Twitter engineers replacing racially loaded tech terms like 'master,' 'slave'

https://www.cnet.com/news/twitter-engineers-replace-racially-loaded-tech-terms-like-master-slave/

by martinlaz • 6 years ago

47 137 6 years ago

cnet.com

baggy_trough2• 6 years ago

To say that these terms are racist, one must start with a racist point of view.

Certhas2• 6 years ago

No, one just needs to live in a racist society with a racist history.

I am not a fan of ignoring context but I get why American companies, with their specific history would want to do that.

hw2• 6 years ago

+100. Race is a product of racism, not the other way around. One is not born of a particular race and the practice of racism is what makes being of certain colors the same as being associated with a certain race. Would recommend reading "Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life" by Karen E Fields.

brink• 6 years ago

I never in my twenty years of computing have thought of those words in terms of race until today.

Race is being dragged into everything now and I hate it.

zorpner2• 6 years ago

Race has always been everywhere. You've just been able to ignore it.

shahruz9• 6 years ago

I don't think of those words in terms of race either, but it's such an easy thing to change. It might be worth considering that a lot of the people who are speaking up have to feel that way about race being a part of everything all the time and they hate it too.

Everyone's trying to get to a level playing field where race isn't an issue. Maybe equality can seem like it's oppression if you're used to not having to worry about that stuff.

gokhan• 6 years ago

Are you white? What if a black person finds those terms offensive?

aplummer• 6 years ago

Some people are constantly marginalised in their everyday, who are constantly reminded negatively of their race, and don’t have the luxury of forgetting about race for even a day.

If changing branch names makes them even just a little bit more comfortable I don’t care if they rename master jiggerypokery.

nickelbob• 6 years ago

This is your privilege.

Here's a really great article that helped me notice my own privilege - https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mcintosh.pdf

emerged2• 6 years ago

It's the most absurd waste of human energy. Nothing is being solved, it's energy which goes directly into amplifying whatever actual racial tensions there already were.

Nobody who is actually racist goes "oh. I guess I shouldn't be racist anymore because they changed the name of the default Git branch" -- I refuse to pretend this is anything other than complete totalitarian Marxist nonsense.

rvz• 6 years ago

It's likely that you have something that has a particular word that some how 'offends' someone.

Given the word 'Master' would asking 'MasterCard' to change its name make it less racist? Can't say Masters degree anymore because someone has dragged race into it and has been 'offended' by it. Perhaps you know some academic who's in a dilemma and can't cite a quote from a paper because the terminology contains the scary 'Master' word in it due to fear of being called a 'racist' if they use it. See where this goes? Where do you draw the line and how far will this be taken?

At some point, someone is going to draw the line somewhere and disagree with renaming for the sake of virtue signalling.

baggy_trough2• 6 years ago

Sorry astronomers, black holes and white dwarfs are cancelled.

shahruz9• 6 years ago

So it's not worth doing anything because there's a line somewhere ahead? At some point whatever startup you're working on will definitely reach an end in some form, so you should definitely stop working now.

HappyDreamer• 6 years ago

I'm wondering if "Master" isn't the problem — it's "Slave" that's not so good.

And, when changing "Slave" to e.g. "Follower", it makes sense to rename "Master" to "Leader" too.

I'm surprised some people want to rename the Git "master" branches to "main", although the word "slave" is absent in this context. That's similar to your MasterCard example? (Rename to "MainCard".) But I'm not a native speaker or color minority person where I am currently, so what do I know.

At the same time, "main branch" is shorter than "master branch" and simpler to understand for beginners? I think it's a better name.

nappy2• 6 years ago

A lot of flagged responses to this that are completely reasonable and respectful. I would encourage the moderators to take a look here.

bluedevil2k• 6 years ago

There were masters and slaves thousands of years before it existed here in America. To claim the terms are only referencing slavery in America is rather short sighted.

bmm6o• 6 years ago

I'm not sure i saw that claim in TFA. Did i miss it?

therealdrag03• 6 years ago

It’s only “racial” if master/slave is racial. There has been racial slavery in America. But the master/slave are themselves are not inherently racial words. To be hyperbolic, it’d be like avoiding the use of the word “cotton”.

hw2• 6 years ago

Right. How are these terms 'racially loaded'? The concept of masters and slaves have been a part of humanity for a long time in many different cultures and countries.

Great that they're working on this, but how about them engineers work on improving their API stability.

grawprog• 6 years ago

Tl'dr the list of words to be replaced:

Whitelist becomes allowlist.
Blacklist becomes denylist.
Master/slave becomes leader/follower, primary/replica or primary/standby.
Grandfathered becomes legacy status.
Gendered pronouns (for example "guys") become folks, people, you all, y'all.
Gendered pronouns (for example "he" or "his") become they or their.
Man hours becomes person hours or engineer hours.
Sanity check becomes quick check, confidence check or coherence check.
Dummy value becomes placeholder value or sample value.

dlbucci• 6 years ago

Wonder if "yinz" would be acceptable, too...

Certhas2• 6 years ago

Seems like mostly also strictly better names. Though being German replacing master with leader is ironic in our cultural context (the literal translation of leader is Führer...).

ethbro4• 6 years ago

Gendered pronouns (for example "he" or "his") become they or their.

For the love of grammar, just invent a neutral pronoun.

"He" or "she" is singular.

"They" is plural.

These things are not like each other.

zorpner2• 6 years ago

"The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to 1375" https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they...

monkpit4• 6 years ago

They is already used as a singular pronoun. Just because you want to play the grammar police won’t stop people from using it as a singular pronoun. It has already been invented, you’re welcome to use it.

ibejoeb2• 6 years ago

Sanity check becomes quick check, confidence check or coherence check

why?

natdempk3• 6 years ago

Similar to how we no longer use "retarded" to be sensitive to the disabled, people have been rethinking words like "crazy", "insane", or "sanity" to be sensitive towards those with mental illness.

Update: Not sure why I got downvoted for stating the rationale for why people are making this change. Objectively I haven't even stated my opinion on the change, just the rationale I've seen for it. If you want a source here's one from NPR around this language: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/08/739643765/why-people-are-argu...

bobthepanda3• 6 years ago

also the US has a pretty ugly history of throwing up nonconforming people in mental institutions when it's convenient (see: suffragettes, gay people, etc.)

mlyle• 6 years ago

An interesting tangent is-- "retarded, moron, imbecile" all were relatively neutral medical terms once upon a time.

Labels applied to disadvantaged groups linguistically develop a pejorative connotation over time.

dijit4• 6 years ago

Yes, but this is very much part of the Euphemism Treadmill[0]

I would fervently argue that 'sanity' has nothing to do with denigrating persons, merely ensuring that the solution remains "sane" in light of many people pouring time on things in different contexts.

Unless we're saying sanity in of itself is bad?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Evolution

htk• 6 years ago

But confidence check can hurt people with low self-esteem. It’s turtles all the way down.

ibejoeb2• 6 years ago

I'm not downvoting you. I just don't see an argument against sanity or coherence. These are things are objectively good. Don't hear a lot of "hey, that's awfully coherent, how about maybe walk that back a little..."

I'm good with the rest of it. I have no need to call anything master/slave. I worry about analysis paralysis though. Primary/secondary has caste connotations, if you ask me...

klhutchins• 6 years ago

I'm guessing because there might be a possibility someone might be offended?

_xnmw• 6 years ago

Because according to a woke worldview, there is no such thing as insanity.

caned2• 6 years ago

"Confidence check" is insensitive toward individuals with low self-esteem.

chris_wot• 6 years ago

And yet they allow Trump to tweet his hatred.

cobbzilla• 6 years ago

Could "Spartan" and "Helot" work? Or would Greeks be offended?

kache_• 6 years ago

This endeavor is doubleplus good!

jakelazaroff6• 6 years ago

To everyone whose first reaction to this is negative, can I ask why? Do you really have an emotional investment in these specific terms?

We have the opportunity to make tech marginally more hospitable to Black developers at basically zero cost to everyone else. Let’s not mess it up!

f3295cde5• 6 years ago

It is not about the specific words, it is language and the use of words. Let's say ESPN came out tomorrow and said they will replace the word 'football' as it is offensive to people with limb difference - would you nod and toe the line without raising an eyebrow?

monkpit4• 6 years ago

No, it’s more like trying to get the Redskins to change their name - which many people support.

jakelazaroff6• 6 years ago

Sure. Again, why is that a problem? I have literally zero emotional investment in being able to call football “football”. Why would I not make a tiny change that has no pragmatic impact on my life in order to be more considerate?

PeterisP• 6 years ago

I presume the reaction is not about investment in any specific term but against the general principle of changing names because someone feels that they're somehow related to something offensive. And of course there's the general natural resistance to someone else demanding that you change your behavior.

In essence, it's a defence of the slippery slope. And not the slippery slope fallacy, as the list included in this article already demonstrates that the slippery slope is very real, extending the approach from terms where the connection makes sense (e.g. the master/slave relationship) to terms where the connection is much weaker (e.g. dummy value).

I'll gladly support the changing of a particular term e.g. master/slave if we draw the line at discussing that term alone on it's merits and justify it's change with specific arguments that for this particular case the benefits outweigh the cost - and the cost is not "basically zero", it requires work on many, many people to change many, many things, it's a nontrivial cognitive cost of changing the habitual terminology of literally millions of people. If it's only about this particular case and we don't concede that "word policing" is generally acceptable behavior.

But if the position is explicitly about the general case, as it seems to be in the article; if we lump together the master/slave terminology with dummy value and expect to extend it further (e.g. the RuboCop debacle not so long ago), then I can't consider that acceptable. If it's piecemeal, then we can discuss specific cases, but if it's all-or-nothing, then I'm strongly on the side of free speech and against the policing of what words are permitted.

If there's no clear, defensible line of changing master/slave terminology that ensures that neutral-seeming (to me) terms won't be attacked as well, then I must defend the general concept and assert that no terms should be changed. The big issue at stake here is whether it's appropriate to make demands to change terminology because someone feels offended, as opposed to making requests (where "no" is accepted) and awaiting consensus. So there's some "line in the sand" (which I don't want to see crossed) at the implied moral right to make demands at the choice of words others use for technical terms. Because it's absolutely unacceptable to have people verbally assaulted and 'cancelled' for things that weren't meant in offence, it's absolutely unacceptable to require everyone to self-censor everything that might be misinterpreted. I've seen how it went back some decades ago in USSR, trust me, we don't want that. If ensuring this means that we'll also have to permit racists to say racist things, oh well, too bad; some things are more important than others, and freedom of speech (practical freedom, including social consequences, not the first amendment about government restrictions) is far more important than freedom from being offended. I strongly support a social climate where misinterpretable things are tolerated and people are free to just live their lives without worrying about stepping on social landmines. So if person A uses a misinterpretable term (like most of this list) in a technical discussion and person B loudly protests its use and calls for social ostracism, I'd want person A to be safe and person B to be ostracized for making unreasonable demands.

And to put it clearly, if someone demands the rest of the world to change from "dummy value" to "placeholder value", then that is an unreasonable demand. If you want to speak differently, you're free to do so, but requiring a whole field to change without a very strong reason is unreasonable chutzpah that should not even warrant attention - and it's sad that here it is, requesting attention.

MockObject• 6 years ago

Because I'm a black developer and I am deeply, savagely offended by such empty pandering gestures. It's like being patted on the head. The thought that a professional like me is disturbed by industry standard terminology is truly degrading. For the life of me, I cannot comprehend there being any good faith motivation behind any of this.

draugadrotten• 6 years ago

There is a lot of "white" and "black" out there to replace, especially on paper.

Raed667• 6 years ago

(Non-US opinion) I don't mind changing the usage of loaded terms, either racially or in other ways (like grooming).

Changing the usage doesn't harm me in any way and if it arguably provides a more welcoming environment for people then why not.

shahruz9• 6 years ago

This is the crux of it. If something that takes nothing away from you makes things better for others why argue against it?

f3295cde5• 6 years ago

It is not at all a fact this this takes away anything from anyone. It is not clear to me at all there is anything even close to a significant fraction of public opinion that agrees that using these words in this way is a problem.

blackbrokkoli2• 6 years ago

Because of opportunity cost, wasted space.

Here we have 50+ HN readers and hundreds of OC readers wasting part of their limited patience/passion/tolerance/love for the topic of racial unjustice because someone is using their etymological ignorance (and inability to use Wikipedia) to project their own bias into completely unrelated matters.

DyslexicAtheist2• 6 years ago

it distracts from the real problem and from actual solutions as I mentioned in my other comment[1]. companies actions (such as using off-shore havens, and funding surveillance Tech) need to stop. by playing the culture war we make ourselves feel good without stopping anything.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23727420

spaniard892775• 6 years ago

by playing the culture war we make ourselves feel good without stopping anything.

Thank god I'm not alone.

shahruz9• 6 years ago

You're not wrong. These are two separate issues and they should both be improved. It's not like we can only do one without the other, and the first steps to bigger change will almost always start with small steps that many feel are too small.

im3w1l• 6 years ago

If a man screams "slaaaaaaaaveeeee" in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it still cause offence?

The answer is yes. It does. Because it's not about sparing the feelings of the person who hears it. It's about controlling language to control thought. It's about control.

Think about why people go looking for things to be offended by. If they only wanted to feel welcome would they really go looking?

r721• 6 years ago

Another discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23723433

gator-io• 6 years ago

We now live in clown world.

dijit4• 6 years ago

This is going to be controversial; thus flagged, but I'd like to have an actual conversation about this.

It's my understanding that slavery has very little to do with race, blacklist has nothing to do with black people and "man" is the default term of humanity that comes from a completely different etymology than the word we use to refer to a male person.

I'm generally pretty stubborn but given the amount of traction this is getting, can someone _please_ explain to me the logic here? I'm perfectly willing to change my mind but right now I cannot fathom that these terms were harming people- unless those people were looking for reasons to be harmed.

Veen2• 6 years ago

This might shed some light on the thinking that motivates this sort of thing:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory

frandroid2• 6 years ago

There were eras where slavery had little to do with race (see: the Roman Republic and Empire) but the history of slavery in the last half-millennium had everything to do with race; it is the edifice on which white supremacy was built.

You're not "controversial" for skipping over the blindingly obvious, but we're not allowed to insult people on this forum, so feh!

Andrew_nenakhov3• 6 years ago

but the history of slavery in the last half-millennium had everything to do with race;

Slaves in Russian Empire were freed a few years earlier than slaves in the USA. There were roughly 5 times more slaves in Russia than in USA, and I can pretty confidently say that zero of them were black. Even if you add ~2 million black slaves from Brazil, the number of black slaves would be dwarfed by the white slave population from Russia.

Based on this calculation, I don't think that your thesis about the history of slavery in the last 500 years holds well.

bobthepanda3• 6 years ago

Not all slavery is race but the vast majority of US slavery was race-based against black people. Black people don't care about the general history of all slavery, they care that at one point the vast majority of blacks in America were slaves.

dijit4• 6 years ago

Ok, but do you not think that this kind of mental colonialist attitude is a bit problematic?

The world is not the US and does not share your culture, yet you're imposing it on us.

PeterBarrett3• 6 years ago

The simple way that I think of it is how black/white list is constantly reinforcing in your head that black is bad and white is good.

f3295cde5• 6 years ago

Please explain to me how "sanity check" or "dummy value" can reasonably be considered non-inclusive.

There are multiple definitions of these words including:

Sanity - reasonable and rational behaviour.

Dummy - an object designed to resemble and serve as a substitute for the real or usual one.

It strikes me as incredibly sensitive to say these are unacceptable for use. Sure, we can use different words but that is not the point - the point is how can words used as commonly defined and with no spite or foul intention be banned?

The comedian Stewart Lee has an excellent routine on this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03zdyz5

natdempk3• 6 years ago

Copy-pasted my comment here, but similar to how we no longer use "retarded" to be sensitive to the disabled, people have been rethinking words like "crazy", "insane", or "sanity" to be sensitive towards those with mental illness. For people with mental illness those words may be loaded with negative meaning and there are often more neutral or descriptive terms that can be used instead.

f3295cde5• 6 years ago

I fundamentally disagree that you can't use a word in one context because of its use in another. If I call someone a bastard I do not mean that they were born out of wedlock the context and use of the word are entirely different.

pseudalopex3• 6 years ago

Stewart Lee: "What is political correctness? It's an often clumsy negotiation towards a kind of formally inclusive language. And there's all sorts of problems with it. But it's better than what we had before."[1]

[1] https://youtu.be/x_JCBmY9NGM

Arcuru• 6 years ago

There's been a movement at my employer to replace some of these terms for years, though it seems to be getting more widespread attention lately.

Some of the terms, especially 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', are also very confusing to many non-native english speakers. 'Allowlist' and 'denylist' are just a lot clearer in those cases.

bigpumpkin• 6 years ago

Orange is the New Purple

klagan• 6 years ago

ridiculous. context is king

jyriand2• 6 years ago

I would think racism and slavery are two different things. Usually slaves and masters are of the same race. But I understand why this might be a good move, the word “slave” itself is pretty loaded with negative connotations.

frandroid2• 6 years ago

Usually slaves and masters are of the same race.

Not for the last 500 years.

dijit4• 6 years ago

My friend, I'm sure you mean well, but there are more slaves today than any other time in history, and I can assure you; they are not of one race.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/25/modern-slavery-...

jyriand2• 6 years ago

"Usually" is not the best word here, I agree. What I meant is that it's "often the case". There are multitude of examples from Middle Ages in Europe(and before that), and Vikings etc. Not only people from Africa were were victims of slave trade.

Andrew_nenakhov3• 6 years ago

In the last 500 years, too, without any doubt. There were 21 million white slaves in Russia, emancipated only in 1861. USA and Brazil had ~4,5+2 million black slaves, combined.

senthil_rajasek2• 6 years ago

Thank you twitter engineers. To the people trying to deflect, consider this as an opportunity to learn and progress.

So much of the tech language is filled with insensitivity.

caned2• 6 years ago

It seems that there is a movement that values "sensitivity" more than understanding. How does this so-called progress lead to greater understanding?

senthil_rajasek2• 6 years ago

Ahhh it allows minorities feel welcome, more involved and free to be themselves.

It certainly was a relief for me ( I am a dark Indian) when SQLServer went from master/slave to publisher/subscriber.

I don't have to second guess intonations when people say master/slave as a sly joke or a sincere discussion in tech meetings.

pseudalopex3• 6 years ago

Most of the replacement terms are more accurate or more precise.

monkpit4• 6 years ago

There is a lot of downvoting going on in here on very valid comments. I know it goes against the guidelines to complain about downvotes, but it’s surprisingly toxic in this comment section. I expected better on HN, it’s pretty disappointing.

dang• 6 years ago

People on each side are downvoting the other side. I changed that in a few cases, but I'm also not seeing a lot of fine comments here that are downvoted. It's mostly flamewar stuff that breaks the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

If you have links to other examples, I'd appreciate them. You can always send them to hn@ycombinator.com.

AzzieElbab• 6 years ago

Really sad seeing a flagship company making headlines with something this superficial.

Anthony-G• 6 years ago

With its 140 character limit and its desire for "engagement", I always felt that Twitter was optimising for superficiality.

DyslexicAtheist2• 6 years ago

github (owned by Microsoft) also was on the FP just recently for renaming master.

this feels like empty (if not hypocritical) when (as Cory Doctrow writes) the same companies:

"spend 20-45% of their budgets on policing on but cops run foundations that solicit millions from large corporations, which then take tax breaks for their donations. The money goes into a slushfund used to procure off-the-books military and surveillance gear. " -- https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1278391796733669378

this just fuels the culture wars but does nothing to address the problem of racism

blackbrokkoli2• 6 years ago

Saying that these terms are racially loaded is, well, racist.

I can kind of understand the argument that there is a history of racism connected with slavery, but the concept of "slave" predates discrimination of coloured people by millenia, closely followed by the word itself, which is actually derived from "Slav" (like you sometimes hear Russians being referred as). But fair enough, seeing a connection to racism is maybe just misinformed.

But "blacklist" (and "whitelist") is just completely absurd. "Blacklist" is a term from a play, referring to a literally black list. Whitelist is just an antonym. Such color metaphors are incredibly common, think wedding dresses or "black death", or black flags, or white lie. Obviously, none of this is connected to skin color. How exactly does your mind have to be wired to come to the opposite conclusion?

As one of the largest (and most criticized) players in political information, one would think that Twitter could maybe do something better about the current situation than engaging in etymological misinformation...

PeterBarrett3• 6 years ago

The whole idea is to remove the subconscious bias that it creates in our minds, always associating black with bad and white with good in the case of blacklist and white list.

None of this has any effect on me and I don't see the negative side of changing it.

f3295cde5• 6 years ago

Black is not always associated with bad and white is not always associated with good - their general associations with bad/good respectively are independent of race.

PeterBarrett3• 6 years ago

Judging by your response (and the amount of comments you've made in this thread) I don't think you really took the time to think about my comment.

We obviously didn't chose black list or white list to donate race but regardless it's another brick in wall for black to equate to bad.

As a white European this has no impact on me in any way shape or form apart from wanting a more inclusive space for my friends.

Out of interest why are you so against the idea of changing terms? In your comment here (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=f3295cde) you make the comparison of "will replace the word 'football' as it is offensive to people with limb difference", you do realise these are fundamentally different issues right? People aren't looking to replace the words for the fun of it.

spaniard892775• 6 years ago

That will change a lot of stuff.

I really have an inside battle when I read this sort of stuff here on HN, because I don't want to post derailed political comments, I want this place to be like it is, keep it cool and avoid kulturwars, but man it's hard.

Look, I'm not in the US, so maybe I can't even think how it is with racism there, but I just can't help to think this is kind of stupid-naive virtue signaling. It feels like some bunch of uber-priviledged SV guys who think too high of themselves want to feel good about something and they come up with this BS that everyone will forget a week later.

Man, it's so surreal. Don't you have poor people in your city? What about helping your local NGOs? What about working for them for free? One week you help feed the people, another in the kitchen and another one in accounting.

Dunno, it feels sooooo far away from my reality. I don't know what is to be earning +100k year and thinking this is a great idea! It was even difficult to write this comment because I find it funny and just feel the impulse to mock this.

jakelazaroff6• 6 years ago

I just can't help to think this is kind of stupid-naive virtue signaling. It feels like some bunch of uber-priviledged SV guys who think too high of themselves want to feel good about something

Except that’s not what happened. This was spearheaded by Black developers who don’t want to have to read about “slaves” being “rekicked” at their jobs. Is that not a reasonable request?

spaniard892775• 6 years ago

I think many words are polysemic (that's how it's called in english right?) and you shouldn't be offended by them, but who I am to judge, I'm not a black developer at Twitter.

Yetanfou6• 6 years ago

Please don't capitalise the term 'black' here, leave that to political pamphlets like the New York Times (who seem to be the ones who started this). The more people start identifying themselves with their inalienable characteristics like skin colour, hair colour or eye colour , the further we'll get away from the ideal of a colour-blind society.

Yes, that is the ideal, that the colour of your skin does not matter. If you don't want to take my word on it, maybe Martin Luther King can convince you:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

[1] https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm

syshum4• 6 years ago

Even though the etymology of the phrase does not support the conclusion, I am less troubled by replacing slave with other terms

However Grandfather? Dummy Value? Sanity Check? Enforced speech codes for Pronouns?

hello_marmalade• 6 years ago

That is straight up infantile. Plenty of people have horrible ancestral histories. If you choose to obsess over it at every moment, that's not really anybody else's issue. As another comment said earlier, it is very similar to no longer using the word 'cotton', because it might remind you of black slavery in America.

It's a childish waste of time that has nothing to do with solving real world problems. Changing terms used in technology contexts doesn't do anything for racial injustice in any capacity whatsoever.

syshum4• 6 years ago

SV has one of the highest homeless populations in the US, I do not see any of them giving up larges parts of the salary to fix that problem, or even demanding the cities stop preventing building of new housing.

You "think this is kind of stupid-naive virtue signaling" because that is exactly what it is.

The real problems we face as a society can not be fixed with a Twitter post and a image outlining the Newspeak we must all follow in the totalitarian superstate that SV wishes upon us

micheljansen• 6 years ago

Moving away from race a bit and totally anecdotally, but my wife was looking at my screen once while I was using the command line and she remarked how it seemed like all the commands were chosen by men: kill, terminate, spawn, mount, push etc. It may be subtle but words matter and they do attract or repel people. And then we complain why there are too few women in tech. Inclusion is not just about race.

lollerka• 6 years ago

I'm not american and don't know what do these words _mean_ for a lot of people. My sidestory that I only feel "bad" because as a non-native english speaker it's really hard sometimes to speak correctly PC-ish. For example my native tongue doesn't have gender pronouns. Grammatical gender doesn't exist at all. So third person singular doesn't make a difference between gender like english. It doesn't exist when I address that person. But when I go to Twitter or check people's profile they more and more ask how they should be addressed or what pronoun to use. Just interesting how the language can affect your way of thinking about the world.

disposekinetics• 6 years ago

It is hard for native speakers to keep up with the demands too.

Andrew_nenakhov3• 6 years ago

Soon:

Chess is racist, blacks always move second and are thus at a disadvantage. Cancel chess.

Daoism is racist, yin is black and has negative connotations. Cancel Daoism.

Star Wars are racist. Droids are enslaved, C3P0 even calls his owner 'Master Luke', a racially-charged word. Cancel Star Wars.

Education is racist. Issued Master's degrees use a racially-charged word. Cancel education.

"To kill a mockingbird" is racist. It is full of insensitive language and it makes reader feel uncomfortable. Cancel "To kill a mockingbird".

"Mysterious island" by J.Verne is racist. The only black character is a servant to a wise white engineer and serves mostly as a comedic relief. Cancel "Mysterious island".

Coal industry is racist, miners are always mocking blacks wearing blackface after every shift. Cancel coal mining. (Good for environment, too!)

Disclaimer: I'm so insensitive because I was born with a white privilege, which I greatly enjoyed since my early childhood in an industrial/mining town in the Ural Mountains, near the eastern border of Siberia.

cyc116• 6 years ago

As an Asian American. I find Yellowstone national park offensive and oppressive.

emerged2• 6 years ago

Sorry but you have to wait your turn. We will burn down buildings, tear down statues, loot and protest for you after the blacks.

I get dibs after Asians, as a person who has some rosacea. For too long we have been disadvantaged.

nappy2• 6 years ago

This is controversial but shouldn't be flagged. It's a link to a factual news story. Dang could you unflag this or otherwise explain why this remains flagged?

Yetanfou6• 6 years ago

Are they going to rename their servers as well? The word 'server' comes from the Latin word 'servus' which means slave.

Also, the word 'twit' has several meanings which might not fall so well with certain people. Ask Google Translate what it means and this is what you get:

Twit: (noun) a silly or foolish person. Syonyms: idiot ass halfwit nincompoop blockhead buffoon dunce dolt ignoramus cretin imbecile dullard moron simpleton clod dope ninny chump dimwit nitwit goon dumbo dummy dum-dum dumbbell loon jackass bonehead fathead numbskull dunderhead chucklehead knucklehead muttonhead pudding-head thickhead wooden-head airhead pinhead lamebrain peabrain birdbrain zombie jerk nerd dipstick donkey noodle nit numpty clot goat plonker berk prat pillock wally git wazzock divvy nerk twerp charlie mug muppet nyaff balloon sumph gowk gobdaw schmuck bozo boob lamer turkey schlepper chowderhead dumbhead goofball goof goofus galoot dork lummox klutz putz schlemiel sap meatball gink cluck clunk ding-dong dingbat wiener weeny dip simp spud coot palooka poop squarehead yo-yo dingleberry wing nut drongo dill alec galah nong bogan poon boofhead mompara tomfool noddy clodpole loggerhead spoony mooncalf

While I personally think they chose a name which fits the product very well indeed I do get the feeling that, if the current witch hunt continues, they'll eventually fall foul of the mob and be either forced to bend to their will or find themselves in the position now reserved for Facebook, i.e. the whipping boy of the social media giants.

syshum4• 6 years ago

Anyone else find it ironic the official announcement on twitter about a major programming change about inclusivity was posted in a non-accessible way?

Twitter engineers replacing racially loaded tech terms like 'master,' 'slave'

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