7 ms·
To provide a little more context. They built out a "strip words from ad" feature that relied on a large list of words provided by the moderators to strip out te
by JamesBarney 7y ago
To provide a little more context. They built out a "strip words from ad" feature that relied on a large list of words provided by the moderators to strip out terms. Most of these words were related to prostitution and only a few related to anything underage.
But there's also this.
> Similarly, in a June 7, 2011
email, Ferrer told a Texas law enforcement official that a word found in one
Backpage ad, “amber alert,” “is either a horrible marketing ploy or some kind of
bizarre new code word for an under aged person.”142 He told the official that he
would “forbid[]” that phrase—without explaining that, inside Backpage, this meant
filters would simply conceal the phrase through automatic deletion.143 Ferrer
forwarded the same email chain to Padilla and noted that he had instructed a staff
member to “add [amber alert] to strip out.”144 A June 11, 2012 version of the filter
word list indicates that “amber alert” was indeed deleted by the Strip Term From
Ad filter.145 In short, Backpage added such terms with full awareness of their
implications for child exploitation.
You'd imagine a normal person would think "we should ban this user, or report this to the authorities" instead of "we should definitely filter out that phrase".