TikTok Told Moderators to Suppress Posts by “Ugly” People and the Poor

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/

by balola • 6 years ago

87 21 6 years ago

theintercept.com

somid3• 6 years ago

Yes, but doesn't Instagram by natural vote (based on views) also punish ugly people?

amitport• 6 years ago

Whataboutism doesn't help the conversation

Edit in response to commenter: Whataboutism is a Meme? It a logical failure and when used it should be dismissed since it highjacks the conversation which is about what tiktok did (which is different from what insta and friends do).

Broodleblot• 6 years ago

Neither does dismissing things with a meme.

fingerlocks2• 6 years ago

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

In particular: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21854822

Barrin92• 6 years ago

Yes. I guess it's no secret that the influencer economy is dominated by people who you could call conventionally attractive or people with lifestyles that young people would want to emulate.

This is of course not news as people in entertainment have always set impossible (and rather shallow and conventional) beauty standards, but I think apps like tiktok with their engagement drive it even faster.

You see a lot of discussions these days about dating behaviour on Tinder as well as people being obsessed with height in their profiles and whatnot, and we seriously have to wonder what this interaction through apps is doing to our social life.

viraptor3• 6 years ago

Not getting upvotes naturally is different from being suppressed by the platform. Specifically tiktok seems to remove the opportunity for success early. Lower votes on Instagram mean just lower votes - smaller communities can still get organised around the "undesirable" profiles.

You can't actually "punish" anyone on IG using voting, because as far as I can tell, you can't downvote.

jariel• 6 years ago

There's no 'but'.

Companies that sell products for the disabled are not 'discriminated against' by the pretty and able-bodied who don't buy their products by virtue of the fact they don't want them.

There are no hairs to be split here: discriminating against the disabled is reprehensible if not illegal, moderating against those who are 'poor or ugly' is at least reprehensible, and suppressing those who don't support the Chinese State is deeply problematic, though it might not be illegal, it should be, at least for users within non-Chinese jurisdictions wherein the can establish regulations concerning this.

To boot, if it can be demonstrated that TikTok receives direct or indirect state aid, then they're violating WTO rules [1].

[1] https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/statra_e/statrad.htm

boomboomsubban2• 6 years ago

A better analog is television, where such practices are completely ingrained in the system. This is also broadly true of their guidelines on political and sexual content as well, making it seem like TikTok was trying to become something like CBS.

rasz• 6 years ago

Not sure about that. Rednecks, hoarders, botched plastic surgery, fat people failing to lose weight, popping pimples and abscess. This is pretty much 1/3 of Discovery Channel lineup. Rest is pseudo history, alien abductions and gun shows.

globular-toast2• 6 years ago

Life in general punishes ugly people.

BostonFern• 6 years ago

The faster you accept this and move on, the more time you'll have to focus on what else matters.

pinkfoot• 6 years ago

Yes, I feel for them.

dirtyid• 6 years ago

Distillation of Chinese / Tik Tok model:

1) Maintain political serenity via suppression of fringe politics.

2) Hide "embarrassment" which is distinct form merely promoting glamour.

It's a algorithm for stable mass appeal, you don't get much fringe representation, but you also don't get Arab spring. For many countries, that's the pragmatic priority.

Pmop• 6 years ago

I left all social networks when Facebook apologized for having done psychological experiments on its users. I recommend you all to do the same.

Mainstream social networks no longer connect people.

blaser-waffle• 6 years ago

When did they ever?

I got off of Facebook in 2008 and even then there was no ambiguity that FB, Google, etc. were going to data mine the hell out of you.

They have utility -- like opiates, or guillotines -- but only in very specific use cases.

TikTok Told Moderators to Suppress Posts by “Ugly” People and the Poor

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