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Twitter is dropping coding terms like 'master' and 'slave'
- chewdatgenie 6y agoAbout time. Tech industry need a black guy to be murdered to enhance the necessary changes, otherwise it would be the same exact thing. smh
- sk0g 6y agoHow are these changes necessary? What problem does moving git branches away from being references to master copies solve?
- quicklime 6y agoIt might make the workplace slightly more welcoming (or less unwelcoming) to people who are descendants of slaves.
- sk0g 6y agoSo is the intended outcome a complete ban on the word "master", context be damned? What about master's degrees, skill mastery, masterpiece? Surely if you see slavery references anywhere you find the word "master" used in any way, that says more about you?
- quicklime 6y agoI never saw the reference until people started pointing it out, so it says nothing about me. But if others do, then I'm not so attached to the terminology that I'd put up a fight to defend it. What I don't really understand is why people are so outraged by renaming a bunch of stuff. It's a trivial change, who cares?
- aspaviento 6y agoHave you ever heard of "give an inch, take a mile"? Today is a trivial thing. Tomorrow could be something more serious but then, it would be too late to complain about it (and today social media is the best example, you can see how peoples' lives are ruined by things taken out of context or exaggerating them).
- quicklime 6y agoI have heard that phrase, but I've only ever heard it used in cases like these (and never the other way around): - parents talking about children - teachers talking about students - management talking about laborers - rich people talking about poor people I hope you see what the problem is.
- aspaviento 6y agoI have heard it also between friends when one of them is too nice and the other one pushes continously to do whatever he/she wants.
- quicklime 6y agoYes, I’ve heard it used in abusive relationships too.
- ThrowawayR2 6y agoThe list of changes already includes innocuous terms like "sanity check", "grandfathered", and "dummy value" so, frankly, it's pretty hard to make the case that the "take a mile" isn't already happening.
- lukeramsden 6y agoAren't most of us descendants of slaves?
- sk0g 6y agoHumanity has been killing and enslaving each other for time immemorial, so I'd wager at some point, most civilizations were enslaved to some extent. Maybe recency plays into this, but it's been abolished in the US for a fair few generations now...
- rimliu 6y agoWhat's next? Ban "atomic operation", because some developers may be Japanese? Maybe ban Germans altogather, because what do you know, maybe someone's grandad got killed in the WWII? These virtue signaling actions are absurd and, what's worse, scary. So happily inching towrads thoughtcrime.
- cultus 6y agoIt upsets people because of the association with slavery, and it's trivial to use different terminology.
- sk0g 6y agoWhat about masterpiece, master's degree, skill mastery, etc? Seems like an complete ban on the word is the intended outcome.
- fernandopj 6y agoIMHO master meaning mastery over a field will still be fine. Master meaning owning someone is the usage under review.
- sk0g 6y agoFrom the article: "In programming speak, “master” refers to the main version of code that controls the “slaves,” or the replicas." Nevermind that the master copy doesn't control anything at all, it is a master copy of the repository, nothing more.
- Ygg2 6y agoWow, all it took to solve racism and America's underlying economic issues was a simple change of terms. If only we knew sooner.
- sk0g 6y agoWhy go through the hard effort of making real change happen, when the masses are appeased by token gestures that solve 0 problems people actually face?
- trabant00 6y agoThis master - slave debate is at least 10 years old. And I have the same questions now: - ofc master slave relationship between human beings is wrong, but are we not allowed to "abuse" and "subjugate" IT systems? I mean that's kind of their purpose if you ask me. It's wrong to beat somebody but it's not wrong to beat a carpet. - what is the purpose of removing those words? Is it like pretending these relationships don't exist? - who benefits from the removal of the terms and in what way exactly? How is the world getting better by doing this?
- sova 6y agoWhat are the new terms to supersede these antequated undesirables? Brain and Body?
- StrangeDoctor 6y agoLeader and follower are pretty easy drop ins for most contexts.
- jaekash 6y agoNot really no
- weego 6y agoSenpai kohai would be the clear winner but unfortunately then we face problems of cultural appropriation. I jest, but then what else is there to do other than that when children of color are being gunned down in the street by the only people supposed to be protecting them and the best that the white tech elite can come up with is some token renaming in their infrastructure documentation. "but that's not all they're doing". Yes it is, if it wasn't things would have changed significantly before now and it hasn't and at this rate it won't this time either. It'll just allow white tech to keep attracting the types of white liberal employees they want to employ so everyone can go on avidly avoiding the truth. Why are companies going out of their way in cost and effort to mass employ using visa schemes rather than work locally? Where are the grass roots campaigns to promote tech education in uber privileged areas / cities? Where are the paths to employment and leadership? Where are the programmes to promote tech hubs in said locations and create opportunities for people who can't move to the tech elite areas? The best answer to that so far is covid-19 forcing people to look at remote working options for employees. We didn't even manage that by choice. What this hell is any of this achieving other than a few feel goods until the next horrific avoidable death?
- bb123 6y agoThis feels like a pretty empty symbolic change.
- adtac 6y agonot if some people consider it offensive. that alone is a sufficient reason to support this change, even if you don't think it's necessary.
- rimliu 6y agoThat alone is sufficient reason not to support this change, otherwise we will run out of words pretty soon.
- NetOpWibby 6y ago“Soon.” Really.
- rimliu 6y agoThe word "really" offends me, please, stop using it.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoReally. I mentioned this downthread, but the headline undersells the extent of Twitter's change; they've also dropped the terms "dummy value" and "guys".
- 3saryHg6LP2e 6y ago"guys" is literally literally defined in the dictionary[1] as: > used to address a group of people of either sex: >Come on, you guys, let's go. [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/guy https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/guy
- saberience 6y ago
- there_the_and 6y agoNames change all the time. Leader / follower and primary / secondary are better for a lot of things, anyway. Even ignoring the social issue, master and slave are not great terms for how they are used. Frankly, I find it disturbing that so many developers are so attached to the master and slave terminology. It’s like the tech industry’s version of the confederate flag.
- sk0g 6y agoIt's not just a developer thing, it's used in lots of other places, like master/ slave cylinders, etc.
- hagy 6y agoAgreed. Further, in most instances master/slave terminology is quite misleading with the master and slave doing similar work and commonly the master doing even more work. Leader/follower and primary/replica are much better terminology from a purely technical perspective. Its a plus that we also get to remove these two awful words.
- rimliu 6y agoTerminology is not misleading because everyone knows what it means in this context.
- marvion 6y ago> Frankly, I find it disturbing how attached so many developers are so attached to the master and slave terminology. I was about to write that too. I'm not quite sure if I find the change necessary - but who am I to raise my word against it. I'm a white guy, it is obvious why master/slave has negative connotations and that's enough for me to let them decide. I just listened to a podcast about "whiteness studies" maybe that enforced my opinion on this - but why would I - a white guy - would want to criticize this discussion. Be open, be welcome, accept diversity is a main rule in many projects. Why would I not want to change something that others consider harmful(especially something as simple as wording)
- 6y ago
- reedf1 6y agoI'm not saying I agree with it - but metaphors matter. It's easy to imagine certain design patterns being associated with offensive stereotypes. How much do we have to extend 'master' and 'slave' before the metaphor crosses a line? The introduction of a 'boat' class or a 'chain' class? Of course the underlying technology isn't offensive but we're attaching our human social context to it. At least no one has a problem with the underlying patterns themselves! That would be a doozy.
- pnako 6y agoMore important than this change of terminology, I think it's good that Twitter decided to donate ten million dollars to NGOs fighting slavery around the world (it's still prevalent, especially in Africa and Asia) https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#prevalence https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#prevalenc...
- drummer 6y agoDo these people realize we're all still slaves of the State via taxation (among other things)?
- sdoering 6y agoIn what way is taxation slavery?
- jaekash 6y agoin what way is a database slavery? It is not ... but yet here we are ...
- drummer 6y agoTaxation is slavery because it is forced ultimately at gunpoint. The government basically claims ownership of a significant part of (the fruits of) your labor. You cannot refuse, which makes you their slave, having to do what they dictate. A 'citizen' is essentially another word for property of the state, i.e. a slave. In the future they'll probably also object to the use of that word like they do for master/slave, not realizing the names change but the result stays the same.
- mint2 6y agoOf course your example is the government, and because you have to chip in for the many services it provides people that makes it slavery in your mind. Eesh privilege. At least cite low paid workers forced to keep working at the same low paid job because they can’t afford to take time off to look elsewhere let alone upskill to get a better job. Or prisoners who are essentially forced to work for pennies and then charged up the nose when their families go to call them. Or the many literal slaves that still exist and often prep your shrimp if you eat any.
- sandstrom 6y agoWhat about 'robot' and 'bot'? The word robot means 'slave worker'. How about payment providers supporting Mastercard? Maybe we ought to stop accepting Mastercard payment, unless they rebrand to Equalitycard.
- omega3 6y ago> The word robot means 'slave worker'. Do you have the source for this? I'd be very surprised if this was the meaning of the word at the time Karel Capek used it. The world robot comes from slavic word robota which means work or hard work.
- kostadin 6y agoThe root of the word is ‘rob’ which means a slave. Robota is ‘slave work’.
- raspyberr 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R. That's the play that introduced it and it's looking like the word means "forced labour" rather than just "work". Which you could say is slavery.
- omega3 6y agoThis might be the historical meaning of the word but it's certainly not the meaning of the word today and I'm doubting it was the meaning of the world at the time of the author. Take this as an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotnik_(1894%E2%80%931939) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotnik_(1894%E2%80%931939) This newspaper was first published around the time of the authors life. It has no connection to the slavery just to the labour and labourers.
- illvm 6y agoYou cannot be serious about your argument while still being supportive of these changes.
- cwhiz 6y agoWhat a creative way to virtue signal. This way you don’t have to do anything that has any positive impact for any single person. But you can tell all your white friends about it. People need to read a history book. ‘Master’ has nothing to do with ‘slavery.’ ‘Slavery’ has a long history going back thousands of years. No race has any particular right to be offended. Romans had slaves of every color. And if you are a person who gets upset when you see the word “master” you need to seriously consider becoming an adult.
- sebazzz 6y agoOnce the rascism card is being played, you don't have much choice. Then it is not longer an argument whether you are right.
- ThrowawayR2 6y agoI think the problem here is that fighting these PC efforts just reinforces the egos of those who champion it because 1) it gives them more "enemies" to righteously battle against and 2) they're currently winning. As an old school liberal with subversive tendencies, maybe the right way to throw a monkey wrench into these language policing efforts is by reductio ad absurdum or killing them with kindness. Push every possible thing that's offensive into these lists, particularly targeting terms common in business parlance. "double-blind testing"? Offensive to people with low vision. TTYs in Linux? Sounds like a NSFW word. "Pros and cons"? Offensive to inmates who have served their sentence. It's not even "in bad faith" (the ultimate modern thought-terminating cliché); do it fully and sincerely in line with their desire to eliminate all possible offense. Just totally fill up their PC dictionary with stuff until it becomes clear that it's impractical to eliminate all possible avenues of offense without being reduced to grunts and gestures.
- chadlavi 6y agoThe terms are gross and by no means necessary, but changing them also does not do anything to improve anyone's life. It's an empty, performative gesture unless accompanied by a lot of bigger structural and organizational changes at Twitter. You can't just "tada, we fixed racism."
- jaekash 6y ago> The terms are gross and by no means necessary No they are not. Slavery is gross, a master git repo is not gross - because it has nothing to do with actual slavery.
- sdoering 6y agoThese terms are actually quite precise describing a relationship between two technical systems. I have yet to hear other words having the same precision. Btw.: Imho no ethnic group has a sole claim to the victimhood role as historical slavery. To name a few examples of that: * My (white, European) ancestors were slaves of the Romans. * My (white, European) ancestors were slaves of the same (white, European) (here noble) ancestors. * My (white, European) ancestors were holders of (Jewish) slaves. So should I ask for the removal of this word from regular, technical use? I do not feel that way.
- semi_good 6y agoTo the cynics: how would you feel about this change if your great grand parents were slaves, lived in shackles and got whipped regularly and called the person whipping them “master”?
- Hamuko 6y agoI'd be indifferent since I care very little about my ancestry. I've never bothered to actually look up how my ancestors lived. I assume they were peasants that got by by eating tree bark.
- sdoering 6y agoI am indifferent. My ancestors were slaves. Other ancestors were slavers. Most people only need to go back far enough to find both in their line of ancestry.
- semi_good 6y agoMy ancestors weren’t. But I’d be triggered by anything that didn’t shame that time in history, if they were.
- ThrowawayR2 6y agoI'm a minority. My culture has had slavery as an institution for millennia, likely including some of my own ancestors. It also didn't legally abolish slavery until decades after the end of the Civil War in the US, so there's more claim to recency. And, honestly, I couldn't care less. I have better things to do than to try to collect imagined debts from more than a century ago for wrongs that were never done to me.
- 3saryHg6LP2e 6y agoWords have different meanings in different contexts, to "floss" could be a dental hygiene procedure or it could be performing a particular dance. It is simply not the same to refer to a "master branch" as it is to a "slave master".
- 6y ago
- Jonnax 6y agoI don't understand why there's so much pushback against the moves to remove terminology like master/slave from IT. It makes people uncomfortable and it's such a small change. And it's just software, go use sed or whatever to rename it. Why be disingenuous and say stuff like "oh I guess racism is solved now!" Or "GitHub changing the default branch name for new projects is going to break everyone's CI-CD pipelines!"?
- 3saryHg6LP2e 6y agoI do not agree with the premise that these words in context are problematic, many others do not agree with it either.
- Jonnax 6y agoIf many others do not agree, then why not just work at a company where they won't change terminology for cultural sensitivity reasons?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoPeople are concerned, correctly, that it's not such a small change and won't be limited to only terms as offensive as "master/slave". Twitter announced that it's also avoiding the phrases "guys", "sanity check", and "dummy value".
- jaekash 6y ago> It makes people uncomfortable and it's such a small change. Not a small change, and gay people also make some people uncomfortable, does not follow we should remove them ... so ... what?
- apta 6y ago> I don't understand why there's so much pushback Many reasons, including a very (distorted) US centric view of the world, going overboard with emotions instead of rationality (words are generally tied to context), and now people have to walk on eggshells or they'll lose their jobs if they speak the "wrong" word.
- morninglight 6y agoMASTERCARD - enslaves millions of people. When will its name change?
- jaekash 6y agoMasters degree ... Master copy, master key, heck we can go all day. People who support this are not thinking clearly.
- fernandopj 6y agoYou gave three examples where master means expertise on the field, not ownership over someone.
- jaekash 6y agoEhh, was Twitter or anybody else using it to mean ownership over someone?!!?!?!?! I mean in that case it is a crime we are talking about and just renaming actual enslaving of humans to something else won't fix it. so ... I mean ... what even are we doing here/
- fernandopj 6y agoI bet someone, right now, is creating a pitch for a brand change to LEADERCARD. Someone, somewhere, is drafting this, prototyping a new logo desing. Just waiting to happen.
- nan0 6y agoThis seems like public grandstanding and virtue signaling to me, but not too surprising coming from tone deaf Silicon Valley elites.
- 3saryHg6LP2e 6y agoI can get onboard with master/slave when used in conjunction. But the etymology of "blacklist" so far as I know and can Google is not to do with race and it's use and understood meaning is not to do with race. How then can it be racist? I have heard others argue that it's the implication that black is bad - but it's not as simple as that. "Whiteknighting" can be used negatively. "Bad" can literally mean "good". Come on. This especially goes for "grandfathered" - what on earth is wrong with this?
- pseudalopex 6y ago"Grandfathered" comes from from laws passed in the late 1800s and early 1900s to disenfranchise black people. States created new restrictions on voting but exempted descendants of people who had been allowed to vote before black people were allowed to vote. You could vote if your grandfather could, in other words. The exemptions came to be called grandfather clauses.
- stepstop 6y agoWords change and I wish people would let bad definitions just fade away
- h91wka 6y agoFrom my experience, only white dudes are affected by "master" and "slave" terminology. When asked to create a PR fixing it, they refuse, and urge you to fix it instead. It's almost as they see you as their slave (ahem).
- quadrifoliate 6y agoI used to think stuff like this was ridiculous. It's just a database, who even cares? However, now I'm all for it. What has changed? Over working in tech for a while, I noticed some patterns in my coworkers' behavior. I noticed that the same people who didn't switch over to saying "primary" and "replica" back in 2015-ish, and when it started becoming more common, and in fact, actively ridiculed it (just like I did) were the same people who would casually say things like “Oh those Indians screwed it up” while talking about problems with an overseas helpdesk. They didn't even consider that I, as someone of Indian descent who was apparently "all right" in their view would be offended by this (Note: when the screwup was, say, due to people from our TX helpdesk, they would never say “Oh, those Texans screwed it up”). Oh, and I never heard this kind of stuff from the few women or PoC in our office. Now I can easily see how at least one black coworker would be offended by these people animatedly discussing how the "slave" is not correctly following the "master", and how it might affect their work day, week, or month in a really bad way. In general I have seen that people who think more about the language they use and how it might affect others seem to make better, nicer coworkers. That's really the primary reason I support these changes now.
- thinkingemote 6y agoYour observation is curious to me, perhaps it was worded confusingly. "I noticed that the same people who ... actively ridiculed it (just like I did) were the same people who would casually say things like “Oh those Indians screwed it up”..." So you are saying that you noticed that if someone actively ridiculed these things before, that they were casually racist. I assume that you were not casually racist when you actively ridiculed these things. So this means 3 or 4 things to me: Initially, my first thought is that you admit that you yourself were part of the first group but deny the label you assigned to the second group to yourself. In other words, it seems to me that you are making a generalisation of people's characters which is inaccurate as you yourself admit that it's inaccurate. Or perhaps its okay to generalise if most of the people you observed had this pattern of behaviour, because it doesn't mean that the exceptions (including you) prove it false? Or... is it that you were part of both groups 5 years ago and you and most people in the first group have changed over time to both accept these new terms and stopped using casual racist talk?
- haunter 6y agoGoDaddy will break records when they sell maincard.com
- moritonal 6y agoOur team had someone who's an orphan. We try to avoid using the term because a joke became a pretty sad lunchtime when they revealed the fact afterwards. Words have different impact to different people. It doesn't cost us anything to use "isolated" node rather than an "orphan" node, but it made the dev feel less excluded.
- dijit 6y agoI'm sorry that this happened to your colleague, I understand how it feels to be reminded of something you would rather not be reminded of. Sufficed to say; as my mother used to tell me constantly: life is kind of unfair. That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to make things fairer of course! There are some things I generally agree with- I take an opposition position often because people should understand that changing the status quo should come with strong and valid reasons; there is a lot of institutional change that people ask for and it comes at some level of cost, so it's not something we should do with complete frivoloty. Also, when it comes to certain terms (Allowlist/Denylist); these are sometimes simply better at conveying what things _do_ and terminology changes for those things can stand on those merits alone. All that is to say: perceived offence, is a very poor reason to change. Not because I'm arguing that people need to suck it up or even that there isn't some level of anguish, but because inherently it has no end. There is no line you can draw. I'm not even saying that "it's a slippery slope" I'm saying that the minute you draw a line you exclude people. As an example of why you can't draw lines: I grew up poor, I might get offended if someone referred to something as 'being in poor condition'; thus you may, on my behalf, want to remove that word. Many people in the world do not have feet, and thus, the word 'football' might remind them of the trauma of losing their feet (or never having had feet). I feel like it's worth mentioning here that 'bot' comes from 'robot' which has roots in the Czech language for "forced labour". Not to mention master/slave are clear in terminology, one instructs, the other obeys, it is terminology that has existed for literally thousands of years (and yes, it is an atrocity when it happens to people). I would also caution strongly about suggesting that it has racial motivations as, of course, black people are not exclusively slaves- even today there are more slaves than at any point in history; and I can assure you, they're not all black.[0] It would help immensely to quantify the impact of these kinds of changes, asking the affected community what they think/feel; that would kill a lot of the discontent around "virtue signalling white people" which is part of the current discussion. I feel like it doesn't need to be said, but words are polyphasic, they have multiple meanings depending on context, altering terminology brings about the euphemism treadmill[1] -- generally speaking the hate in our hearts is the issue, not the words we speak; and restrictions on language do nothing to curb that hatred if it exists. New words or phrases will be created to skirt the rules and then we're back at the same place, with less words in our vocabulary. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/25/modern-slavery-trafficking-persons-one-in-200 https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/25/modern-slavery-... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Evolution
- bredren 6y agoI just sold an internet product I built that contains both “Whitelist” and “Blacklist” rules. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I added the names a few years ago. However I also grew up in the 80s and Dukes of Hazard was still a popular enough television show that I was specifically not allowed to watch it by my mom for reasons I did not understand at the time. [1] As far as changing language of the rules in the product I built, or would build I have no problem using something neutral. Software developers are used to deprecated language. Function and class names are changed for any number of reasons, sometimes just because they are inconvenient to spell. If some people feel that Master Slave, or Blacklist Whitelist constitute micro aggressions, then why put up a fight to switch to neutral language? Just deprecate the syntax and return the narrative and focus to problems developers can overwhelmingly agree are getting in the way of establishing a more inclusive developer community. [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-dukes-of-hazzard-reall_b_7725078 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-dukes-of-hazzard-reall_b_7...
- jaekash 6y ago> I just sold an internet product I built that contains both “Whitelist” and “Blacklist” rules. Fuckit, lets be done with language all together ...
- AkshatM 6y agoWhen I read defenses of these moves online, usually it is acknowledged that these terms, when used in the context of engineering, do not have a relationship to human subjugation. However, the arguments offered at that juncture are: a) Every little bit helps: If we can help eradicate injustice even in a tiny way, such as by using more inclusive language, and it's not unreasonable to implement, why not? b) We need to cut ties with a problematic past to improve: If we want a world with equity for all, we must voluntarily let go of heritage that binds us to a world without equity. I have many problems with these arguments. (If I have not steelmanned them sufficiently, please suggest improvements). First, it is not true that the current strategy is reasonable to implement. A solution is reasonable if the effort needed to implement it does not outweigh the impact of the problem. A reasonable solution is to use "leader / follower" yourself and gradually encourage people away over time at their own discretion: a low-effort solution for a low-impact problem. An unreasonable solution is to risk production impact and breaking changes (as in third-party tooling that relies on the `master` convention in git), creating more work for everyone - all so slightly different language can be used. Doc changes are a great low-effort solution if you really want to do this. Second, the claim that improvement cannot occur without cutting ties is a bit of a switch-and-bait. People will defend "improvement is not possible without change", and then morph that into "improvement is not possible without disassociation". There is some merit to this latter claim in some contexts - for example, in cases of domestic abuse - but that does not make it universal. We can keep the past around, but eliminate its ability to impact the present, which is "improvement with change". I think the "master / slave" convention and its history have done this adequately, since everyone agrees that no reasonable person would associate the term now with an endorsement of slavery or oppression. These two points put me firmly in the camp of "necessary changes are good, but this particular change is unnecessary".
- marakv2 6y agoPrimary, secondary. Problem solved. Need more, well English has it. Anyone arguing against this is just pissing against the wind -or worse. Move on. Were supposeto be the people who adapt and change the fastest.
- 3saryHg6LP2e 6y agoWhat would your response be if someone came along and said "binary" is not an appropriate word for compiled artefacts because some people do not identify as a man or a woman? What would your response be if someone came along and said we should rename the HTML <div> element because "div" is a schoolyard insult implying low intelligence? What would your response be if someone came along and said we should stop referring to mobile phones as "cells" because people are unjustly confined to prison cells due to structural racism? I do not believe I am, or others who agree with me are, arguing that we should not change language where it is problematic the issue is we do not agree that the use of these words in context are an issue at all.
- duckmysick 6y agoFull list in a text form: * Whitelist -> Allowlist * Blacklist -> Denylist * Master/slave -> Leader/follower, primary/replica, primary/standby * Grandfathered -> Legacy status * Gendered pronouns (e.g. guys) -> Folks, people, you all, y'all * Gendered pronouns (e.g. he/him/his) -> They, them, their * Man hours -> Person hours, engineer hours * Sanity check -> Quick check, confidence check, coherence check * Dummy value -> Placeholder value, sample value
- einpoklum 6y agoSocial media corporations make millions and billions by catering to manipulate - and often darn right evil - advertiser needs, spying and tracking users for them. And then they want to be all moral by playing identity politics and excising inappropriate language. This sounds like an attempt to divert the public attention during the Corona + police violence crises the US is currently undergoing. ... and all of this is not to say what I think about the use of these terms. I'm of two minds about that actually.
- tehbeard 6y agoHow much of this sort of thing (including the hiding/removing of "problematic" TV/films) is being done/encouraged to draw attention away from the defund the police/better social services message? Making BLM seem asinine looks like a fairly easy/standard psyop move.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ojhughes 6y agoWhy are people failing to grasp that languages have context? Twitter, GitHub and others are clearly lacking some "mastery" of language semantics, such as homonyms. Perhaps we should be lobbying for better English education? Nah screw that, let's adopt a simplified version of the English language that removes any emotion or chance of ambiguity... I'm sure an author came up with a candidate language in the late 40s
- mnm1 6y agoSo "grandfathered" is considered offensive now by the idiotic pc crowd? What's next? Where does this stupidity stop?
- lr4444lr 6y agoWhen I was a teacher, there was a distinct group of kids who always pushed the boundaries to see how far they could. They presented endless reasons for why they wanted to do what they wanted to do, with no regard for how ridiculous they sounded. They were smart and creative, and knew what they were doing was unwelcomed. They just wanted to see how far they could push the teacher. That's exactly what this feels like. It doesn't stop, until we put our foot down. It doesn't have to be nasty, but it doesn't require we entertain weak arguments about people's psychological comfort demanding we change behavior either on the defensive about how we are not oppressive.
- mnm1 6y agoYup. This stupidity will backfire badly. In the latest list they are essentially destroying the language itself by removing gendered pronouns. How do I wish Spanish without them? Or phrases like "you guys" which is gender neutral. Frankly, these people are hurting the cause as much as racists and sexist people are, maybe even more. This will not be supported but anyone with a brain and frankly neither will their original causes. This idea that people need to feel "safe" and therefore others should modify their speech is mad. The only response to such idiots is to tell them off, to say "fuck you idiots" and ignore them. I think it does have to be nasty indeed because these morons have shown time and again they do not listen to reason.
- ulisesrmzroche 6y agoY’all acting like it’s the end of the world. Slippery slope is a logical fallacy. I don’t know why we put up with that logical fallacy. Is it because white dudes won’t stop crying about it? It shouldn’t bother anyone this much. It’s pretty telling that it does.
- sandstrom 6y agoIf you look at how censorship has progressed in e.g. Russia, it began with "good censorship", e.g. child pornography, advocating suicide and illegal drugs. It's been a downhill slope from there. At what point does the slope transform from a logical fallacy to a real slope? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Russia#Developments_since_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Russia#... https://www.wired.com/2014/12/rospotrebnadzor/ https://www.wired.com/2014/12/rospotrebnadzor/ As for the N-word, maybe because that word only has a single use, where as master has multiple uses + slave ownership isn't directed at a single race (slavery has existed in almost every civilization, for the past several thousand years). https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/nigger https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/nigger https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/master https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/master
- reddog 6y agoThose terms are a bit archaic. They should change them to BillionaireITOligarch and MillinealGigWorker.