TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people and the poor

Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by kryogen1c on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @06:27PM (#22611249)

this is a very cogent point. algorithims act as a layer of abstraction and somehow gives people an escape for moral culpability. i wonder what facebooks algorithms would have done during US slavery, in nazi germany, during the apartheid, or any other (countless) horriffic human event?

no doubt we will hoist pitchforks at tiktok for being authoritarian chinese and neglect our own senseless populism.

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by pbhjpbhj on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @06:38PM (#22611344)

I wonder if racists get friend suggestions for people who aren't their "race" in appearance terms; I'm imagining that could be an emergent selection not explicitly encoded for. If that were the case ... would it be so different to people making that selection. It's a question of allowance vs. instigation I suppose ... but if you knew that behaviour was likely to emerge then the line gets blurred somewhat ...

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by anigbrowl on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @06:52PM (#22611471)

Rarely. I operate several facebook profiles that exclusively look at very racist or politically extreme people, and guess who FB keeps recommending as potential friends.

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by chillwaves on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @08:17PM (#22612221)

Why?

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by anigbrowl on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @11:00PM (#22613185)

I study people like the other person who replied to you (whose comment has since been removed).

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by detaro on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @06:33PM (#22611306)

How are algorithms a "layer of abstraction" for guidelines given to human moderators?

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by bronipstid on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @06:39PM (#22611345)

I think his point is that if people set the objectives, the AI will learn what people like, and that is going to be discriminatory in some way.

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by im3w1l on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @06:45PM (#22611394)

The difference is that a person with some flaw can compensate by having other qualities and still be popular. But if there is a hard rule, then that's not possible.

People need that hope.

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by daveFNbuck on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @06:30PM (#22611280)

This is not about low quality content getting automatically filtered out by an algorithm because people don't like it. This is about TikTok using human moderators to prevent users from ever seeing content made by people they don't like.

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by lonelappde on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @06:46PM (#22611401)

What do you think "low quality" means if not "what people don't like"?

TikTok doesn't care who made it; they care how the video looks.

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by daveFNbuck on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @07:54PM (#22611998)

This isn't about content being low quality or not liked. It's about content containing specific things that TikTok moderators were told to look out for.

There is plenty of extremely high quality content made by people who appear fat, poor, old, disabled, ugly, etc in their videos.

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by linuxftw on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @06:33PM (#22611302)

So, like reddit?

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by capableweb on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @06:36PM (#22611326)

Moderators of the subreddits in reddit are normal reddit users (normally) compared to the moderators in TikTok who I presume are selected by the company and on payroll (or contractors maybe, I seem to recall Facebook uses contractors for this)

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by catalogia on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @06:49PM (#22611440)

Paying their labor seems to be a respect in which TikTok is better than reddit, not worse.

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by linuxftw on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @06:44PM (#22611389)

What difference does it make? People are moderating content that they want to seen or not want to be seen.

No different than the editor of a newspaper or television show.

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by daveFNbuck on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @07:55PM (#22612010)

I don't think Reddit gives moderators instructions to remove content if it indicates that the poster has a list of undesirable characteristics like being fat or poor.

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by nkkollaw on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @06:34PM (#22611311)

So, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube..?

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by daveFNbuck on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @07:56PM (#22612018)

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube don't have moderators hiding posts by fat or ugly people.

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by nl on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @06:30PM (#22611281)

TikTok works with AI

No, it's manually done by humans.

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by nkkollaw on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @06:33PM (#22611304)

It's not. The whole point is that you keep scrolling and they show you what the algo thinks you'll like.

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by capableweb on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @06:36PM (#22611332)

Sure, the algorithm will try to figure out what you like and put that on the top, but the things being removed by humans don't even get into the algorithm, they are completely removed.

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Re:TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” people... by nl on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @07:24PM (#22611755)

Did you read the article?

Quote: 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.

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