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Comment by jjeaff | Hacker News Reader

Since the female photos get a significantly higher level of harrassed, how does this not indicate sexism?

I agree with your conclusion (that this is sexist), but not for the reasons you state. Correlation and causation, and all that.

If crappy programmers make crappy chatbots, and they all have female pictures, then people's disdain would not be caused by a sexist reasoning, but by the widespread practice of using female pictures in crappy chatbots.

I have no idea how would one go about testing this theory, specially when I believe your conclusion to be correct to begin with. But I can see why other commenters would disagree.

They also get a higher level of normal responses. That's also sexism, but "positive" for them. Why don't we talk about this, as well?

They specifically didn't mention the level of "normal" responses:

>Other than the creeps, trolls, and bullies, I didn’t notice a shift in the types of questions people were asking - users with problems on Kapwing still asked Rachel for help. But we didn’t analyze the volume of messages, so I can’t say if Rachel got more or fewer messages overall.

Since we know nothing about these strangers, it may be anything from mostly rude boys who like girls (so they target “her”) ... to actually average rude people of all sorts who only attack women. If latter proportion is true, then women get their “cut” asymmetrically.

Lsh, it is no clear indicator.

Female photos, especially the second model photo, look incredibly fake. I guess people use that unwanted box to vent to frustations with what seems to be a bot?

The perception that female photos look fake is still sexism. It suggests people believe it less likely that a woman would be on the other end of the conversation. And you suggesting that perception as an explanation without challenging it kind of demonstrates how this is a pervasive problem.

Now I agree that the model photo looks a little more artificial for reasons beyond gender, and they should probably have compared with a male model photo as well. Though personally I suspect people would still think it more likely that an attractive man was a real person than an attractive woman.

>The perception that female photos look fake is still sexism

Except it's not. Stock photos of good looking women are routinely used in marketing to attract users. It's proven by stats from A/B testing.

So the gendered assumption is the result of a gendered marketing practice which is based on gender differentiated responses to images (which are proven by stats)? But there's no sexism involved here?

Okay, I'm being glib, but this idea that thinking of a plausible causation with no further critical analysis means it's "not sexism" is kind of exasperating.

That's literal sexism then... As in it's literally made to trigger sexual areas of your brain to get your attention. If you wan't to insist that it's wrong to be biologically wired like that, Go on. But... idk.

No, the person is using sexism of other people, but that does not mean he/she himself/herself is sexist.

>But there's no sexism involved here?

I'm only saying a person using good looking woman as an avatar because of a/b testing does not make him sexist.

I'm not sure why it matters if they're "a sexist".

Whether they make a decision based on internal biases caused by societal norms, or make a decision by measuring those societal norms directly and responding to them, the decision is still an expression of societal sexism.

> Stock photos of good looking women are routinely used in marketing to attract users

They're photos, though. They're real. Not "fake"

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