3 ms·

Again, this data doesn't show that the labels are offensive, just that they're more likely to be used in text which was classified as offensive. If there's lots

Again, this data doesn't show that the labels are offensive, just that they're more likely to be used in text which was classified as offensive. If there's lots of 13 year old boys on the Internet using "gay" as an insult, filtering out those insults from the corpus (and it's gottta be correct to filter them) could fully explain the high PMI for the word "gay".

cratermoon 5y ago
> used in text which was classified as offensive Yes, and determining if a text is offensive is a very socially and culturally determined. Who determines the offensiveness of the context, and how? To shift gears a bit, how many rap song lyrics were filtered out from the corpus, for example? Does use of the n-word make an entire text de facto offensive? What about references to the common name of the moth Lymantria dispar dispar? What about the football team from Washington, D.C.? A lot of this just feels like a repeat of the Net Nanny internet filter days, when keywords were idiotically filtered out.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  These are all important questions, but I don't think the article meaningfully engages with any of them beyond noting their existence. A lot of people are in a position where they have to judge whether a text is offensive; if your system autofills racial slurs, and you try to explain that it's not a problem because in some contexts the slurs have been reclaimed, you're gonna get in serious trouble.