4 ms·

Twitter Thinks My Gender Is [EICAR String] (Or “Server-Side Checks Matter”)

35 points by some_furry 7y ago

knolax 7y ago
The ML based guessing of people's genders sounds extremely tactless. You'd think given the demographics of their userbase Twitter would've known better.
- leoh 7y ago
  Although it was never ideal, it was probably implemented and reviewed years before thorough discussions and considerations about gender. Even as recently as 5-10 years ago it was hardly discussed. Things have changed drastically the last few years (for the best IMHO).
- 0xy 7y ago
  Tactless? You should see what Google and Facebook's ad targeting ML will guess about you.
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    The stuff you can visibly see they've guessed about you is a tiny drip compared to what they've guessed about you but have no way to display. Most vendors now simply a guess 128 floats about you as a vector which encodes your gender, your love of stars, your favourite foods, and how much you're itching to buy a deck chair... The vendors themselves don't really know what's in the vector, apart from the fact it helps them predict ads. They couldn't explain it if they tried - nobody could - it's all generated by stochastic ML methods.
    - Eridrus 7y ago
      > They couldn't explain it if they tried - nobody could - it's all generated by stochastic ML methods. This isn't true. These systems are not unknowable. It's just generally not worthwhile to figure out what these encode, but it is doable.
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  Not the entire world consists of ‘did you just assume my gender’ people. Most people don’t care at all. Stereotypes exist because they model people pretty well. If you enter that your gender is unicorn you probably just get slightly more generic ads. Here’s a scary thought: if you walk the street everyone who sees you will assume your gender.
  - pasabagi 7y ago
    Eh - if you're trans and experiencing dysphoria it can be pretty painful when people misgender you. The whole 'did you assume my gender' thing is a sort of weird take on the fact that yes, it is pretty hurtful when somebody's going through a really hard and vulnerable time in their lives, then some douchebag is determined to make a political point that a complete stranger is 'really' x, or y. It's also just really bizarre and rude. Imagine referring to a cis woman with a beard as an 'it', or 'he'. For whatever reason, people go out of their way to commit this kind of absurd faux-pas with trans people.
    - abjKT26nO8 7y ago
      > It's also just really bizarre and rude. Imagine referring to a cis woman with a beard as an 'it', or 'he'. I do that sometimes, unintentionally (regardless of the person in question having a beard or not). It's just that gender in language is most of the time redundant and it only introduces noise into conversation. For most topics, the gender of the persons involved is irrelevant. But many languages force you to choose one, which just creates confusion if this piece of information is crucial or if it's just this bloat that the language forced you to include in your sentence. Oh, and genders are much more prevalent in my native language. English is actually better than most languages in this respect. But let's go a step further and just get rid of it. I've heard the Swedes chose to move to "person/thing" pronouns, as opposed to "male/female/thing". In my native language, verbs change their forms based on subject's gender. And then when you have sentences like "if I were in your shoes, I would verb", my brain tells me to assume the gender of the other speaker when I say verb. I mean, it's only logical: if I were in your shoes, I would be of your gender. But the language works otherwise. It's just stupid. As to people's reactions to my occasional misnamings, most people don't care at all, some are amused. Because, really, this part of language is ridiculous. And making an issue out of it is immature.
RL_Quine 7y ago
What does their backend look like that a 30 character string for gender could end up containing a limitless amount of text?
- londons_explore 7y ago
  As long as their backend isn't going to fail under a limitless amount of text, it's fine for this to be a front-end only limit... But unless they've tested the backend against a 64 gigabyte gender...
rwmj 7y ago
As an aside I like the idea of using the EICAR anti-virus test file[1] as a way to "auto-delete" your data. I suspect this plan might even work. I happen to maintain the libmspack library[2] in RHEL, it's a library for extracting Microsoft CABinet files. Part of the source contains regression tests. Some of those tests are flagged by AV software because they contain past exploits for the library: the idea of these regression tests is to ensure that they don't reintroduce the vulnerability by accident. Well, the libmspack source RPM causes all kinds of problems, both internally at Red Hat and at customer sites. It is constantly being flagged by AV software. Every release I have to manually waive the package through our AV checks, and we've had feedback from customers that we're "shipping a virus" which had to be handled very diplomatically. AV software is crazy, but let's make it work for us :-) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EICAR_test_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EICAR_test_file [2] https://www.cabextract.org.uk/libmspack/ https://www.cabextract.org.uk/libmspack/
- ryanlol 7y ago
  > As an aside I like the idea of using the EICAR anti-virus test file[1] as a way to "auto-delete" your data. Nobody detects EICAR when it’s surrounded by other data. Strings like <script type="text/javascript" src="http://web.nba1001.net:8888/tj/tongji.js"></script> will work much better.
jbj 7y ago
Interesting, twitter correctly guessed my gender, but incorrectly what languages I speak.

35 points by some_furry 7y ago

The ML based guessing of people's genders sounds extremely tactless. You'd think given the demographics of their userbase Twitter would've known better.

leoh 7y ago
Although it was never ideal, it was probably implemented and reviewed years before thorough discussions and considerations about gender. Even as recently as 5-10 years ago it was hardly discussed. Things have changed drastically the last few years (for the best IMHO).
0xy 7y ago
Tactless? You should see what Google and Facebook's ad targeting ML will guess about you.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  The stuff you can visibly see they've guessed about you is a tiny drip compared to what they've guessed about you but have no way to display. Most vendors now simply a guess 128 floats about you as a vector which encodes your gender, your love of stars, your favourite foods, and how much you're itching to buy a deck chair... The vendors themselves don't really know what's in the vector, apart from the fact it helps them predict ads. They couldn't explain it if they tried - nobody could - it's all generated by stochastic ML methods.
  - Eridrus 7y ago
    > They couldn't explain it if they tried - nobody could - it's all generated by stochastic ML methods. This isn't true. These systems are not unknowable. It's just generally not worthwhile to figure out what these encode, but it is doable.
tinus_hn 7y ago
Not the entire world consists of ‘did you just assume my gender’ people. Most people don’t care at all. Stereotypes exist because they model people pretty well. If you enter that your gender is unicorn you probably just get slightly more generic ads. Here’s a scary thought: if you walk the street everyone who sees you will assume your gender.
- pasabagi 7y ago
  Eh - if you're trans and experiencing dysphoria it can be pretty painful when people misgender you. The whole 'did you assume my gender' thing is a sort of weird take on the fact that yes, it is pretty hurtful when somebody's going through a really hard and vulnerable time in their lives, then some douchebag is determined to make a political point that a complete stranger is 'really' x, or y. It's also just really bizarre and rude. Imagine referring to a cis woman with a beard as an 'it', or 'he'. For whatever reason, people go out of their way to commit this kind of absurd faux-pas with trans people.
  - abjKT26nO8 7y ago
    > It's also just really bizarre and rude. Imagine referring to a cis woman with a beard as an 'it', or 'he'. I do that sometimes, unintentionally (regardless of the person in question having a beard or not). It's just that gender in language is most of the time redundant and it only introduces noise into conversation. For most topics, the gender of the persons involved is irrelevant. But many languages force you to choose one, which just creates confusion if this piece of information is crucial or if it's just this bloat that the language forced you to include in your sentence. Oh, and genders are much more prevalent in my native language. English is actually better than most languages in this respect. But let's go a step further and just get rid of it. I've heard the Swedes chose to move to "person/thing" pronouns, as opposed to "male/female/thing". In my native language, verbs change their forms based on subject's gender. And then when you have sentences like "if I were in your shoes, I would verb", my brain tells me to assume the gender of the other speaker when I say verb. I mean, it's only logical: if I were in your shoes, I would be of your gender. But the language works otherwise. It's just stupid. As to people's reactions to my occasional misnamings, most people don't care at all, some are amused. Because, really, this part of language is ridiculous. And making an issue out of it is immature.

RL_Quine 7y ago

What does their backend look like that a 30 character string for gender could end up containing a limitless amount of text?

londons_explore 7y ago
As long as their backend isn't going to fail under a limitless amount of text, it's fine for this to be a front-end only limit... But unless they've tested the backend against a 64 gigabyte gender...

rwmj 7y ago

As an aside I like the idea of using the EICAR anti-virus test file[1] as a way to "auto-delete" your data. I suspect this plan might even work. I happen to maintain the libmspack library[2] in RHEL, it's a library for extracting Microsoft CABinet files. Part of the source contains regression tests. Some of those tests are flagged by AV software because they contain past exploits for the library: the idea of these regression tests is to ensure that they don't reintroduce the vulnerability by accident. Well, the libmspack source RPM causes all kinds of problems, both internally at Red Hat and at customer sites. It is constantly being flagged by AV software. Every release I have to manually waive the package through our AV checks, and we've had feedback from customers that we're "shipping a virus" which had to be handled very diplomatically. AV software is crazy, but let's make it work for us :-) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EICAR_test_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EICAR_test_file [2] https://www.cabextract.org.uk/libmspack/ https://www.cabextract.org.uk/libmspack/

ryanlol 7y ago
> As an aside I like the idea of using the EICAR anti-virus test file[1] as a way to "auto-delete" your data. Nobody detects EICAR when it’s surrounded by other data. Strings like <script type="text/javascript" src="http://web.nba1001.net:8888/tj/tongji.js"></script> will work much better.

jbj 7y ago

Interesting, twitter correctly guessed my gender, but incorrectly what languages I speak.