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The problem is not 'innapropriate words'. Because 'swear words' are probably not something we want in our G Docs. But to tell users that 'landlord' is 'inappr

The problem is not 'innapropriate words'. Because 'swear words' are probably not something we want in our G Docs. But to tell users that 'landlord' is 'inappropriate' is way crossing the line. If Google were any bigger it would be Orwellian. There are not too many options outside G for these kinds of things. When populists people get mad on Twitter about 'wokeness', it's exactly this kind of stuff that will give them a kernel of legitimacy. They should really just stay out of it.

Karawebnetwork 5y ago
> But to tell users that 'landlord' is 'inappropriate' is way crossing the line. It does not. It says "This word is gendered. Do you want to use a non-gendered version instead? [Yes/No/Report]" If you are writing a text where the goal is to help abuse survivors in a women's shelter to become land proprietors, it might be of use to you. But if you are writing a text for your men's sport team you simply press "ignore".
- jollybean 5y ago
  No, and you've made my point for me. The term 'Landlord' has gendered elements, that's fine, but so does most of our language, and that's mostly fine as well. Rarely, it's not. "If you are writing a text where the goal is to help abuse survivors in a women's shelter to become land proprietors, it might be of use to you." And since this is a 0.00000001% use case, you can see why it's ridiculous. In fact, that 'use case' you've conjured is possibly never likely to have happened in all of history and even then the term 'landlord' may be perfectly justifiable. It's not just that the suggestion itself is almost always going to be de-contextualized, it's for that reason that the software is effectively 'political' in a way. Google is telling us to 'de gender' our culture when the vast majority of people are fine with 'most' things the way they are. This is a bit like the 'Latinx' people - educated White people telling the Latino Plebes, who don't use or want hat language, how they ought to think. Worse, I don't even think the motivation is entirely legit - Google has a ton of extra money, they have ton of busy bodies, everyone wants to get their 'inclusivity brownie points' all the way up the executive chain, humble brag to others, make something nice for the Big Conf. Admittedly - as an intellectual concept it's not far off, but in it's application, it's ridiculous. At very minimum it should be 'off' by default.
  - WaffleIronMaker 5y ago
    I want to second the Latinx thing. Every latino I know, even the non-binary ones, find that particular change to the language offensive and uneducated. I'm sure there are some native spanish speakers who support it, but they seem to make up the minority. It just doesn't make linguistic sense.
    - jollybean 5y ago
      It's not a language issue it's an ideological issue that exposes in clear terms that Social Justice Populism is more an antagonizing than it is about 'Justice'. Latinos don't want this specific social change, but the 'vanguard' of Social Justice demands the change and utilizes it as an effort to both give evidence of the 'evil racist world in which we live' - and to 'one up' and take the the supposed moral high ground. Put another way - there will never, ever be an end to the claims of racial injustice, because the opportunity for bad faith populism provides an opportunity for some groups to gain leverage and power. Social Media has amplified this dramatically so in a world that is actually getting much more fair on racial terms, we scream and argue more about to the point of raising pedantic elements into total hyperbole. In 'polite Canada' they used to have language wars. The 'STOP' on the stop sign is a political issue, because it's technically English. So they argue about having 'Stop / Arret' - i.e. 'bilingual' stop signs - on federal property so that the French speaking person in Alberta, who may not know what 'Stop' means, will get the right idea. These ridiculous discussions drown out any meaningful social reform, because the rational, pedantic progressives are actively culled by the radicals. In much the same way Stalin's control over the Germany Communist Party in Weimar Republic led him to attack the SPD (Social Democrats) as 'the primary enemy' over the far right. This entire post could be restated in terms of populist right-wingism as well, particularly in regards to making something out of nothing and attacking their more traditional peers , with small differences.
  - BadCookie 5y ago
    The people who decide these things (journalists, I guess?) have ordained that “Black” should be capitalized while “white” should not. And I hate that I’ve told you this because I’m not a fan of the asymmetry, and you quite likely don’t care (I don’t blame you if you don’t!), but I suppose it’s exactly the sort of thing that Google Docs now warns about.
raxxorraxor 5y ago

Karawebnetwork 5y ago

> But to tell users that 'landlord' is 'inappropriate' is way crossing the line. It does not. It says "This word is gendered. Do you want to use a non-gendered version instead? [Yes/No/Report]" If you are writing a text where the goal is to help abuse survivors in a women's shelter to become land proprietors, it might be of use to you. But if you are writing a text for your men's sport team you simply press "ignore".

jollybean 5y ago
No, and you've made my point for me. The term 'Landlord' has gendered elements, that's fine, but so does most of our language, and that's mostly fine as well. Rarely, it's not. "If you are writing a text where the goal is to help abuse survivors in a women's shelter to become land proprietors, it might be of use to you." And since this is a 0.00000001% use case, you can see why it's ridiculous. In fact, that 'use case' you've conjured is possibly never likely to have happened in all of history and even then the term 'landlord' may be perfectly justifiable. It's not just that the suggestion itself is almost always going to be de-contextualized, it's for that reason that the software is effectively 'political' in a way. Google is telling us to 'de gender' our culture when the vast majority of people are fine with 'most' things the way they are. This is a bit like the 'Latinx' people - educated White people telling the Latino Plebes, who don't use or want hat language, how they ought to think. Worse, I don't even think the motivation is entirely legit - Google has a ton of extra money, they have ton of busy bodies, everyone wants to get their 'inclusivity brownie points' all the way up the executive chain, humble brag to others, make something nice for the Big Conf. Admittedly - as an intellectual concept it's not far off, but in it's application, it's ridiculous. At very minimum it should be 'off' by default.
- WaffleIronMaker 5y ago
  I want to second the Latinx thing. Every latino I know, even the non-binary ones, find that particular change to the language offensive and uneducated. I'm sure there are some native spanish speakers who support it, but they seem to make up the minority. It just doesn't make linguistic sense.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    It's not a language issue it's an ideological issue that exposes in clear terms that Social Justice Populism is more an antagonizing than it is about 'Justice'. Latinos don't want this specific social change, but the 'vanguard' of Social Justice demands the change and utilizes it as an effort to both give evidence of the 'evil racist world in which we live' - and to 'one up' and take the the supposed moral high ground. Put another way - there will never, ever be an end to the claims of racial injustice, because the opportunity for bad faith populism provides an opportunity for some groups to gain leverage and power. Social Media has amplified this dramatically so in a world that is actually getting much more fair on racial terms, we scream and argue more about to the point of raising pedantic elements into total hyperbole. In 'polite Canada' they used to have language wars. The 'STOP' on the stop sign is a political issue, because it's technically English. So they argue about having 'Stop / Arret' - i.e. 'bilingual' stop signs - on federal property so that the French speaking person in Alberta, who may not know what 'Stop' means, will get the right idea. These ridiculous discussions drown out any meaningful social reform, because the rational, pedantic progressives are actively culled by the radicals. In much the same way Stalin's control over the Germany Communist Party in Weimar Republic led him to attack the SPD (Social Democrats) as 'the primary enemy' over the far right. This entire post could be restated in terms of populist right-wingism as well, particularly in regards to making something out of nothing and attacking their more traditional peers , with small differences.
- BadCookie 5y ago
  The people who decide these things (journalists, I guess?) have ordained that “Black” should be capitalized while “white” should not. And I hate that I’ve told you this because I’m not a fan of the asymmetry, and you quite likely don’t care (I don’t blame you if you don’t!), but I suppose it’s exactly the sort of thing that Google Docs now warns about.

raxxorraxor 5y ago