> Under this policy, TikTok moderators were explicitly told to suppress uploads from users with flaws both congenital and inevitable. “Abnormal body shape,” “ugly facial looks,” dwarfism, and “obvious beer belly,” “too many wrinkles,” “eye disorders,” and many other “low quality” traits are all enough to keep uploads out of the algorithmic fire hose.
A TikTok spokesperson seems to confirm they are real guidelines, but won’t confirm how they were used.
> TikTok spokesperson Josh Gartner told The Intercept that “most of” the livestream guidelines reviewed by The Intercept “are either no longer in use, or in some cases appear to never have been in place,” but would not provide specifics.
No, it does not.
There is a big difference between:
- showing you unconnected content you are likely to engage with
- having rules enforced with the help of human reviewers to prevent any user from getting recommendations with people deemed ugly/poor/etc.
The older crowd also prefer to look at beautiful people.
I don't understand why you would need to actively encourage this, I don't believe Twitter would ever have people with “Abnormal body shape,” “ugly facial looks,” dwarfism, and “obvious beer belly,” “too many wrinkles,” “eye disorders,” and many other “low quality” features trending.
Instagram on the other hand is so beauty centric that it's created its own makeup aesthetic.
Anyway, I uploaded the most recent video on my phone as a test which was me getting my nostrils waxed in a Turkish Barbers. It hit the For You page and it's now got 360k views :-(
The only difference with Facebook is that it got crap from people who wanted it to be responsible for it's content (fake news), while TikTok gets crap from people who were not prepated for it to be so moderated, but it's still the same fundamental problem of trying to sit on both chairs at the same time.
Maybe you don't owe a country better, but you owe this community considerably better if you want to post here.
* TikTok's local moderation guidelines ban pro-LGBT content - Chinese-owned social media app bans such content even in countries where homosexuality has never been illegal [1]
* Revealed: how TikTok censors videos that do not please Beijing - Leak spells out how social media app advances China’s foreign policy aims [2]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/26/tiktoks-l...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...
It's unpleasant, but a handy reminder that TikTok and other social networks don't work for you, but make you into a product.
To me, this seems most similar to movie producers hiring attractive people to be in their movies. TikTok creators are making content for the platform, and the platform is curating the content to try and find things it thinks the audience will like. In the same way movie producers select specific people to be in their movies because they think their audience will appreciate them.
Sadly, they’re probably right.
Sounds just like a lifestyle magazine, or a catwalk, or a million other situations that have been normalised in which people are chosen for how they look (just about every prospectus appears to choose people to present their idea of the right type of diversity, for example).
It's not great, but TikTok just seems to be doing the same as most other organisations?
I am not saying this is an ethical thing to do, I am saying these apps are no different from nightclubs and they gotta do what they gotta do to survive. And no matter what you may say, humans prefer non ugly people over ugly people. I am sorry but this is simply how humans work. If you disagree, then you are a hypocrite.
So should high end nightclubs be publicly shamed for doing what they do (when what their "users" want is exactly non-ugly people) and driven out of business?
Or fashion products, which hire models based on attractiveness.
Or the music industry, which puts forward pop stars that are attractive while keeping ones that don't have sex appeal off the air.
Or the film industry. Or the literally any other industry that tries to survive via popularity and getting eye time. Attractiveness sells. What TikTok is doing is no different than any other industry, it's just that the models aren't getting paid.
Sure, why not?
Privately-run-and-owned social networks like TikTok tend to attain a critical mass where they're considered a utility when they're really not. So boycotts don't work because it becomes literally where everyone is after a while, and alternatives become difficult because the barrier to entry gets so high.
That's the real problem, and the problem of a centralized Internet. I should be able to broadcast video from my house and participate in a peer-to-peer CDN of my choice.
Tiktok is not a CDN, it's a presentation layer on top of their own CDN or one they rent through cloud providers.
But even ignoring the authoritarian state angle, surely you'd think it'd be weird and counterproductive for user content from YouTube or Instagram or imgur to have similar policies? Those sites are also not nightclubs or modeling agencies or a Hooters franchise either.
FWIW it's totally shitty for nightclubs to be discriminatory in that way. I get why they do it, but it doesn't make it any less shitty of them, and it sure as hell doesn't let them off the hook for their shittiness in this regard.
Tangentially, this is one of infinitely many reasons that nearly all of humanity hates nightclubs, including the people that feel socially obligated to go to them, and including people still young enough to convince themselves that they must be having fun there because it sure looks like everyone else is, not realizing that everyone else is thinking the exact same thing.
You say "it's a place for people to put their content out on the internet", but you don't ask WHY they would do that. And I don't know if you have used TikTok at all, but if you ask anyone who "put their content out on" TikTok, they would agree TikTok is like a giant nightclub.
Their platform, their choice for what goes on. You want something better? Go build in yourself. I have no problem with platforms self moderating. At the end of the day consumers speak with their actions.
How many TV shows feature dwarfs or people with who are abnormal? Don't blame a platform for the inherit flaws in most of us. It really only serves as a black mirror to the truth.
No, TikTok is a place for a company to sell ads on views of creator content and they, much like those nightclubs, believe having "desireable" creators will get them those views.
Other sites have different strategies (much like the local bar in comparison to that nightclub). Their strategy seems to work for a variety of industries.
I am not supporting it, as being on the other side of the good looking line does tend to make life a pain in the butt around the "pretty" people.
Please, please, read the ToS and stop thinking like that! This is not people's own content, it's Facebook's, YouTube's, Reddit's content. If you want to own your content - you should rent a domain name, a server and host it by yourself.
Except typical social network users doesn't want to own their content. They are here for other's attention.
Or maybe there's a case to be made that censoring people for being homosexual or looking different is a form of harassment by censorship?
It's not like these platforms offer any kind of critical service. They come and go every couple of years it seems. TikTok seems pretty crap, just tell people to stop supporting it.
Some people feel socially obligated to go to nightclub, others feel socially obligated to use some social networking app. They're probably both wrong.
No it's not. China has their own version of TikTok called Douyin. If I recall correctly, TikTok isn't even available in China.
Since TikTok isn't even used in China, who exactly are the users you're describing as "people living in a pathologically authoritarian state"?
What would shaming them for this accomplish? Is the idea to shame them so much that they pretend to like ugly people like me? What would be the point of that?
Some people don't want to see you, and that's their business.
The nightclub lets you know where you stand at the door. I took a read of tik-tok's about page, and it gives me the impression that they're here for everyone. Just a platform to share short videos. The author of one of the featured videos on that page looks like someone who may have been filtered out.
I don't think the analogy is completely off base, but we can judge tik-tok for being deceptive.
TikTok users aren't aware of filtering yet, so telling them is a social good. Humans may prefer to see beautiful people, but filtering out ugly people means the majority of users will be below average compared to the content they view. They should at least know it's happening.
> and driven out of business?
Has this happened to TikTok?
That kind of tone is frowned upon here.
The individuals who they reject on the other hand are living beings, more specifically humans. And that is the point where it starts to become a moral issue because the business interest of an organization is directly linked to the discrimination of a group of humans.
Yes, that is the way that kind of business works, but it should also be valid to consequently judge it as immoral.
It's not, and that's pretty messed up too when you stop and actually think about it.
> If you disagree, then you are a hypocrite.
Just going to shut out any opposition to your view point like that huh? Great chat.
> So should high end nightclubs be publicly shamed for doing what they do and driven out of business?
Actually yes, discrimination is NOT OK and those supporting it need to be named and shamed.
Many night clubs want users to have "fun" so they pay for a membership. TikTok wants users to stay so they can collect enough data to give it to advertisers or government to target them better.
A single night club won't have more than 100 people at any given time. But tiktok boasts 1.5 billion+ users and millions of them are active at any given time.
Few people going to night clubs won't decide the future of your country but millions on tiktok or other US centric social media might - facebook? instagram?
This too - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22611404
Other comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22612589
Most people going to nightclubs are there for fun. In contrast, it's possible to make money on Tiktok and a lot of handicapped people are desperately looking for ways to make money online.
A lot of those people will not be beautiful people. Their disability makes sure of that in many cases.
So the difference is that nightclubs are not telling people "You can make money from the comfort of home" and then shafting people who have few other viable means to make money.
There may be a few sex workers and drug dealers making bank at the nightclub, but they already know they have to fly under the radar and can be thrown out if caught, etc. The nightclub isn't actively telling them they are welcome to hang there and establish an income, then secretly saying "only the sexy people."
Now as for how we should treat businesses that treat people better based on their looks is not something I have a strong opinion about, but my two cents is that looks should not be a factor of how people get treated because it is possible that representation of "ugly" people in media could make many diverse looking people "attractive" to younger generations. This would be beneficial because it means that talent would have more priority over looks than before.
Nightclubs tell you if they think you're not up to their standard. This is far more manipulative and cruel. You could even call it gas-lighting to simply encourage these people to post content!
Nightclubs that have physical appearance standards have a business model designed around one end of the beauty preference spectrum. By itself, that's not bad; if you want to have a club for only right-handed people, that's fine.
But it's unethical to then pretend that the club is for everyone, when it's really not. That's more like selling someone a car with a top speed of 120mph, but artificially limiting the speed for poorer people, and not telling them. Just because nightclubs walk a fine ethical line doesn't make other companies that also walk that line a great idea.
A lot of things are like that. One example that comes to mind is that the New York Times, which frequently runs articles criticising tech companies for invading their users' privacy, loads a million trackers every time you access its website. When you're bigger (and more lucrative), different rules apply to you. Maybe that's not a bad thing.
Tell me how it could work any other way? nightclubs are "popular" because of this selection, if anybody could come and go, what would make a place popular?
I don't go to nightclubs and I don't enjoy it, but I can understand why it works that way, it may be unfair but if you break that, the whole concept falls apart. It is valid with any type of community, they simply value different things.
Business that engage in immoral behaviour should be shamed. Doesn't matter if it is casino sites, drug dealers or nightclubs that discriminate against ugly people. Whether that shaming results in them becoming unprofitable is beside the point.
Or do you mean another kind of bar?
Pretty similar to how TikTok isn't stopping anybody from posting, they are just selective about what they feature.
Don't casting agents and producers essentially do the same thing for movies and TV?
No, that's how you work.
Humans exist within a fitness gradient and we naturally evaluate other humans according to how they fit within it.
I don't like it, but we're bloody animals.
Why does it matter? Because a nightclub does it, suddenly it's OK for TikTok to do it, too?
If Johnny jumps off a bridge, are you going to leap as well?
I gather that TikTok claimed to be inclusive. Nightclubs almost by definition don't.
If you want to do that, then go ahead.
But you should not use whataboutism to shame people into not fighting bad behavior on other platforms.
At the end of the day, this behavior is not normal on most online platforms. And users have the right to shame platforms that do this, and you are the immoral one if you are trying to attack people for doing what they believe is right.
Are you implying that it is only because of a sense of “political correctness” that people would object to discrimination?
Now that is some fine spin! Reminds of the Oscar Wilde sketch.
TikTok doesn’t care about bullying.
Here it’s humans taking that shortcut, in the future I’d totally imagine AIs resolving to eliminate the source of the problems when dealing with societal issues. And we sure won’t be happy about it.
Seems kind of similar to what supermarket magazines do. Obviously a social media app is not a supermarket magazine, but the premise of cynically using pretty people to drive up engagement is nothing new.
What in TFA indicates that these policies were intended to stop online bullying? Just as plausible to think that they were intended to create a saccharine user experience in order to promote growth.
I don't think these were intended to stop online bullying as much as they are just another bullying tactic themselves.
'Regarding the policy of suppressing videos featuring unattractive, disabled, or poor users, Gartner stated that the rules “represented an early blunt attempt at preventing bullying, but are no longer in place, and were already out of use when The Intercept obtained them.”'
Any traditional teen magazine from 20 years ago (seventeen, tigerbeat) wouldn't be scolded for heavily policing what photos go in the pages. Not only that, they heavily post processed everything.
There's superficial and arbitrary gatekeepers for what is called news, what is played on the radio, basically everything. Even some of the talent shows have strict, rather low, age cutoffs. 29 is too old for American Idol (it used to be 25).
Even more apparently egalitarian entertainment, such as contestants on the Price is Right aren't "truly random" and get shortlisted into energetic people who come in larger crowds in order to make better television. Most people think that's probably also fine. Some guy just standing and shrugging after being revealed a "brand new car" wouldn't really be right.
So for a digital social entertainment platform to do the same kind of pruning, it's kind of expected. Content is filtered to create better entertainment for the target demographic, one that I'm not in.
Maybe you think it's not the right filter system but now we're doing a target marketing debate and not one of ethics.
For instance, if a PhD program only accepted white male applicants, we'd find that unacceptable. If instead, they only accepted people with proper credentials, scores, and recommendations, we'd find that fine. It's not no filter, just the right one.
Similarly, if we were making a movie about Jim Crow segregation and needed actors to play white racist men then our same unacceptable filter all of a sudden looks reasonable.
So it's not about removing filters, it's about making them justifiable and relevant. That's why we say "there's no reason that a qualified X can't be a Y", that part, the reason part, is important.
It's like the contestants on reality TV shows tend to not be ugly as well.
For some reason it _feels_ slimy but I am not sure why. Perhaps it is being confronted with the notion that the world isn't fair.
No wonder they're not interested in seeing people air this dirty laundry.
PR people really are the worst. It's OK to be rude to them at parties.
Videos TikTok moderators are suppressing here get to be watched and liked too, but not in some unassuming liberal manner SJWs are hoping to promote: you can find hundreds of so called "TikTok cringe compilations" on youtube. It's not what TikTok's "normal" audience wants to see in their feeds. So TikTok is doing them a service supressing this stuff. And it absolutely doesn't matter if they do it "algorithmically" or with manual labor. Essentially this is the same process, they differ only by cost and efficacy.
It is not the case that people entirely autonomously 'want' things. Humans have culture, which amongst other things, inculcates desires. Further, it manifestly doesn't follow that anyone is right to provide anything that people happen to have been acculturated into wanting. That brand of absurd corporate nihilism would have been literally unthinkable to any human prior to (roughly) the European Enlightenment, and is what has led our planet to the brink of oblivion.
This is the natural consequence of any platform that wants to be popular and get a ton of media attention.
Is it mortally wrong? of course it is, exactly the same as glamor magazines and Hollywood are.
A. [0] Familiarity breeds attractiveness.
This isn't a new concept. You can find many advocate groups who want "diversity" in workplaces and higher positions to stop systematic or perceived racism due to non familiarity. How is that different from above? Do you have a choice to be ugly or not? Do you have a choice on whether your body is deformed or disabled? Do you have a choice on being poor?
To little extent, maybe but most can't be helped beyond a certain level.
B. Scale
Night club doing it doesn't affect society as much as a platform with 1.5+ billion users. Of those who are going to vote new policies and may get to a high position of authority later,
do you really want your judge who uses tiktok to sentence you for longer?
You can already find people living in echo chambers online and as more of it is moved online, will you be okay if your child is excluded from something more than a billion people use because she is a bit shorter than normal?
How many of you have LinkedIn, twitter or social media crap that you despise but have to use due to others using them? What will happen then?
C. Awareness
Do you think users are aware that they are being censored constantly compared to real life where you can't avoid meeting different people? If you go to a bar, you will see different people in your way - few "ugly" and others pretty.
<sarcasm>
I propose we stop ugly people from having kids so everyone remains pretty and similarly symmetrical. Who wouldn't wanna live in a world with everyone pretty and same? It's not like we will seek more exoticism after that happens. The problem will remain solved forever.
</sarcasm>
0] http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~efi614/documents/InPre...
You can’t prioritize posts in an algorithmic feed without deprioritizing others.
Reverse chronological is the only non-editorializing choice, and it’s not an option on most major platforms.
I encourage people not to donate content to these censorship platforms and to disintermediate their connections with their audience.
Another demonstration that centralization is anathema to community. It concentrates power in a few hands, and it creates single-points-of-failure. The internet is not yet routing around that kind of damage.
I think it's used as a staging environment to test mass human interactions with computer generated videos of people in a setting where there isn't pre-loaded skepticism and where the sample sets are extremely good. Mass amounts of people doing the same dance is a pretty good data set, and the information in this article makes me believe this even more. They are effectively "cleaning" the data so the sample set is attractive people in clean and presentable homes or areas with good lighting, all confined to the "For your page" stream. Might not be true, but it's a fun thought.
Basically, what seems to have happened is someone worded it crassly, but they were just telling them to think like marketing people, and use common sense. Also, the word "suppression" implies censorship and heavy handedness, while "promote" seems harmless. But they can really be describing the same process.
Not that this is a good thing. It's childish to be surprised and indignant about these companies' policies and behavior like they're your buddy or something.
I feel like we want the world to be a better place in 2020, and then we are reminded the humans are basically still humans.
Users deserve to know how hard they are being fucked. Informed consent, even for the naive users, basically.
I don't think that's an apt analogy because I don't think that's true. I've perused the health inspector reports for local restaurants a few times and I've seen businesses written up for substandard sanitation practices. It may not be the most enforceable law ever, but nevertheless I'm pretty sure the law does require them to wash their hands thoroughly.
The interesting observation and funny side to this policy is that there could be a story to be told here where the suppressed "ugly" and "poor" people become the heroes and the TikTok elite and its glamorous fans have become the super-villains.
Freedom of speech isn't a slogan. Freedom of speech means allowing others to say things you don't agree with or like, because it allows your own voice to be heard.
Once censorship is allowed, in any form, it will always devolve into us and them. Us and them is determined by who is running things. They're the us. Everyone else is them.
Us justifies their decisions and actions, but it's still the same ol' story. Power corrupts and those Us' in power, will use their influence in any way that they choose.
Censorship equals tyranny.
As for TikTok, it’s a Chinese app and things we consider discriminating may be a bit normalized there. I constantly get surprised how much the CPC gets away with, but asking my Chinese friends, they’ve made peace with it “it’s for the greater good”.
So like Facebook’s unofficial motto “growth at any cost”, this doesn’t surprise me coming from TikTok. I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook did/does this too.
As someone has pointed out on this threat elsewhere, Tiktok is a night club. You gotta dress up, put up fake eye lashes, high heels and show some cleavage to get more attention. THAT IS their business model.
This outrage is nothing but silicon valley hippie attitude which I think the chinese simply don't give a shit about.
Social media is a playground for beautiful, glamorous people, because those are the personalities most people want to see. It’s true for YouTube and Instagram. If you’re a relative newcomer to the market like TikTok and your promoted content is filled with ugly people, users will notice that and assume your service is second rate.
I mean, to me, this is how things just work, ethical or not. What would we expect from "featured" things? Typically people in television (shows and commercials) or otherwise "featured" fall into more attractive territory.
Is it shallow? Absolutely.
Is there anything to be done about it? I mean, maybe, but is there some monetary harm coming to TikTok users?
If you're not gifted with good lucks you are punished in the system.
Censorship is OK when it helps making money.
Failing that, censorship is OK if we dislike the content being censored or the people posting it.
TikTok doing this is Universal Chinese that is understood all over the world. No need for translation.
Hire unattractive people. They are the one suffering the most, & deprived of attention." [0]
This is the story. Why would anyone use a CPC social media platform?
That's explicitly the point.
Yes its evil and manipulative - but everyone should understand CPC is not above such tactics. And neither are pop magazines, holywood.. other people
Its an ugly world out there
I wouldn't equate pop magazines to the people who run concentration camps and silence anyone who talks ill of them.
I'm re-watching Breaking Bad. A great show about some ugly f*ckers.
TikTok works with AI, but the same would happen on Facebook, where people click on "Like" manually.
Cry me a river.
no doubt we will hoist pitchforks at tiktok for being authoritarian chinese and neglect our own senseless populism.
TikTok doesn't care who made it; they care how the video looks.
