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Comment by yosito | Hacker News Reader

I was permanently banned from Tinder for trying to upload a picture of myself holding a pepper from my garden. I can only assume that Tinder's AI thought the pepper looked like an unacceptable body part.

I am absolutely in favor of using AI to combat unsolicited nudes as long as it's implemented something like: on the sender's side, show a warning before sending that the image appears to be in bad taste and asking for confirmation, then on the receiver's side, hiding the image behind a warning that it may be unwanted and showing two buttons, "show image" and "unmatch".

This is how Bumble appears to have implemented the feature. Though personally, I'm not going to test it because I think sending unsolicited nudes is a losing strategy for dating.

Yet, as rare as it might be, there are people of both genders who actually enjoy receiving unsolicited nudes. And people who enjoy sexual pickup lines. The judgement call of what is/isn't going to be attractive or appropriate ought be to left in the hands of the individuals dating as much as possible rather than controlled by a priest at a tech company.

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> rare as it might be, there are people of both genders who actually enjoy receiving unsolicited nudes

I’m a nudist. I don’t enjoy receiving “unsolicited nudes” but a lot of acquaintances from that zone of my life do send photographs that sometimes depict them undressed in pursuit of whatever activity it is they’re depicting — usually the body in the picture is not the point of the exercise.

This just impedes the day-to-day communication of some folks. Imagine if Instagram were bought up by fundamentalists and suddenly implemented a filter that blocks all photographs of women who are not wearing headscarves.

It’s just yet another frustrating obstacle to overcome put in place by prudes.

I get why this would be incredibly annoying to a nudist, but I can’t really see a path forward that works for nudists and non nudists in this context.

Of corse I’m aware that I’m representing a minority concern and I’m well aware that as matters and principles currently stand we’re in a mutually irreconcilable situation. I’m not saying every effort should be abandoned.

I’m just saying that it would be mightily nice if those in decision making positions with regard to these issues and initiatives took the existence of this small and derided demographic into account occasionally.

That’s fair!

When the goal is to create a service with 100% uptake, one can't optimize for the minority position, especially if the majority finds it objectionable.

So what you're looking for if you want something like that is a developer that is not optimizing to get 100% uptake. That's tricky to find, because the people with money always want 100% uptake.

It can’t have a target of “100% uptake” if it’s deliberately excluding some tiny but nonzero proportion of those who might otherwise subscribe.

That’s the bombastic reply anyway.

The more subtle and nuanced response is this is not a comparable situation because it’s not that developers are ignoring a small demographic, it’s that they’re deliberately working to make the environment actively hostile for that mini-demographic.

> It can’t have a target of “100% uptake” if it’s deliberately excluding some tiny but nonzero proportion of those who might otherwise subscribe.

Targets are always aspirational. "100% uptake" just means "As many users as possible."

> they’re deliberately working to make the environment actively hostile for that mini-demographic.

Yes. This is because the larger demographic has made clear that they don't want to share the room with the other demographic and they will leave if forced to.

At one point, a promise of the internet was to optimize for the long tail of niche interests and viewpoints.

I think the internet, as a whole, still does.

Individual pages and sites (even the mega-sized ones, like Facebook and Twitter) don't.

> but I can’t really see a path forward that works for nudists and non nudists in this context

The very comment thread your comment is in describes a method that would work for both.

> on the sender's side, show a warning before sending that the image appears to be in bad taste and asking for confirmation, then on the receiver's side, hiding the image behind a warning that it may be unwanted and showing two buttons, "show image" and "unmatch".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33326990

That method certainly doesn’t work because it is absolutely predicated upon discrimination not respect.

Easy. Have a setting where someone can consent to (or not) receiving images that may potentially have nudity in them.

What about nudists who want unsolicited nude pictures of their friends enjoying dinner together, but not unsolicited dick pics?

I'm amazed by silicon valley's general puritan/orthodox stance on nudity

Nudism is great for the soul - to anyone reading, try it!

They cared a lot less before the lawsuits started hitting.

Their appreciation for nudity is offset by their aversion to standing around in courtrooms or paying money for an expensive representative to do it for them.

Bumble is a dating app. For private communication, you would use an end-to-end encrypted messenger such as Signal or WhatsApp, where no one has any access to your pictures.

> I was permanently banned from Tinder for trying to upload a picture of myself holding a pepper from my garden. I can only assume that Tinder's AI thought the pepper looked like an unacceptable body part.

If that was a "peter pepper", the AI could have reacted just like a human. NSFW warning in case you search: yes, it can look very close to the real thing.

I tried to grow them in my balcony among other types of chili but this type failed probably because of wrong climate and/or bad soil.

The makings of a Lonely Island music video that it's actually a pepper in the popcorn and not something else.

Sorry, I couldn't help but think of the Run-DMC tongue-twister lyrics while reading that.

I'd imagine a geoduck (yes, NSFW) would be similarly misclassified

seafood isn't safe for work? maybe the chinese algorithms are trained to identify cantonese seafood dinners versus american algorithms

A peter pepper looks like a very real flaccid human penis for all bright red and orange human males.

It was a green wax pepper.

50% of the pictures I upload to discord which contains my hands/fingers are flagged as porn and automatically deleted, it's a major pain in the ass. On the other hand I uploaded artistic nudes a few times with less issues

>Yet, as rare as it might be, there are people of both genders who actually enjoy receiving unsolicited nudes. And people who enjoy sexual pickup lines. The judgement call of what is/isn't going to be attractive or appropriate ought be to left in the hands of the individuals dating as much as possible rather than controlled by a priest at a tech company.

Everybody enjoys all these things if it comes from the right person. All women and men would welcome a dick pic of a boob flash from the right conditions and from the right person.

There's also a sex imbalance as well. Women are picky, thus the "right" people that send these things to them encompass probably the top 1% of the population. For men the opposite is true. Boob pics are welcome from likely 75% of the population. Also men have a much lower fear response and disgust response from advances from the wrong people so the other 25% aren't too big of an issue either. Not a hard statistics but you get my point.

Thus the result is a fundamental misunderstanding between both sexes. Many Men would welcome a daily boob pic from a well endowed woman from bumble. And some men are dumb enough to assume women want the same thing. Women on the other hand aren't typically as stupid, but they're much much more cautious in their approach; but they certainly understand men and have capitalized this kind of thing on OF and porn. Women are delusional in the sense that a lot of them think some perfect man who thinks like them exists (probably does 0.01% of the population is my guess) and that they can land this man.

Largely this dick pic offense is a sort of issue raised exclusively by females. A lot of men buy into it too, but it's usually only because they empathize with women. The great majority of men themselves never experience it as raw disgust or fear the way women do.

That's hilarious. I would take that as a sign the platform is as thoughtful with arbitrary enforcement (without review) and that it's users aren't much sharper.

Why do you take it to mean that people who use a dating app are somewhat dumb? I can’t understand how you’d think that from Tinder misclassifying a photo

Firstly, they invited themselves being deep faked in perpetuity. The average consumer who posts their face online doesn't understand the gravity, implications, and permanence that that entails... like their future kids and grandkids stumbling on their dating life, being deep faked in porn, appearing in chumbox image recycling on CNN or (insert ads-heavy site here), social media phantom profile stuffing, and the rights related to company acquisitions. That's just for starters.

Anyone who can't go outside, share hobbies with other humans in person, or connect with people organically probably isn't worth meeting. Dating websites are bursting with the lazy, the truculent, the undesirable, the unpleasant, and the under-socialized. To be fair, there haven't been so many (%) single and "childfree" (old-age misery-in-waiting) people in all of human history. I blame the myriad of distractions: first TV, video games, then VHS (porn), the internet, and finally smartphones. Now, combinations of all these together manifest as digital hallucinations consume the lion's share of people's attention and lives while they miss-out on genuine connections in the moment sharing something real.

Yikes! I can't relate at all to your world view. That sounds stressful.

>on the sender's side, show a warning before sending that the image appears to be in bad taste

Quick feedback like this is what makes people figure out the system very fast, defeating the protection's purpose. It would work much better, if the warning only showed up on the receiver's side - maybe a blank image and the warning, a heavily blurred image and the warning, and a prompt if received would like it to view or not.

> The judgement call of what is/isn't going to be attractive or appropriate ought be to left in the hands of the individuals dating as much as possible rather than controlled by a priest at a tech company.

Using a service doesn't entitle you to control how that service works.

As long as a service is lawful, the owner should be able to define "what is appropriate." Period.

Obligatory https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tWwCK95X6go

you were holding it the wrong way, take a picture with you taking a bite out of it.

> Yet, as rare as it might be, there are people of both genders who actually enjoy receiving unsolicited nudes. And people who enjoy sexual pickup lines. The judgement call of what is/isn't going to be attractive or appropriate ought be to left in the hands of the individuals dating as much as possible rather than controlled by a priest at a tech company.

I don't understand. Are you suggesting that Bumble should allow users to send unsolicited nudes to strangers, despite the vast majority of women not appreciating that? Why would any company want to intentionally degrade the experience of roughly half their users?

> Are you suggesting that Bumble should allow users to send unsolicited nudes to strangers, despite the vast majority of women not appreciating that? Why would any company want to intentionally degrade the experience of roughly half their users?

Why must it be one or the other? They could have a per-user flag to opt in to unsolicited nudes.

Even better, a more fine grained series of flags or enums indicating the level of nudity, topless, bottomless, or even background scenery (to be able to filter out, or in, public nudity).

> Why must it be one or the other? They could have a per-user flag to opt in to unsolicited nudes.

I mean, isn't Bumble's implementation effectively that? Users can still view the potential nudes if they want.

In the abstract, I don't mind if Bumble wants to add a such a flag. In practice, I doubt they will since (1) it's a feature few people are likely to use and (2) the potential for bad press is high ("Woman Receives Thousands of Unwanted Nudes on Bumble after Accidentally Changing Settings").

I'm suggesting that Bumble shouldn't be the judge of what messages are appropriate to send or not. But they absolutely should provide filtering tools and feedback to users to reduce low quality or obnoxious behavior.

I don't disagree with you that a majority of women do not want unsolicited nudes. But there's not a consensus or black and white line between messages that are wanted or unwanted. Not all women are puritans, yet big tech censorship tends to push all interactions toward a puritanical moral ideal.

Personally, I'm interested in dating people who are sex positive, kink friendly, polyamorous and open minded. While I absolutely do not send unsolicited nudes or lead with crude messages, it can be hard to find people with a similar mindset when dating apps insert their morals between me and my potential dates.

I'm advocating for sensible filters and feedback, rather than moralistic censorship. Even if a majority of people agree with the morals. The only morals that dating apps ought to be concerned with are that the interacting parties are all consenting adults.

> I'm suggesting that Bumble shouldn't be the judge of what messages are appropriate to send or not. But they absolutely should provide filtering tools and feedback to users to reduce low quality or obnoxious behavior.

That's an untenable position. Bumble should (and does) block pornographic, illegal, or harassing content. As already mentioned in the post, sending unsolicited nudes is illegal in at least one jurisdiction, so it's hardly a stretch to include unsolicited nudes in this category.

> But they absolutely should provide filtering tools and feedback to users to reduce low quality or obnoxious behavior. [...] I'm advocating for sensible filters and feedback, rather than moralistic censorship.

Isn't that exactly what this feature is? Users still have the option to view potential nudes; they just aren't exposed by default. It seems obvious that the feature should be opt-out (rather than opt-in), given that the majority of users would prefer not to be exposed to unsolicited nudes.

If you let users add an "is okay with nudes" flag, to their profile, then those who want could just consent to receiving unsolicited nudes while anyone else can have a safe experience free of unexpected sausage.

I don't see how that is in any way less practical than outright blocking everything.

I imagine you’re a guy thinking about how you don’t mind a free pic of some sweet leche carriers landing in your inbox, but the only women who send unsolicited nudes are OnlyFans spammers.

Yes.. Go on..?

Surprisingly enough, you're wrong with nearly every single assumption you made in your comment, starting as far back as with me not even using any dating apps.

Fair enough. Was the “nearly” because you are indeed an appreciator of some sweet mommy milkers and that’s the one I got right, at least?

They clearly are saying that one can provide a system that allows for it, but which also allows people to 'never' receive unsolicited nudes (by enabling the solicitation of acceptance of nudes).

Why? He's suggesting some people like that and advocating for liberalism in this (invoking the idea that it is religious conservatism that leads companies to be averse to such things).

It could be a setting.

> They clearly are saying

I didn't find their comment clear, hence my question.

Honestly, their comment feels closer to concern trolling than a genuine grievance (not to insinuate that they're arguing in bad faith, just that the problem is so minor in comparison). Sure, I suppose Bumble could implement a per-user flag instead (at the risk of introducing a plethora of OnlyFans spam, as someone pointed out), but Bumble's new filter is significantly better than the status quo. I truly can't emphasize this point enough. The OP is imagining there's some slim minority of users who are harmed by being unable to receive unsolicited nudes -- and I'm sure that group exists somewhere -- but frankly the largest group "harmed" by Bumble's filter are perverts who get off on sending unsolicited nudes to women.

The new filter is an unambiguous improvement.

Sending unsolicited nudes is a crime so no, it should not be allowed even if there are people who enjoy that stuff.

How does your model differentiate solicited and unsolicited nudes?

Doesn't need to, does it? If it's solicited, you know to click on the blurred image. No harm done.

The person I replied to said sending nudes shouldn't be allowed at all

They did not say sending nudes shouldn't be allowed. They send sending unsolicited nudes should not be allowed at all, even if a few people enjoy it.

They aren't saying people can be naked in front of other people, but that flashing people shouldn't be allowed.

It is not.

https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/bumble-now-unsolicited-...

> This sending of unsolicited nudes, or cyberflashing, is not only violent and pernicious, it’s entirely without consequences in 49 states.

Keep reading the article and you will see it is now indeed illegal in a few places, including Texas where Bumble is based.

> Now, the sending of a lewd photo without the recipient’s consent is a Class C misdemeanor in Texas, punishable by a fine of up to $500.

> you will see it is now indeed illegal in a few places

There's a bill waiting for a Governor's signature in Virginia (which I guess will make it illegal there) and some bills being discussed / worked on in other places but as far as I can tell from the article, Texas is currently the only state with an actual law on the books to make it illegal.

> not only violent

When the western world is so isolated from violence that a naked photo is labeled as such..

Don't get me wrong, that is probably a good thing. And of course I am against unsolicited nudes, but "violence" is a bit of a stretch

There are jurisdictions other than the US, you know? Germany, for example, places unsolicited nude photos as a felony [1].

[1] https://www.anwalt.de/rechtstipps/strafanzeige-wegen-des-ver...

184 isn't a highlight of German legislation though. It's one of the many leftovers from the prussian police and justice system, which had a heavy emphasis on morality and decency. 184 for example also criminalizes everyone in Germany who ever uploaded porn to a site that doesn't comply with current youth protection laws (which is all of them, basically).

Fully agree that the 184 series of StGB is not up to date (e.g. that 17 year olds routinely end up in trouble with the law for sending their partners consensual pictures) and the German youth protection law is ridiculous, but the idea that sending someone unsolicited pornography is bad is a good one IMHO.

Sure, nothing wrong per se with 184(1)6 criminalizing that.

I'd argue though that this only comes about unintentionally because 184i (sexual harassment) only covers physical sexual harassment.

Meanwhile non-physical sexual harassment is completely legal in Germany unless it is an insult in itself (185).

IMHO the proper way is to mostly yeet 184 (because there is no particular reason for the state to morally regulate porn using the criminal code apart from stuff like CSAM) and criminalize sexual harassment in general (physical or not). That's of course going to be a hard sell for German conservatives (I can already see CDU and AfD go "the leftist greens dictatorship is making DATING illegal!")

Honestly, I think the proper way with most laws would be to just yeet them entirely and go for a round of refactoring; but alas, politicians aren't programmers and neither do they have the same mindset of cleaning up after themselves or even after others, so we're stuck with sub-optimal legislation like this and that probably won't ever change.

It has happened a couple of times in the past (e.g. with the law on transgender people or homosexual marriage) that the courts stepped in and demanded improvement or yeeted laws outright as they became untenable.

It's not unthinkable, particularly as the generation "18th birthday gift? Onlyfans account" enters political life, that the same will happen again. Additionally, the youth protection commission NRW is on a holy crusade against Pornhub and other sites - should they eventually be successful, younger people who don't care about the news and only react when they see their favourite porn site going dark in Germany may rise up and demand reforms as well.

And on top of that, boomers are thankfully slowly dying out and retiring, so the gerontocrats in parliament will go away as well.

At what point does a nude become unsolicited though? I mean this is a dating site.

If I put my arm around someone or lean in for a kiss that could be unsolicited but shouldn't be illegal in the context of a date. Similarly dirty talking in a date is different to doing it in the office.

I suppose this could be dealt with through user preferences (don't show nudes/ doesn't appreciate nudes) but the line seems blurred in this situation. It isn't as if you're walking around town in a Mac.

I'm not saying it's ok, but it's not definitely, not ok. People are different, dating is already hard enough without worrying about if you're going to be arrested for trying to get to second base.

It's honestly baffling that I have to explain this, but: Expressing interest in finding someone to date does not imply any form of consent to being sent nudes.

Some people might want that, and for them it would make sense if platforms added an opt-in feature to signal their interest in unsolicited nudes, or to opt-out of whatever form of filtering there might be.

But the default should be that you can open an app for meeting people without being forced to see someone's dick.

Well I've already covered the second two paragraphs.

And I didn't claim the first paragraph was the case.

But I can see a flirty conversation getting to a point where sending a nude might be reasonable to one party. Just like putting a hand on someone's inner thigh might be reasonable to one party at a certain point in a date. It may not be appreciated, signs might have been misread, but unless you want people to sign contracts before they go to bed with each other there's always the danger of there being misunderstandings. And in my view misunderstandings shouldn't be criminalised.

My girlfriend might not appreciate me sending her nudes. I hope we can agree that's different to flashing at random people on the street.

My point is there's nuance. This isn't a black and white issue, certainly in the context of a dating app.

It is always unsolicited until it is reasonably, directly solicited

Right but then you're making 'reasonably' and 'directly' do a lot of heavy lifting.

And what does directly even mean in this context? The standards for initiating sex don't require a sit down conversation as to what each party is agreeing to. So why should nude sending be held to a different standard?

In modern countries that have implemented a consent-based model instead of a coercion-based one you can't just initiate sex with someone based on your presumption that the other person wants it. If they actually don't (even if they don't explicitly say "no") it's considered rape by the law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_consent_in_law

And in what consent based jurisdictions are you required to sit down and have a conversation about what is going to happen?

All of them if you want to be sure, which you should. Update your obsolete and outdated view on consent.

Should I also breathalyse my girlfriend if she gets drunk and horny?

She tells me off if I suggest going to bed to have sex because it kills the mood. So what? Am I to give up sex because our views on consent don't match up with your views?

Have you ever actually been in a relationship? Or do you just have an aversion to sponteniety?

Wow, disgusting comment. I have no interest in discussing this with a rape apologist. Good bye and I hope you come to realize how ancient your views on equality are.

The context for this is talking to a person on a dating app where you haven't met them personally. In that case, assuming you've never met them, I think it's inappropriate to send an explicit photo/video unless they straight up ask to see it.

"The standards for initiating sex don't require a sit down conversation as to what each party is agreeing to."

This attitude leads to women having sex/relations they aren't super comfortable doing. It's not a mood killer if you take a beat just to make sure you're on the same page with expectations and it takes a lot less time than locating, opening, and putting on a condom.

You stated in a different comment that your gf tells you off and it kills the mood if you ask to move to the bedroom or having sex while impaired, but surely you realize that's a totally different situation than you meeting up with someone from a dating app, right? Spontaneously acting with someone you know and with who you have built trust is waaaaaay different than sending an unsolicited nude or making advances on someone who is a little more than a stranger.

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