4 ms·
What if it was a dating website that didn't allow African Americans or Jewish people on the site? Now what if it was a physical establishment? Say, a whites-o
by zzalpha 10y ago
What if it was a dating website that didn't allow African Americans or Jewish people on the site?
Now what if it was a physical establishment? Say, a whites-only lunch counter?
Of course, some hold the position that no anti-discrimination law should be applicable to a private business. If so, at least that's ideologically consistent, though IMO historically naive.
But if you allow for such laws IRL, so to speak, then extending those same laws to the online sphere is, I think, perfectly rational.
- waterphone 10y agoThere are multiple gay-only dating sites/apps that people seem to have no problem with.
- elpocko 10y agoI don't know anything about the law in question, but if it's only about protecting minorities, it creates the situation where gay-only sites are lawful, while hetero-only sites are illegal. I think that's pretty bad.
- elpocko 10y agoYour examples are not applicable because, as far as I understand it, they would have to implement additional features to allow for same-sex matches. There's no "no gays allowed" code on their site. Your examples are examples of active exclusion, while this is a case of missing inclusion. I don't think it's right to force them to implement this additional code. If they had active anti-homosexual code it would be a different matter though.
- zzalpha 10y agoI see. So are you opposed to accessibility laws, which require businesses to spend money to adhere to additional building codes, in order to accommodate the disabled?
- elpocko 10y agoIf there are plenty alternatives available, and the express purpose of the building is something the disabled in question are inherently unfit for, then yes, then I'm opposed to such laws. Being homosexual is not a handicap, and they are not being excluded from society by not being able to match each other on a religious dating website.
- elpocko 10y agoOh, and it actually, honestly didn't cross my mind once that I'm bisexual myself when I made this argument. So it should not say "they" in my comment above, but rather "we". My sexuality is not that important to me, and the bisexual tendency is a rather new thing to me, so I tend for forget.
- aethertron 10y agoThe fact that the service was implemented such that it only matched men with women, and women with men, could be interpreted as 'active anti-homosexual code'. On the other hand, one could argue there LGBT singles weren't excluded in the first place -- the site just provided a less than satisfactory service for them. I think this situation is very comparable to face-recognition technology that fails to work properly with people with dark skin, and voice-recognition technology that functions poorly with certain accents. It's desirable that these services and technologies are equally accessible for everyone. To make this a legal obligation may effectively speed up this process. It also risks slowing development by restricting the use of incremental releases.
- elpocko 10y agoI'm a programmer and in my opinion "active code", in this context, implies there is actual code expressly written to fulfill a task (i.e., to not allow homosexuals to match). While in this case, substantial parts are missing (e.g., everything that is required to allow the site to fulfill the needs of LGBT* users). Should we call something that does not even exist "active"? Edit: after thinking about it for a bit, I'm quite sure the site probably actually does have at least one clause written, somewhere, to make sure only men + women match. Simply removing them wouldn't result in good UX though :)
- aethertron 10y agoI program too. I get your perspective, I think. If we looked at the site's source code, we (probably) wouldn't be able to identify any specific lines of code that were actively anti-LGBT. To see the complainant and the court's perspective, look at the functionality of the site at a higher level. What does it do? It lets people match up for dating purposes. LGBT people - a specific historically-discriminated-against group - could find this as a useful service too. But the site software lacks the necessary functionality to enable this -- and it doesn't need to be this way. So where's the 'active' exclusionary code? There in the program, considered as a functional whole, not located at any more specific location.
- gmoore 10y agothe Gov't forces companies to abide by the law in many ways. You have to build a ramp and widen your doors to allow for handicap access - same thing with code..
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