I thought that, but I disabled my uBlock Origin and still didn't see anything. Now I'm wondering if I have a hosts file block. Or maybe I enabled the ‘Facebook: Bad’ setting in Firefox?
Anyway, thanks for clarifying. I think news reports should never rely on outside servers for their own content. It should be hosted by BBC, just the same as their text.
BBC might be worried about copyright issues of they duplicate and self-host Facebook content without a license. I am not sure if this is the case, but I would expect media publishers to be especially guarded when it comes to copyright.
I find it ironic that the FB contact responded with:
> sometimes it doesn't know a Walla Walla onion from a, well, you know
She can't even write breasts / nipples / butt. Makes me think of the "Big Lebowski" quote:
> The word itself makes some men uncomfortable. Vagina. (...) Yes, they don't like hearing it and find it difficult to say whereas without batting an eye a man will refer to his dick or his rod or his Johnson.
Saying someone “doesn’t know [something] from their own ass” is a dated, low-brow expression in English meaning someone is completely unfamiliar with something. A person could never realistically mistake anything at all for their own ass, so the expression implies an impossible level of ignorance.
The joke here is that the AI is both comically unfamiliar with onions (as the expression usually means) and that it may have literally mistaken the onions for being buttocks or breasts.
> "We've sold more in the last three days than in the last five years," said Mr McLean, adding they are also now listed under "sexy onions" on the company website.
Perhaps surprisingly savvy for a grocer, but good on him!
I can't be the only human on Hacker News who knows enough about machine learning (not all that much), in combination with enough about the human body (not all that much) to completely empathise with the machine's misunderstanding in this instance?
I do not blame the algorithm but the people who decided to implement an algorithm that is unsuitable for the task in the place of paid human being who could do the job properly.
Not only do I 100% agree with you, but I actually think there's a good probability it was done on purpose and then capitalized on brilliantly. That onion image jumps at me.
I must give them a tip of the hat, they know how to play the media game:
> "We've sold more in the last three days than in the last five years," said Mr McLean, adding they are also now listed under "sexy onions" on the company website.
I'm guessing this was flagged by their nipple detection algorithm. Personally, I think it's time for our society to grow out of that phase, the whole nipple censoring is just ridiculous at this point. Can we change the laws around it? Or why is that even still in place?
I think it's a matter of hiding them because of so many people fetishizing tits, which ironically is likely due to them being hidden in the first place. It'll probably take a couple generations of uncensoring them before it's not socially pornographic
Why did the open that article talking about someone who assaulted another person? That just seems random and unrelated, like if if an article about sex toys just randomly opened with a paragraph about rape.
It might be true, as a European I was surprised when I learned that you have adult magazines in the US dedicated to woman breasts. It's just not a big deal here.
Europeans fetishize what they can't have as much as anyone else. It doesn't always result in censorship to amplify the coveting.
The outcomes are just as often built on deep patriarchal control and objectification as anywhere else. I just like that across Europe you can get all of your carnal desires fulfilled in a regulated environment, or various levels of regulation, whatever you are feeling at the time.
In Germany there's also the Playboy and other magazines, dedicated to female bodies. Come on, it's not like in Europe we are also full-on contrary of the US.
It's still a matter of statistics. If only 1 in a million photos is classified incorrectly, then most researchers as well as most "normal" people would consider the algorithm ok for the purpose (regardless of whether the purpose is justified). Yet on the scale of Facebook, errors are very likely to happen on a daily basis.
This is probably not about nipples. My bet would be that the machine is interpreting a naked round belly, vagina (vertical black shadowed area) and open legs in the arrangement of the three onions in the top.
AI doesn't work that way. It's the overall combo of skin tones and curves that resemble the training material it was fed (porn), and that's why it's triggering.
Yes. More in some places, less in others. I'm guessing that their minimum age (13) has something to do with it.
I am sure there are other options that can be done - restricting some content in some countries, restricting content for minors, and allowing adults other places to opt out or opt into nudity. I do not trust facebook to implement these well enough to appease governments and I think the prudish regulations align with Zuch's views on things. Not to mention that as long as folks use the service, they aren't really here to make folks happy. I'm not looking for change any time soon.
Only Zucker---- can speak to the rationale for Facebook's nudity policies. However, I've seen it speculated that FB's policy is driven by the fact that advertisers don't want to risk the blowback if one of their products were to be seen advertised next to any content religious conservatives will get upset about. Other sites that used to post various forms of semi-nudity have run into this problem.
Facebook itself may also be unwilling to risk losing advertising from conservatively-aligned companies by allowing material that their conservative clients would find offensive.
Religious conservatives can cause tremendous brand damage if a megachurch pastor happens to 'find' something blasphemous that he can use to motivate his flock to up their donations that week. For most companies it's not worth the risk of stirring up these people and it would not be surprising if this is also the case with Facebook.
One way my country "tramples on its citizens' inherent religious rights" is that priests here must, just as for the other professions, have degrees from accredited theological studies.
Not only does it free us from the more radical sort of bomb throwing islamic fundamentalist extremism, it also frees us from the more radical sort of female curve covering puritan fundamentalist extremism.
"Religious conservatives" is another term for victims of manipulation techniques used by different organisations. It is all about enslaving ones mind in order to extract value from such person. Their sick views shouldn't be imposed on the rest of the society. "Religious" organisations should be banned from using various techniques e.q. If you don't do what's in the book, you will burn in hell. "Religion" should only be available to consenting adults.
Because it creates an automatic subconscious response (excitement) in males. I guess brain is built that way for the sake of reproduction of human population.
You're right and you're wrong. Men who grow up being exposed to the idea of nipples as sexual have a subconscious response; men who have not, don't, which is why some lineages of humanity don't have the same taboo, like most pre-modern tribes. It's the same reason that an ankle could be scandalous and arousing in 1750, but isn't now (with some exceptions in modern subculture.)
Personally I'm in favor of modesty, and would prefer not to have sexuality flaunted everywhere like it is, but your answer isn't quite accurate.
I'm a little confused. Didn't your first paragraph illustrate how "modesty" is basically subjective? If that's the case, what does it mean to be in favor of it? Are you in favor of the current notion of modesty as it is today in your country, and if so, why?
Humans share many subjective feelings and views. Just because something is subjective it doesn’t mean it should be disregarded.
What days should be holidays is also pretty subjective, but if the society can agree on which days to consider as holidays, probably it can also agree on what is considered sexual and modest. (Which is actually way more important than holidays because it impacts children that could be traumatized by certain sexual behaviors).
> Just because something is subjective it doesn’t mean it should be disregarded.
Right, I completely agree. Which is why I'm confused when somebody brings up how a topic is subjective, complicated, and has been approached in the past in a way that seems ridiculous to us today; and then says simply "personally I'm in favor of [it]." That strikes me as disregarding the issue, and even disregarding what they just said themselves.
> ...probably it can also agree on what is considered sexual and modest.
I don't think the people of the USA will come to an agreement on this in my lifetime. Why would they? They haven't for the last hundred years.
I see your confusion, but I never actually agreed that the way people approached it in the past was ridiculous. Nearly every single human custom is arbitrary and subjective, but there's no reason to abandon all preferences simply because we understand that.
"Modesty" in my country means that behaviors and body parts that are considered sexual are not displayed prominently or advertised; it doesn't matter that a nipple may not be inherently sexual, because everyone here feels that it is, and thus not displaying (and by extension, not saturating TV, movies, and advertisements with images of sexualized breasts) would be considered modest.
I certainly wouldn't mind if the nipple was eventually de-sexualized, but seeing as that's likely not possible given the internet, and since it will likely remain sexualized at least in the western world, I'd prefer if people were modest about it.
that argument wouldn't work with native tribes. These things are entirely cultural and specifically judeo-christian. From the the ancient Minoans who portray their women usually barebreasted, to the greeks and romans , to many non-western societies, it is the prominent puritanism of anglosaxon cultures that is sticking out as an exception, not the other way around.
That something is routinely exposed is not evidence that it isn't considered sexually exciting. You know what part of a woman is always, without exception, considered a major part of her sex appeal? Her face.
The nudity policy in media however is utterly ridiculous. Butts are allowed nipplee are not , but breastfeeding is probably ok, bikinis are ok, but not if too wet , etc etc.
Tech is perpetuating the Victorian era in the most comical, backwards fashion
that argument wouldn't work with native tribes. These things are entirely cultural and specifically judeo-christian
You must have a cartoon sense of "native tribes," because this existed in many "native tribes" and other cultures around the world before the first missionaries arrived.
Take it another way: would you prevent your boys from having one more erotogenous zone to explore on their partner when they are adult just so that you could explore it everywhere now? Would you be so selfish to be able to experience it now but prevent your kids from ever experiencing it?
So, perhaps we should cover ears, necks, and lips too? Backs too, can't forget that. No sandals. Don't forget men, too: They really need to cover up more. Especially their nipples. Beaches are going to be a real bummer and more uncomfortable. Perhaps we should require loose swimwear and increase risk of drowning while we are at it.
Nudity isn't going to take away any of these zones. You children are going to experience things differently than you, and nudity isn't going to encourage or prevent it.
Tribe women not covering breasts does not imply tribe men did not get excited to see them.
Modern women, specially young, dress very provocatively sometimes, and men definitely feel excited when they see them, yet they do it anyway.
One of the oldest pieces of extant textiles is a string skirt, which was apparently designed to reveal as much as it hides.
I find it entirely plausible that dressing in string skirts and flowers while dancing to songs with highly ambiguous lyrics would have been the neolithic equivalent of "woo girls" tottering around on heels, intermittently pulling down skirt hems and emitting the Sorority Mating Call ("I'm soooo drunk").
Koyo, to wa terashting mali? Fo to du seping kori mi.
(Baby, are you an attitude control Epstein? Because you make my heart spin.)
Could it be that distant tribal villages didn't go through the same type of evolution and their brains didn't develop specific receptors in their visual field/cortex to detect nipples and bind them to the reward system in the brain? We know that even a single neuron in visual cortex can detect complex objects shapes like animals, who tells us that we didn't develop a specialized nipple detector neuron linked directly to the reward center while Papuan tribes didn't?
I don’t think it’s a crime to find a woman’s body sexually arousing.
I just think we to chill the fuck out if we see a boob.
It’s titillating... so what? Is that such a bad thing?
A great example was when I watched a YouTube video on Robocop a while ago. Robocop is a great movie, but it’s insanely violent. Yet YouTube was fine with all the violence and gore. But show a nipple? Bam... instant demonetisation.
As far as I've seen, soviet censorship took the opposite tack from US censorship, roughly: dem titties, xorosho, but on-screen violence? straight to GuLag, citizen!
Come to think of it, the USSR did dissolve nearly peacefully. Maybe those censors knew what they were doing?
Ere wa wel, desh terash kowltim, deradzhang inyalowda tili pensa wit kuwang. (In a gravity well, there's always acceleration, which is why Inners don't think straight.)
There's a thing called user preferences. Ask a few questions when creating an account, are you ok seeing naked human body? Are you ok seeing death, blood and traumas? Are you ok seing people engaged in reproductive activities? Are you ok seeing violence? Then blur the images or text which happen to be categorised as nude, gore or porn. Require action to unblur them. Nobody is offended, nothing is censored.
I can understand some people may want to avoid nipples, like some people may find images of guns or knives disturbing. But things like that are a personal preference.
In this day and age information delivery is already personalized. There is no excuse to censor content or ads based on what "most users don't want".
Seriously. Sometimes I think everything wrong with America would gradually settle down if we could just collectively disillusion ourselves from the notion that human female nipples are an indecent horrid thing.
The more I think about it, the weirder becomes the fact that the one and only part of human anatomy that is specifically made to go into a baby’s mouth is a sex symbol.
If it had been men’s nipples, which are otherwise useless, that had been sexualised, that would’ve been much less weird; but it’s fine for me to go around topless and nobody cares.
It's a pretty standard type of signal. Only females nurse -> nipples are a signal of being female. Females are sexually interesting -> nipples excite sexual interest, because they are indicators of femaleness.
Men conflate women's sexuality with child rearing to control women > men insist women cover voluptuous body parts > men exploit women's sexuality with modesty constraint for additional power and control > men decide women's nipples are hidden = modesty, and sexualize women's nipples > nipples somehow mean something different if they're attached to a woman
If I had to guess, compared to other primates it takes human young too long to be any good for anything. Permanent breasts would make cross-nursing more feasible in the event that a mother died or couldn't produce enough during scarcity.
No sources or background, just throwing darts at a plausible "the ones who didn't died" scenario.
> Permanent breasts would make cross-nursing more feasible in the event that a mother died or couldn't produce enough during scarcity.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. Most mammals do fine with nipples and no breasts, whether they're nursing or not. And women lactate after giving birth; they can't do it on command.
On the other hand, it doesn’t seem to be “oh no nudity” if a woman wears a very skimpy bra that only covers their nipples and fully exposes the rest of their breasts.
there are good articles and youtube videos on why woman's boobs are sexy.
the common denominator is that in all societies all boobs are considered sexy. lindybeige's channel suggested it may have to do with some sort of trickery. ie the woman wants to be protected so they are always 'full' unlike other animals.
I think the fact that they are considered sexy across all cultures regardless of shape/size tells us something obvious. they are to show the woman is of mating age.
I mean specifically the nipples, not the entire boob. It isn’t considered nudity (at least in the places I’ve been) for a woman to expose any part of their breast except the nipple itself. That (plus men’s nipples being so boring nobody even thinks to mention them) is what I find weird.
That does raise one obvious question: is the cultural difference (1) a real difference of sexualisation of body parts, or (2) does the average [†] hetero women look at topless men the same way that the average [†] hereto man looks at topless women, but society as a whole hasn’t noticed because it is male-dominated and not enough men in power ask women?
{As an aside: In the context lindybeige would be an example of argument from authority fallacy; expecting him to be right about comparative global sexuality is like expecting sexplanations to be right about comparing the relative merits of ancient Athenian and Persian armour.
That doesn’t mean he must be wrong (if I said that I world be making the fallacy fallacy), but surely there is a better example to use than him?}
[†] to emphasise: average as in “no I can’t just ask my exes that would be anecdotes”
> I mean specifically the nipples, not the entire boob. It isn’t considered nudity (at least in the places I’ve been) for a woman to expose any part of their breast except the nipple itself. That (plus men’s nipples being so boring nobody even thinks to mention them) is what I find weird.
there are a lot of situations where it would be considered inappropriate for a woman to expose most of a breast (though perhaps not nudity, per se). the degree of coverage socially required for a man or a woman varies a lot. like if I wore cargo shorts to work, it would merely be against the dress code. if I wore only a speedo (or a woman wore a bikini), it would be inappropriate.
once you've decided you have to make and enforce rules about nudity, you need to make them unambiguous. "cannot show nipple" is a lot less ambiguous than "most cover most of breast". "must cover entire breast" is also fraught; how do you decide exactly where it begins? if you agree that female breasts are sexual features, it doesn't seem that weird that nipples would be where the line is finally drawn.
just for the record, I don't think the world would end if women could expose their breasts without repercussions.
I remember reading a Desmond Morris book that put forward the theory that female human breasts developed, unlike those of other animals, to mimic the sexualised female bum and encourage the missionary during sex.
The theory is that this aids with conception.
...and as for you going topless in public, actually we do care; nobody wants to see that. ;)
You’re using a definition of “naked” that depends on your particular societal views, so that’s a circular question. Most people don’t where clothing over their hands in public, but you probably don’t call that “naked.” What reason is there to cover one’s nipples unless it’s for comfort, protection, or warmth?
>What reason is there to cover one’s nipples unless it’s for comfort, protection, or warmth?
Several thousand years of Judeo-Christian cultural indoctrination teaching that because Eve tempted Adam into original sin, women and their bodies are inherently unclean and can lead men astray, and thus are to be treated as taboo.
Several thousand years of Judeo-Christian cultural indoctrination teaching that because Eve tempted Adam into original sin, women and their bodies are inherently unclean and can lead men astray, and thus are to be treated as taboo.
This was going on long before Judeo-Christianity existed, and in almost every single culture on the planet before each made contact with the first Christian.
Nevertheless, as far as the Western world is concerned (and the US in particular,) Christianity has been the primary influence on the nature and culture of sexual morality. Almost all of our gender views and stereotypes can be traced back to the Bible in some form or another, among them the prejudice that female sexuality exists to serve men, and that the female body is inherently more vulgar than the male.
I might be agreeing with you, but isn't it just under-specified? To me 'naked' alone = 'no clothes whatsoever'; but 'naked breast' is entirely similar to, yes, 'naked hand'. The latter just having less frequent utility as a phrase, shall we say.
Not caring about it is better than caring about it so much we wind up with robots censoring images of onions lest they offend our Puritan sensibilities with their lascivious roundness.
This attitude is a real problem for society: leaving outdated laws on the books just because they are not the most pressing issue encourages bureaucracy, a bloated enforcement system, and worst of all selective enforcement that can mean its easier to find a way to punish groups society generally doesn't dislike. I think there should be a regular purge of old laws as we should be deliberately retaining the ones we still feel are relevant. Just because this sort of thing doesnt rise to the level of the crisis de jour is not a reason to ignore it.
> I think _everything wrong with America would gradually settle down_ if we could just collectively disillusion ourselves from the notion that human female nipples are an indecent horrid thing.
Emphasis added—I should have re-quoted in my post, as I think it got lost. It's not that our obscenity standards are good or that we should ignore that problem—but it's not going to magically solve everything else too!
Because it’s illegal in many places. A female exposing her nipples in public is considered an act of public indecency in states like Illinois, which is a misdemeanor[0].
Edit: not that I agree with this law. It’s a very clear double-standard with roots in conservative Christian thinking.
>A female exposing her nipples in public is considered an act of public indecency in states like Illinois, which is a misdemeanor
This is a very bad comparison. That's like saying "drinking on the street in public is illegal in many states, so showing any visual references to people drinking on Facebook is potentially illegal and should be removed".
This existed thousands of years before the first Christian, and in almost every culture on the planet.
You might want to re-examine your biases to figure out why you assume that things you disagree with are automatically "conservative Christian thinking."
Any system that accepts public uploads will eventually receive all kinds of horrifying depravity and disgusting content. Viewing some images can cause permanent psychological injury. What is OK for one person might cause severe distress for another. For example, certain kinds of porn can trigger panic attacks for victims of abuse. Automatic nudity/gore detectors save a lot of people from looking at such things. This includes users and employees.
Automatic content filters also enable new business models. They allow new products to exist that wouldn't be economically viable without automatic filters. And they lower costs, which makes our society more efficient and wealthy.
They are not perfect, but neither are human moderators. Here is some analysis on the performance of these nudity/gore detection systems:
> "We use automated technology to keep nudity off our apps, but sometimes it doesn't know a Walla Walla onion from a, well, you know," Facebook Canada's head of communications, Meg Sinclair, told BBC. "We restored the ad and are sorry for the business's trouble."
Pretty affable for a public corporate PR "incident" response. I like it. Is this a Canadian thing?
I recall trying to set my Google+ profile picture to a 64x64 totally transparent PNG, and getting some message that pornographic pictures were not allowed. I imagine that many kinds of out-of-distribution images will not be well-classified with current approaches.
Judging by the mention of pumpkins in the article, my (extremely non-)educated guess would be that it's a round object that has something small-ish sticking out of its side. Like a breast with a nipple. And their brown/orange hue is, perhaps, similar enough to skin tones that Facebook's poor algorithms get messed up.
Maybe not the only reason but it's a lot easier to block nudity with automated algorithms. Violence can take many forms and it's difficult to (for example) differentiate between a violent civil war scene and peaceful protestors on the street.
well, "hot dog" or "not hot dog" aside, FB seems to be onto something - i like onions and just looking at that picture i'm salivating. God forbid somebody place a piece of "salo" (Ukranian style bacon) into that picture, and i'd have a heart attack.
The shop owner made a lot of sales on the wave of the free PR created by the Artificial Stupidity.
So. Imagine that - next time you start a business you engage an AS expert who will help you select imagery of your product, manipulate it to trip up the bots into false censoring, spread the outrage far and wide, then capture the blowback and send it directly to your checkout page.
Automatic nudity/gore recognizers save a lot of people from looking at many disturbing images. They also enable new business models, so new products can exist that couldn't before.
You use the term "Artificial Stupidity" instead of "Artificial Intelligence". I don't know what your intentions are. Some people will read your comment and think that you are belittling an entire field and the efforts of people who work in it. Such an intention must come from a place of ignorance or hatred. Either way, it's not the kind of thing I like to read.
The main point of your comment is interesting. I hope you will edit it to make the tone more respectful.
I feel like someone needs to write a blog "So you spent $100m and 500-person-years of engineering time and your tech performs worse than a minimum wage employee"
Because seriously, I understand the hope the that facebook can just automate away the actual job of running a platform where users post porn/death threats/plans for genocide, but telling the difference between "I'm gonna nail that pussy" (romantic plans for later tonight) and "I'm gonna nail that pussy" (homophobic death threat) is not only non-trivial, I'm starting to think it may be something that facebook needs to fix now rather than waiting for the tech to maybe catch up at some point in the next 5,000 years. Specifically, before the second example actually commits the murder they're threatening.
Every index lookup corresponds to one dimension, right? So if you're saying that function has signature "dirty(a, b, c) -> bool". But if you don't know how many bits of information a, b or c has, how does it matter?
For news story about a photograph, I can't imagine why the subject isn't included?
EDIT: The Daily Mail has the journalistic integrity to include it :) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8823925/Facebook-bl...