Now, when people just want to work within FB's official policy, they do the opposite and violate their own policy.
They seem to be establishing a trend of hurting small groups and changing the interpretation of their policy to let them do whatever they want to do.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
Society is teaching us to quickly point out racism whenever its convenient. Its really stupid and it actually creates racism where there was none intended.
I agree, but I think it is also caused by reality. Racism is very strong in the US, insanely so, and we can't defend overtly racists activity by stating that we are too sensitive to it. Someone here is being harmed, maybe at first by accident but now intentionally, because of their race. I don't see any way where race isn't a factor here.
The more the media points out racism, the worse racism will become. It is impossible for it to improve when its constantly being reported.
-
I'm very hesitant to delete mine, I think I've decided to kill the existing one and create a new one. I should add that this real name business is not my only reason - I find the whole company / business model creepy as all get out.
As to why they're stuck on it, I don't know either. Seems atrocious that no one can solve this!
-
@IRJ said:
The more the media points out racism, the worse racism will become. It is impossible for it to improve when its constantly being reported.
Is that really true? Does ignoring it make it go away but pointing it out not? In some ways I see what you are saying, but what is the alternative? How does pointing out when someone is behaving badly (maybe illegally) make it more likely to happen than simply allowing them to do so?
-
@MattSpeller said:
As to why they're stuck on it, I don't know either. Seems atrocious that no one can solve this!
You mean that no one will solve this. Plenty of simple solutions have been proposed. The EFF is fighting them to drop the policy completely on safety grounds.
-
@IRJ said:
The more the media points out racism, the worse racism will become. It is impossible for it to improve when its constantly being reported.
I disagree completely for a few reasons. History shows us that by illuminating blatantly stupid ideas not only does social pressure dissolve it rapidly but you also keep those bad ideas in the public eye. Example: the last thing I want to see is the WBC be unable to post dumb shit online. I want to know what they're doing, what they think, how they recruit, etc. All the better to ridicule them, point out their errors and ensure they don't retreat and fester in a self created, self sustaining mindless echo chamber.
-
If everything bad was also illegal, maybe it would be different. But many bad things only get changed through social pressure, since they are legal or legal-ish and benefit someone in a position to enact policy.
