from Hacker News

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

by Gonzih on 3/17/20, 9:47 PM with 341 comments

  • by papeda on 3/17/20, 10:15 PM

    Geez, I thought this might be an overblown piece about algorithms unwittingly optimizing for the wrong things, but the headline is pretty accurate. Discussing how moderators choose content to recommend to people in the “For You” section (not a user — I assume this is something highlighted to users):

    > 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.

  • by continuations on 3/17/20, 11:05 PM

    TikTok has a long history of doing shady things:

    * 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-...

  • by pjc50 on 3/17/20, 10:26 PM

    The Russians call this "face control"; the practice of maintaining a club full of only good looking people by the bouncers.

    It's unpleasant, but a handy reminder that TikTok and other social networks don't work for you, but make you into a product.

  • by cocktailpeanuts on 3/17/20, 10:39 PM

    How is this different from nightclubs having a high bar to entry?

    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?

  • by keanzu on 3/17/20, 10:51 PM

    A TikTok spokesperson said the goal was to prevent bullying on the platform, tying the document to a report from December that showed that the company was suppressing vulnerable users’ videos in a misguided effort to prevent them from becoming the centre of attention that could turn sour.

    Now that is some fine spin! Reminds of the Oscar Wilde sketch.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uycsfu4574w

  • by Consultant32452 on 3/17/20, 10:33 PM

    This is what happens when you mix utilitarian morality with a desire to stop online bullying. You just stop letting the most likely targets of bullying be seen. This is much cheaper and easier than trying to get rid of everyone who has ever been mean online, because that's everyone.

  • by brenden2 on 3/17/20, 10:45 PM

    Most forms of media do this to varying degrees. Most actors, for example, are attractive people. Few unattractive actors are successful, unless perhaps they only play roles which play off of their unattractiveness (like antagonists/villains). TV news anchors are also usually picked for their attractiveness.

  • by kristopolous on 3/18/20, 2:15 AM

    Although this ruffles sensibilities, isn't it kind of expected from an entertainment platform?

    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.

  • by zeeone on 3/17/20, 10:50 PM

    Like most Hollywood productions, TikTok wants to show the healthy and the beautiful over the sickly and the ugly. This is purely driven by customer demand. The good news is that 1) TikTok a private enterprise and it can set its own rules and 2) it's in China so it won't be vulnerable to public shaming and social pressure to bend its business decisions to please fringe groups.

  • by cosmodisk on 3/17/20, 11:51 PM

    I only heard about TikTok probably a couple of month ago,as I 'checked out' from social media platforms long time ago. Now what they are doing is is awful, however, that's already the case across the board. The world celebrates handsome men chasing a ball, women that have more silicone and botox in them than an average lab. We somehow give more attention to someone,who's ass size falls within 9th percentile, than the scientist,who discovers cure for some nasty disease. We reward people with tons of cash for coming up with some nonse, science free absurd, while we are ready to throw stones at anyone who says that oil fried fries are bad for us. The same crap happens on youtube or instagram,where pretty faces push yet another cream from big name corp.

  • by mgolawala on 3/17/20, 10:51 PM

    I can see how moderators would be instructed to surface content that is more "appealing" to the audience and beautiful people are no doubt going to be more appealing.

    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.

  • by anigbrowl on 3/17/20, 10:46 PM

    Gartner would not explain why a document purportedly aimed at “preventing bullying” would make zero mention of bullying, nor why it offers an explicit justification of attracting users, not protecting them.

    PR people really are the worst. It's OK to be rude to them at parties.

  • by krick on 3/18/20, 1:29 AM

    I'm not really surprised how this is considered a huge deal once again, but, in fact, this is what the users generally want. TikTok is a quite specific platform, it's not there to share opinions and whatnot. It's to film and binge-watch hundreds of short stupid gimmicky music videos depicting what the general audience of the platform finds appealing (which turns out to be uncannily specific thing: I'm afraid by now it must be millions of hours of the same music, moves and facial expressions by 14-year old girls with awfully similar clothes and hairstyle).

    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.

  • by grecy on 3/17/20, 11:08 PM

    Why is this a surprise? Glamor magazines and Hollywood movies have been doing this for all time.

    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.

  • by searchableguy on 3/18/20, 1:12 AM

    Here's my 2 cents -

    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...

  • by viztor on 3/18/20, 2:44 AM

    Unfortunately, those written document are nothing more than ugly but accurate reflection of the market. TikTok does this the same reason Hollywood does. The only difference no one in Hollywood wrote it down, but it is almost as a taken.

  • by sneak on 3/18/20, 1:42 AM

    Instagram does this too, just algorithmically based on likes and engagement.

    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.

  • by 8bitsrule on 3/17/20, 11:39 PM

    Whatever 'ugly' means in this century, ugly appearance is much preferable to ugly action.

    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.

  • by rickety-gherkin on 3/18/20, 1:15 AM

    I think the club analogy here is spot-on. From what I've seen of TikTok, if you're classically attractive then you're famous on there, and it drives the wants and trends of TikTok. A userbase that is infatuated with crushes. It's no different than any teen magazine from the 90s. I have an ignore-worthy conspiracy about this app, stop reading here if are you have a distaste for this.

    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.

  • by matz1 on 3/17/20, 11:44 PM

    In other word, the sky is blue, most people would prefer to see attractive people, its not rocket science. It would be stupid for tik tok to do otherwise.

  • by LatteLazy on 3/18/20, 2:23 AM

    If you think is is unfair, wait until they find out about Tinder and Literally The Whole Modelling and Acting Industries.

  • by robbrown451 on 3/18/20, 1:23 AM

    Would we be upset if they told the moderators "try to promote things that will be shared/upvoted a lot", and tied their earnings to how good they did at picking winners? Even if the effect was precisely the same?

    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.

  • by jhare on 3/17/20, 10:54 PM

    News flash: social media is garbage. What do you expect from these companies? It's just a private entity that makes its own rules about its own landfill of humanity. All of a sudden because anyone can make a post TikTok is obligated to preserve their rights? Not the case.

    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.

  • by literalanyone on 3/18/20, 12:06 AM

    So... "Sex sells." Is this new?

    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.

  • by ct520 on 3/17/20, 11:05 PM

    makes sense to me. Isnt this how society works at large? Cute hostess at the front of a restaurant to great you. Top sales earners are usually in decent shape and charismatic. Society segregates itself away from the poor. Sounds like tech imitating real life to me. (to be clear not saying its right, but giving my opinion on what I perceive in society and how this aligns to it)

  • by runawaybottle on 3/17/20, 11:45 PM

    It’s just verbiage right? Replace moderator with ‘casting director’, and replace website with ‘movie’ or ‘tv’. The goal is the same.

  • by rvz on 3/17/20, 11:24 PM

    Well that's no fun isn't it. You warp reality to make the whole social network a complete misrepresentation of only looking at the happiest of everyone's side. There is at least someone keeping a straight face and on TikTok but still feeling ugly or depressed there anyway. It is the same nature that users of Facebook have and it isn't very healthy and promotes one-sided stories.

    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.

  • by everyone on 3/17/20, 10:58 PM

    So, its like TV or films? ... or advertising, magazines.. most media come to think of it.

  • by imchillyb on 3/18/20, 1:55 AM

    This is a wonderful example of why no speech should be allowed to be censored.

    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.

  • by nojvek on 3/18/20, 4:55 AM

    Ugly fat poor. 3 strong words repeated over and over in the comments. I hope people realize that there is a pretty large demographic that may identify with this.

    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.

  • by KorematsuFred on 3/18/20, 2:18 AM

    I am unable to see what is wrong with all of this. I wont be using tiktok if it had ugly people doing stuff I am not interested int.

    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.

  • by philwelch on 3/18/20, 9:18 AM

    I have to admit, my reaction is...so what?

    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.

  • by tomrod on 3/18/20, 1:21 AM

    Not a TikTok user.

    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?

  • by virtualpresence on 3/17/20, 11:05 PM

    Hahaha that's like 99% of the people on there. Great marketing tik tok. Tick tock your time is coming

  • by saltedonion on 3/18/20, 1:21 AM

    How is this any different than having an algorithm do it for you? If human moderators use these rules, it probably means the content it lets through is correlated with high engagement. What’s the material difference to an algorithm that just favors high engagement as well?

  • by mothsonasloth on 3/17/20, 10:50 PM

    Everything is becoming more curated and centralised, it wouldn't take a stretch to make a dystopian outlook where eugenics and social credit is implemented through a global tech platform.

    If you're not gifted with good lucks you are punished in the system.

  • by majani on 3/18/20, 9:20 AM

    Have people in here actually downloaded TikTok and browsed through it? It's actually pretty amazing how beautiful their creators are. It's gonna be a legitimate unique value proposition for them as a social network

  • by m3kw9 on 3/18/20, 1:23 AM

    How is this different from Hollywood filtering actors and actresses for good looks?

  • by classified on 3/25/20, 2:17 PM

    Rules of censorship:

    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.

  • by SamReidHughes on 3/17/20, 11:46 PM

    I remember the first day a local Philz cafe opened, it was immediately filled with very attractive people. Months later, its population looked mostly interchangeable with that of the Starbucks across the road.

  • by overcast on 3/18/20, 2:46 AM

    Reminds me of the S10E7 of Curb your Enthusiasm, "The Ugly Section"

  • by aabbcc1241 on 3/18/20, 6:57 AM

    TikTok (and many other social network) is a business company, it can do whatever it favor as long as it's legal. Instead of complaining it, it's more constructive to come up alternatives :)

  • by Sophistifunk on 3/18/20, 10:38 PM

    Why pretend this is novel? All visual media select for prettier people, and every single company that wants to operate from (or in) China will do the rest of the slimy pro-state censorship.

  • by strategarius on 3/18/20, 8:21 AM

    Too many comments down there. Beijing troll factory noticed the post?

  • by MrBuddyCasino on 3/18/20, 10:24 AM

    "TRUE JUSTICE If you really want diversity & protection of minorities suffering workplace prejudice, stop chromo-categorizing -- that fake unempirical business.

    Hire unattractive people. They are the one suffering the most, & deprived of attention." [0]

    [0] https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1231359316147478528

  • by mordymoop on 3/18/20, 11:24 AM

    There’s that really really old social media platform called television that does something pretty similar.

  • by _pmf_ on 3/18/20, 5:19 AM

    Why is this a problem when done by social media companies and not a problem for the rest of the media?

  • by Ozzie_osman on 3/18/20, 2:04 AM

    God bless the Intercept for continuously pumping out investigative journalism pieces.

  • by s_y_n_t_a_x on 3/17/20, 10:47 PM

    > These same documents show moderators were also told to censor political speech in TikTok livestreams, punishing those who harmed “national honor” or broadcast streams about “state organs such as police” with bans from the platform.

    This is the story. Why would anyone use a CPC social media platform?

  • by hurricanetc on 3/18/20, 11:55 AM

    If you don’t like it don’t use TikTok. It’s as simple as that.

  • by lonelappde on 3/17/20, 10:47 PM

    Netflix and NBC TV do this in the shows they distribute too.

  • by alecco on 3/18/20, 7:32 AM

    Comments here are ~50% whataboutisms.

  • by throwaway122378 on 3/18/20, 2:19 AM

    Well that’s like saying Reddit suppressed pro Trump community

  • by dang on 3/17/20, 10:24 PM

  • by nkkollaw on 3/17/20, 10:10 PM

    Well, I guess those videos turn people off and they stay on the app less, and TikTok wants to make money.

    TikTok works with AI, but the same would happen on Facebook, where people click on "Like" manually.

    Cry me a river.

  • by strategarius on 3/18/20, 2:34 AM

    People should probably hate their lives using Chinese social network. Chinese are well-known for racism even against other Asian people, not to say all your information is being stored on servers of a communist totalitarian state.