Comment by wutbrodo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wutbrodo | Hacker News Reader

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I always find it interesting to hypothesize why an automated system does the things it does (the implied theory in the OP video is, unsurprisingly, idiotic).

I'd assume that it's a blunt filter that tries to catch racism by not allowing people to say "black" in their advertising profiles. The reason "white" isn't caught up in this filter is probably because the consensus doesn't consider it to be racism when directed at whites ("racism = power + prejudice", all whites have institutional power, etc). I'd guess that the same block would be in place for other groups that are considered to be the "oppressed" instead of the "oppressors" under the childish, binary framework that afflicts so many these days. I'd also guess that "Trying to fix white people" or "Against white people" would be allowed, while the analogues for "black" wouldn't be.

That is to say, their threat model is aimed at _negative_ racial phrases, not positive ones (even ones that they wouod definitely reject under manual review, like "pro white supremacy"). The examples in the video are artifacts of this clumsy approach, not evidence of a conspiracy to keep black creators down like the metaphorical Alex Jones in the OP video claims.

"the consensus"

I don't agree that there is consensus on this definition. It has been around since at least the 1960s and has always been controversial.

I'm being a little imprecise with my terminology, sorry about that.

> It has been around since at least the 1960s and has always been controversial.

It has been around since the 1960s, as an academic curiosity. In the last half decade to decade, it metastasized into the rest of society and embedded itself deeply, almost religiously, into all of the institutions that shape our discourse.

There's no such thing as a society-wide consensus, on pretty much anything (you can even find thoughtful "legalize possession of child porn" takes, like Falkvinge's). But institutional consensus is as close as we come to this, and has real and significant coercive (and doctrinal) power in the form of the media, university curriculums, HR departments, PR departments, etc etc etc.

This is by far the most likely reason for what's being seen, but it's not going to get views like this sensationalist video claiming that TikTok is anti-black.

>"racism = power + prejudice", all whites have institutional power, etc)

Oh please. The attempt to redefine "racism" to exclude white people is itself hilariously racist. It's propaganda that tries to influence people through deceptive language. If the people behind that had honest intentions they would have created a new word to describe the phenomenon rather than try to redefine existing words.

It's a very short comment. Do me the favor of reading the entire thing before beclowning yourself so thoroughly in responding. Literally two sentences later, I call this worldview "childish" and describe it as "afflicting" those who subscribe to it.

The fact that there's a consensus around it (especially the narrower type of consensus that motivates the content policies of a social network) doesn't at all imply support. It's simply not what the word means.

I don't think the person you're replying to said anything that disagrees with your assessment.

He implied this definition was the consensus, when it's an alternate definition used mainly by anti-white activists.

In the context of social media Trust & Safety policies, it definitely seems to be consensus.

> We are committed to combating abuse motivated by hatred, prejudice or intolerance, particularly abuse that seeks to silence the voices of those who have been historically marginalized. For this reason, we prohibit behavior that targets individuals with abuse based on protected category.

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-condu...

Note the weight of "Particularly" above.

Reddit had a similar policy but recently removed the clause "For example, the rule does not protect groups who are in the majority".

I disagree with the logic that Twitter ToS choosing to focus on combating a specific type of abuse is indicative of the definition of "racism". It does not mention that word anywhere.

And these anti-White activists have extraordinary power in academia, politics, the press, etc.

You won't find a relevant textbook in use in major universities that doesn't support this definition, perhaps even explicitly. It would be a brave politician to openly object to this concept.

What is said in private may be different, but publicly this definition has the consensus in the modern West.

My use of "consensus" in the OP comment seems to have been mistaken for approval a couple of times in this thread, so I should point out that this ^ comment exactly captures what I'm saying, as does my clarifying comment elsewhere in the thread.

> And these anti-White activists have extraordinary power in academia, politics, the press, etc.

They do have a lot of power, so aren't they capable of being racist against white people, even when racism is defined as power+prejudice?

There is literally nobody in this thread arguing that the redefinition is salutary, or even sane. I think that the idea that "racism" only applies to certain races isn't just foolish, it's evil. But one can describe the _existence_ of a phenomenon without endorsing it. The bubbles who subscribe to this definition are the relevant ones when discussing how Tiktok's content policy was written.

I'm not sure why you would take my comment (which was simply expanding on someone else's comment) as being directed at you or implying that you agree with the redefinition.

I'm just pointing out the obvious logical mistake being made by generally rational academics and textbook authors. Obviously we don't often see reason triumph over political advantage among politicians and the press, but without the support of educators that redefinition would have far less support.

Yes it is an unfortunately common definition among the groups you mentioned, but I still believe those people to be a minority relative to the population.

The dictionary.com definition for racism says nothing about power being a requirement:

A belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others.

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