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When Purchase Recommendations Go Bad 370

Posted by Zonk from the tech-just-smart-enough-to-be-dumb dept.
nixman99 writes "An article on MSNBC describes what happens when 'View Similar Products' recommendations go bad. From the article: 'The company said it was alerted to the problem early yesterday afternoon after word began spreading among bloggers. When visitors to Walmart.com requested Planet of the Apes: The Complete TV Series on DVD, four other movies were recommended under the heading Similar Items. Those films included Martin Luther King: I Have A Dream/Assassination of MLK and Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson.'"
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When Purchase Recommendations Go Bad More

When Purchase Recommendations Go Bad

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  • That's quite funny (Score:5, Funny)

    by MountainMan101 ( 714389 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @04:49AM (#14415912)
    Amazon recommended some adult entertainment to go with the Madagascar (rated U) when I ordered the other day. My other interest was nature books, so how it put two and two together no one knows.

  • The Eye Of The Beholder (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nick_davison ( 217681 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @04:55AM (#14415923)
    Connection:
    Planet Of The Apes - Social Commentary.
    Martin Luther King - Import changer of society.

    Were you to be a glass is half full kind of person, that sounds like a connection. I could entirely accept that enough customers to trigger a connection algorithm are interested in social commentary to the degree that both titles appeal.

    Were you to be a glass is half empty kind of person, clearly the system is racist.

    Fortunately, we have a media that's only interested in postive and uplifting stories so they'd never focus purely on the negative, for shock value, without considering other possible alternatives.

    And, for added amusement, type "Civ 4" in to Amazon and see what recommendations come up further down the list. It may too be racist. It may be a deeply humorous commentary on lonely guys playing Civ 4. Or it may be some other connection that we haven't figured out yet.

    But then that's the whole point of data mining... Finding connections that humans tend to be entirely too preoccupied by their assumptions to be able to see beyond.

    • Re:The Eye Of The Beholder (Score:5, Funny)

      by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @05:05AM (#14415946)
      Were you to be a glass is half empty kind of person, clearly the system is racist.

      Or to put it another way, if the banana is half eaten.

    • Well the Civ 4 example is insulting (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @05:25AM (#14415994) Journal
      The Marthin Luther King example can indeed be seen as both being about racism and the fight against it. The original Planet of the Apes was using the sci-fi trick of turning the roles around to give its message.

      Star Trek (the episodes that are not pure action or particle of the week thrillers) does this a couple of times. I am reminded of the color difference episode where we meet two races locked in a fight to the death, the one being black/white and the other being white/black.

      TNG had an episode to show how stupid judging people on their sexual preferences is but showing a race that is purely homosexual (a 1 gender species that still used two people to procreate is off course the ultimate same sex race) with the sexual weirdos being those who tended to have heterosexual feelings.

      This is indeed the eye of the beholder, it took me a while to figure it out even what the problem was. Apparently blacks are apes.

      • This is indeed the eye of the beholder, it took me a while to figure it out even what the problem was. Apparently blacks are apes

        I had the same problem working out what people's beef was with King Kong - apparently enslaving a huge gorilla when it's the only such example of a huge gorilla is somehow related to enslaving African people. Maybe I'm naïve but I didn't see that connection.

        The Marthin Luther King example can indeed be seen as both being about racism and the fight against it. The original

        • Re:Well the Civ 4 example is insulting (Score:5, Insightful)

          by thesandtiger ( 819476 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @08:40AM (#14416379)
          If one grows up being compared to monkeys as a way of demonstrating that they are less than paler people, and more generally as a paternalistic term used to put one in one's place, one gets somewhat sensitive to monkey related stuff.

          Sometimes this can be very blatant - Howard Cosell saying "Would you look at that monkey run?" when describing a black football player. Sometimes this can be less blatant, and a "clever racist" (if there is such a thing) will try to say "Well, Planet of the Apes is social commentary and so is MLK, so it's just those darkies being overly uppity again!) And, yes, sometimes it can be absurd - I have some friends who attend a church that insists they boycott King Kong because it is, and I quote, "An interracial love story designed to show the black man's unquenchable and self-destructive desire for white women."

          So, I'd say it's somewhat disingenuous to say "Gosh, I don't know why people would get so upset that someone is comparing Monkeys Gone Wild with Martin Luther King! It's so absurd!" It comes off as rather false.

          For further reading, I recommend "How to Rent a Negro" - pretty funny take on a less than funny subject.

          • Re:Well the Civ 4 example is insulting (Score:5, Insightful)

            by jcnnghm ( 538570 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @10:21AM (#14416735)
            Howard Cosell was not a racist. He used to call lots of small, quick players "monkeys", including white players. (Don't quote me on this, I remember hearing at one point he used to refer to his own children and grandchildren as "monkeys" as well.) Further, Cosell didn't even understand why what he said could be considered inapropriate at first. Blatant racism - hardly. The trouble is that true racists hear something and then decide that the person is a racist based upon themselves.

            This reminds me of the South Park episode about the flag, with the black figure hung and a bunch of white figures around the black figure. The boys don't see anything wrong with it because they don't see white people hanging a black guy, they see 4 guys hanging another guy. Chef sees it as blatant racism. Racism is in the eye of the beholder.

            I took King Kong to be a movie about capturing a giant ape. If you see racism in the pairing of Planet of the Apes and MLK, or in King Kong, perhaps you should take a look in the mirror, because the real racist may be closer than you think.

            • Re:Well the Civ 4 example is insulting (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @11:36AM (#14417012) Journal
              There are really two types of racism.

              Real racism is not in the eye of the beholder. Real racism is when you irrationally use the characteristics you believe are true of a "race" to judge a member of that race. It becomes especially destructive when the characteristics believed true are false and derogatory, and especially destructive when it involves judging the value of a person (something not intrinsically wrong in certain contexts... "would I hire this person?" "is that person going to try to kill me?" we make value judgements every day).

              This is as close to an emprically verifiable term as you can ever get when dealing with humans, assuming you can get at the inner state of the person.

              The second type of racism is in the eye of the beholder, and it has gotten to the point where "That's racist!" is one step shy of "I don't like that!", only much, much meaner. The distinguishing characteristic of this kind of "racism" is that if the accuser can come up with any reason that the accusee might be doing or saying something for a racist reason, regardless of how likely or even how true that reason is, the accusee can be presumed racist, and should therefore be vilified. Fortunately, I think we're very near the point where that accusation will have been so overused that it will be diluted into nearly no effect.

              As a homework exercise, estimate the probability that this form of racism will ever be "eliminated", and consider the consequences of your answer.

              Often, it's hard to tell which is which. I prefer to cultivate an attitude more like the South Park children than the current attitudes of people who are hypersensitive about the second type of racism. This is the first I've heard that "of course" King Kong is a stand-in for black people. Personally, I thought he was just a giant monster. Since this accusation is a "projection" type accusation, I am inclined to think this is the second kind of "racism."

              (Incidentally, the second type of "racism" is not itself really racist. It's just evil, in every sense of the term, especially including how it destroys the one afflicted with it. No apology for that belief.)
            • While you make some good points, you are going a little too far with the whole if you see it you are probably the racist. I have the ability, and I'm nobody special, to examine things relatively objectively and see how certain things may be percieved or intended a certain way by others without having those perceptions or intentions myself. Even if the boy doesnt see that flag as racist, its intent could still be as such. Furthermore, whether or not the act of pairing those movies was an intended racist a

          • Sometimes this can be very blatant - Howard Cosell saying "Would you look at that monkey run?" when describing a black football player.

            This is what happens when you rely on just a quote. You mistake the man who 'went to the mats' for Cassius Clay and multiple other 'athletes of color' (or whatever the current PC term is) for a racist. Which couldn't be further from the truth - as Cosell worked his whole career to see black atheletes treated as just that athletes.

      • TNG had an episode to show how stupid judging people on their sexual preferences is but showing a race that is purely homosexual

        Never saw the ep, but it sounds like a bit of a rip off of Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness.
      • This is indeed the eye of the beholder, it took me a while to figure it out even what the problem was. Apparently blacks are apes.

        Ah. I didn't get that either.

        In Denmark we have a law against racism, which quite frequently has some unpleasent side effects, as exemplified in recent local elections. Someone might accuse islam of being a supremacist religion. Then his opponents, instead of looking at the sources and coming up with counterarguments, simply report him to the police for racism. That creates a

    • Most recomendation system are not context based, but more of the you're looking at this movie, so here's other movies that people who looked at this movie also looked at (or rented or purchased), based on a large statistical sample. As such, the connection probably wasn't created by the system, but instead reflected the connections and tastes and preferences that existing people had already made.

    • Re:The Eye Of The Beholder (Score:5, Informative)

      by kamapuaa ( 555446 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @05:56AM (#14416053) Homepage
      Connection:

      Planet Of The Apes - Social Commentary.

      Martin Luther King - Import changer of society.

      That would explain the recommendation if it were to come up on Amazon.com, but Walmart.com used a less intelligent linking system. From AFA [msn.com] (another f'ing article), Wal-Mart manually assigns DVDs to categories, and then will pass on the recommendation if you're browsing from the same category. So it has nothing to do with user habits.

    • Re:The Eye Of The Beholder (Score:5, Informative)

      by MuckRaker ( 170517 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @06:50AM (#14416170)
      Maybe because back when racism was still very much overt in the early 2/3rds of the 1900s, blacks were often likened to monkeys and apes, by white people. Many racist whites/hate groups still do. Heck black soldiers fighing over in France during the World War were ridiculed by people asking could they see their {monkey} tails.

      • Re:The Eye Of The Beholder (Score:4, Funny)

        by ArsenneLupin ( 766289 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @08:43AM (#14416396)
        Heck black soldiers fighing over in France during the World War were ridiculed by people asking could they see their {monkey} tails.

        You must not be very fluent in French. The word queue does indeed mean tail, but it also has another much more interesting meaning ;-)

      • blacks were often likened to monkeys and apes

        Which even from the perspective of a racist seemingly makes no sense, since many [allposters.com] apes [nworbcire.com] have white skin, and they all seem to have straight hair, oftentimes brown. Ridiculous as it is in either case, it makes just as much sense for black folks to call white folks monkeys or apes, so I'm not sure how this particular idiocy got started. I guess it just demostrates a little more ignorance and stupidity on the part of those making such comparisons.

        Cheers
        • From the actual perspective of a racist, it makes obvious sense.

          They're black or brown. They've got that flat nose thing going. They wear little or no clothing. They come from Africa, living side by side with each other. They're clearly related to us, but also clearly more primitive.

          On a continent with many different primate species, it would make sense if they were all related, and the fact that one of them can interbreed with us doesn't mean they're the same, any more than it means that horses and donkeys

    • Fortunately, we have a media that's only interested in postive and uplifting stories so they'd never focus purely on the negative, for shock value, without considering other possible alternatives.

      And naturally, they wouldn't wait until later in the article to reveal that the same recommendations were also linked with "Everybody Loves Raymond", "Friends", and "The Powerpuff Girls" just to make it seem as incriminating as possable.

    • I wonder how much of this uproar reflects the generation gap between 40-somethings and 20-somethings. The original Planet of the Apes was packed with social commentary - particularly civil rights, but to a lesser extent the battle between science and religion, animal rights, mutually assured destruction, etc...

      The remake was a very low-brow action movie with no discernable deeper meaning like the original.

      The original is a natural pairing with other civil rights pieces of the time, but if someone is thin

    • Well, from TFA, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" also linked to African American themes. Hmmmm... not sure where the glass is half-full here. "A way out of poverty" would be a stretch.

      Although TFA article pointed out that *later in the day* "Planet of the Apes" linked to other innoucuous titles such as "Everybody Loves Raymond," I suspect this was just PR damage control.

  • Seems like a good recommendation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by riflemann ( 190895 ) <riflemann&bb,cactii,net> on Saturday January 07, 2006 @04:55AM (#14415924)
    Why are people apologising for this recommendation? IMHO, this is actually a fairly good recommendation!

    POTA is a movie about civil rights, in this case across species, not races. One species (the monkeys/gorillas) effectively enslaves another species (humans) and the base message of the movie is about the struggle for emancipation by this enslaved species.

    So exactly how is a movie about enslavement and emancipation not related to real life civil rights issues?

    I'm not American so I'm not really exposed to this over-the-top sensitive PC stuff, but this seems just silly to me. Franky, I find the people who did the complaining about this issue offensive and ignorant.

    • Why are people apologizing for this recommendation?

      It's because people are way to fucking sensitive, and the corporations know it.

      It's similar to the whole sexual harassment thing. All it takes these days is a hint of it, to get someone fired. No matter if it's intended or not, just the suggestion that it might be inappropriate, and wham!

      Sometimes, I think people look for the worse possible thing they can find, just so they have something to complain about.

      H.

      • The sexual harassment thing itself is sexist. Try and accuse a female boss of flirting with you if you are a guy and see how far that takes you.

        --Oh but she did wink at me!
        --Whatever, she was just being nice/--Whatever she was just being funny

        But if it is the other way around, the male will be out of the door immediatly, before anoyone can say "lawsuit".

        --Oh but he winked at me!
        --WHAT???! He's GONE!

        I am not saying that sexual harassment or racial bias should take place, but in efforts to stop it

        • Do you actually have any examples of people being fired for winking at a coworker?

          • The poster was using a little thing called exageration to make his point on harasment.

            Notice the second sentence states "flirting." So replace "wink at me" with a bit more overt form of flirting, say "place a pubic hair on my can of Coke." Also, the penalty may have been a bit extreme, so replace "out the door [sic] immediatly" with "immediately enrolled in an sensitivity ropes course written by Oprah Winfrey and preside over by Lisa Lampanelli." (I do maintain that as hard as it can be to get fired by

        • The problem is... (Score:2, Interesting)

          by HalAtWork ( 926717 )
          The problem is it gives individuals who have very low self esteem a weapon to use against their fears. If they have very low self esteem and subconsciously desire to have high self esteem and command respect, to have people pay attention to their feelings, etc, they may even use these rules as a means for them to have power over others so they can put themselves in a position where people pay attention to their feelings (by fearing what the consequences would be to agitate someone like that, going on a pow
    • But I don't think you can explain how "The Powerpuff Girls" has anything to do with "real life civil rights issues". (And I think this PC shit is stupid too.)
      • Because empowering young girls is a part of civil rights? I know people who only rent DVDs with strong, empowered female role models. As well as powerpuff girls, I'd recommend Buffy the Vampire Slayer (for younger audiences) for this same reason.
        • Yes, and I'm sure that when little suzy is buying her powerpuff girls DVDs online with all that money she has, she'll see the civil rights DVDs and think 'Oh hey, I think I'll buy some of those too!'. As hard as you may try, *The Powerpuff Girls* simply doesn't make sense in this context.
          • I don't know what the target audiance for the powerpuff girls is but it seems to me is is targeted for the late-high school to college age crowd first (the animated series), then the little dolls and other marketing trinkets are for the "tween" crowd who likes it because their older sister likes to watch it while getting high on some bud (I would hope that last part is without little suzy hanging around). And as the stereotype goes, older sis, Amber, while on the surface is a neohippie college girl, majorin
        • hmm the Powerpuff Girls are slaves.
          The Mayor is corrupt and inept.
          Miss Bellum is a vamp, using her sexual power to control the mayor.
          The main villain is a power crazy Monkey (with an Asiatic accent), who, rejected in favour of pretty girls, turns his fallo-centric oedipal black rage against Townsville.

    • Its because there is an old ethnic slur comparing people of African descent to monkeys. You may not have heard of it and the computer almost certainly has not heard of it (it is just doing statistical relations), but people can still get insulted regarding it.

      And it certainly does not just occur in the United States. I remember a couple of years ago Conan O'Brian did a show in Canada and did a segment making fun of French Canadians which he got run out of the country for. And then there are plenty of e

  • It actually makes good sense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Walter Wart ( 181556 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @04:55AM (#14415926) Homepage
    When Planet of the Apes first came out it was revolutionary. It took the Lords of Creation - White men - and put them in a situation where they were the oppressed, the minority. Someone else was in charge and no worse, perhaps better, than the astronauts. The movie asked questions and had a discussion of race in America that would have been unthinkable without the fig-leaf of science fiction.

    So yes, it was appropriate. Those who are offended never looked deeper than the skin. Which is sort of the problem.

  • in a positive light (Score:3, Insightful)

    by roseblood ( 631824 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @05:01AM (#14415938)
    pull out your rose tinted glasses and try to see it this way:

    The Planet of the Apes is a social commentary in the form of a sci-fi film, MLK was a historic figure who made great efforts to make society more equal.

    Trying to view a glass that's half full I'll try to see that as a connection that some software somewhere made. Of course the victocrats(glass half empty types) will see nothing beyond the titles of the connected products. To them I say get over it and try to look beyond the superficial.
  • When I looked up the 1979 film "The Cracker Factory," which about a woman who drifts in and out of asylums, I got the following recommendations:

    8 Mile
    Over the Top
    Bean

  • Blame (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quokkapox ( 847798 ) <quokkapox@gmail.com> on Saturday January 07, 2006 @05:05AM (#14415945)
    So we can blame the unthinking machines and the corporations that use them for our own cultural and racial bigotry. Nice.
    • Considering that Planet of the Apes is widely viewed as a social commentary on civil rights and an allegory on racism, it seems perfectly relevant to me.

      The recommendation, regardless of who or what made it, doesn't seem racist or bigoted to me...

  • what exactly is so offensive? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by theonlyholle ( 720311 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @05:06AM (#14415948) Homepage
    I don't get it - what exactly is so offensive about those recommendations? Could it be that's only offensive in a climate that is so obsessed with political correctness that you cannot make perfectly innocent recommendation without some people reading whatever malicious intention into it? Honestly, I don't understand this, but I think it makes me a little bit happier that I'm living in Europe...
    • Honestly, I don't understand this, but I think it makes me a little bit happier that I'm living in Europe...
      Why troll?

  • hierarchies (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tunesmith ( 136392 ) <siffert&museworld,com> on Saturday January 07, 2006 @05:06AM (#14415951) Homepage Journal
    planet of the apes was loosely considered an allegory on race relations, or at least recognized to have spurred discussion on race relations, (although I don't exactly see how anyone thought it would be a good idea to have it be suggested by using apes).

    anyway if you categorized these things in terms of hierarchies or in terms of degrees of separation, and they wanted to boost the relevance of MLK stuff, they'd boost the levels of search depth to find connections, even tenuous connections, to make things that had even a remote connection to one of MLK's supercategories recommend the MLK media.

    technology can make people look pretty damn stupid, but as a progressive, I'm pretty embarrassed by the progressives that were so sure they saw overt evidence of deliberate and corporate-sponsored racism in this. I'm not saying there wasn't a racist in wal-mart that thought it would be funny to manually link POTA to MLK, but it's not even close to the only possible explanation. All people have to do is remember the old grapevine game to realize how easily an intent or an idea can corrupt itself by just being passed three or four links down a chain.

    • Re:hierarchies (Score:3, Funny)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      (although I don't exactly see how anyone thought it would be a good idea to have it be suggested by using apes).

      Because if they had chosen mice, the movie would have been a comedy.

  • Are bad recommendations from trolls bad? (Score:5, Funny)

    by CurbyKirby ( 306431 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @05:13AM (#14415968) Homepage
    ... or funny?

    E.g. http://www.speakeasy.org/~curby/swg/text/jellypong .gif [speakeasy.org]

    I vote for funny.

  • Damn... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by kentrel ( 526003 )
    I submitted this story a few days ago, and linked to the original Wal-Mart story. Literally, 10 minutes later Wal-Mart had changed their recommendations to Friends.

  • But why? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drgonzo59 ( 747139 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @05:25AM (#14415992)
    I guess WalMart never explained how their "mapping" algorithm works.

    Is it a simple un-supervised algorithm that creates relationships based on customer's choices? Then shouldn't the whole American public be to blame? In other words did the people who buy "Planet Of The Apes" also buy the book about MLK, implying an association between black people and apes? The fact of the matter remains that most people in U.S. are racist - period. Even the ones who preach PC are racist even if just at the subconscious level. There have been studies done that shows this.

    This makes me think of an interesting point: in one of the previous articles on Slashdot someone said how it is possible to extract so much data out of people's wish lists. But how about also gaining an insight into the American global subconscious by looking at the items people choose when they shop at the stores like WalMart, Amazon and others? I see someone in Sociology being interested in this...

    • I guess WalMart never explained how their "mapping" algorithm works.

      I'm curious, since I've found that similar algorithms sometimes can be easily manipulated, often for entertaining results

      For example, Amazon has a "customers who viewed this item also viewed" feature, that I've found was fairly easy to manipulate in the past, simply by doing things such as spending 5 minutes looking at pages for various Sesame Street toys, and then spending 5 minutes looking at pages for various risque titles over in bo

    • EXCEPT . . . (Score:3, Interesting)

      by drachenstern ( 160456 )
      you are forgetting that this does not provide a complete cross section of all american or otherwise consumers.

      This would only cross section those consumers who shopped online at those various stores. Even assuming one third of americans purchased ten percent of all household purchases on websites, you would have an indicative three percent of all purchases to make up for one hundred percent of all american characteristics? Does it really make sense that people anywhere, US, worldwide or in any particular
    • In other words did the people who buy "Planet Of The Apes" also buy the book about MLK, implying an association between black people and apes?

      That implication is unjustified -- people could have associated the society in POTA with the one MLK was fighting against, or it could have been as innocuous as "I remember listening to King speak when I was a kid in the '60s; let's watch that. What else was I into back then; oh yeah, that Planet of the Apes movie. Sixties culture sure was great!"

  • What's the problem? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by hattig ( 47930 )
    Surely the racism is in the eyes of the people complaining about this, rather than in the programmed system that is probably matching keywords?

    You always get a slightly strange recommendation when shopping on sites with this feature. It is to be expected, categorisation can only go so far...

    • Surely the racism is in the eyes of the people complaining about this, rather than in the programmed system that is probably matching keywords?

      I had the same feeling as I read about this. The system only observes and responds according to its observations, without any judgement. People, however, are full of biases and inclinations, and are quick to see racial slurs (at best) and conspiracies (at worst) where none really exist.

      In that way, I have to say I find Wal-Mart's apology to be a greater racial

  • Essential .NET purchase recommendation (Score:5, Funny)

    by enkafan ( 604078 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @05:39AM (#14416022)
    On Amazon.com, when browsing for Essential .NET Amazon.com was nice enough to tell me that fellow purchasers also wore "Clean Underwear" [netcrucible.com]. I was a bit disturbed that Eddie Bauer felt it was needed to specify that the underwear I was buying was in fact clean.

  • Exception Filtering (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Nymz ( 905908 )
    Rather than asking why thin-skinned reactionaries aren't rational enough to understand that the theme of 'Planet of the Apes' examines how society deals with racism, I would rather discuss the technical problem that is likely to come up again and again. That problem would be 'Exception Filtering'.

    Examples:
    a)Filtering out Metallica named files off of Napster.
    b)Filtering out Chinese bloggers off of MSN.
    c)Filtering out Planet of the Apes from similar themed Walmart DVDs.

    Questions:
    1)Is it even possibl
  • so he can educate everyone on how Walmart doesn't care about black people.

  • Amazon... (Score:5, Funny)

    by IainMH ( 176964 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @06:18AM (#14416100)
    I love 'The West Wing'. In fact, I like it so much that I've got every single dvd box set (1-6). All purchased from Amazon.

    So what did they recommend to me?

    This [amazon.com]. Yeah - great thanks.

  • Hanlon's Razor? Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Aphrika ( 756248 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @06:22AM (#14416109)
    Isn't this a corruption of Hanlon's Razor [wikipedia.org] which states that:

    "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"

    In this case, it could be construed that either the system, or the people making the malicious links are the stupid element - both could come to the racial conclusion by misinterpreting the data. Alternatively, the system might be too smart, working in a logical way such that elements in subject matter for both Planet of the Apes and Martin Luther King both deal with social commentary, alienation and segregation.

    Either way, the comments by the spokesperson that the system was malfunctioning and not working as it was supposed to are probably incorrect; it work exactly as it was programmed, but it was either too stupid or too smart for us to comprehend adequately.

  • Oh you guys HAVE to be kidding (Score:3, Insightful)

    by aendeuryu ( 844048 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @06:34AM (#14416134)
    So far I've seen 5 posts modded up pretty high for saying that this isn't as offensive as it sounds, and is even in some ways appropriate. Give me a break. Is racial insensitivity so DEAD in your country that you can't see how putting four influential black icons onto the same page as a B-movie about monkeys is offensive?

    I'm not saying it was maliciously done. Without seeing the algorithm, nobody can know for sure, but I know enough about data mining to know that random stuff crops up. But for the Love of CHRIST show a little empathy.

    I bet people would be singing a different tune if it were four documentaries about 9/11 mixed with Mahmoud Darwish's The Shahid?
    • Yes, people would be offended. Your example, however, doesn't relate to this situation.

      In this example, people are drawing the conclusion that the recommendations infer that MLK is an ape.

      In your example, there is no "surface" conclusion that can be drawn. Mahmoud Darwish's "The Shahid" (aka: martre, or suicide bomber) would be considered offensive if recommended with ANY "item" in this country, in much the same way most people would consider a recommendation to read Marx's Communist Manefesto to be offe
    • Is racial insensitivity so DEAD in your country that you can't see how putting four influential black icons onto the same page as a B-movie about monkeys is offensive?

      How are we going to get past racial issues if we make a big stink out of every minor thing that happens. If people are actually offended by this recommendation and feel that this is calling black people apes, then they are a serious part of the problem.
    • Is racial insensitivity so DEAD in your country that you can't see how putting four influential black icons onto the same page as a B-movie about monkeys is offensive?

      I bet that in most of the world, equating black people with monkeys is either unknown as an expression of racism, or something people stopped doing in the 1940s or so.

      If someone did the monkey/black-guy thing in my presence here in .se, I'd probably first not understand him, and then, horrified, assume that he came from a family of crypto-Na

    • Planet of the Apes was also recommended when you viewed a Hitchcock collection. So what? I don't hear you complaining about that.

    • Is racial insensitivity so DEAD in your country that you can't see how putting four influential black icons onto the same page as a B-movie about monkeys is offensive?

      No, it's alive. Unfortunately it takes the form of screamy women (this is not intended as a stereotype of all women, just certain individuals I've been unfortunate enough to meet) who think that saying blackboard or whiteboard is offensive and nurseries where children learn baa baa yellow sheep. You can probably guess what most people think

    • So far I've seen 5 posts modded up pretty high for saying that this isn't as offensive as it sounds, and is even in some ways appropriate. Give me a break. Is racial insensitivity so DEAD in your country that you can't see how putting four influential black icons onto the same page as a B-movie about monkeys is offensive?

      According to Amazon, people who bought George Orwell's Animal farm, which is about farm animals, also bought the Schindler's List DVD, which is about Jews. Is that insensitive to Jews, in y
    • Shit happens, get over it. The computer some how thought the grouping was appropriate. I seriously doubt there's someone in a smoky back room that thought it would be a good thing to group MLK with Planet of the Apes. Take the tin-foil hat off, go outside where you can see the daystar, and have a drink.

  • Evil Walmart (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thunderpaws ( 199100 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @07:06AM (#14416201)
    The only reason this story is getting attention is Walmart is the current American icon of corporate evil and greed. America is a nation of victims who have nothing better to do than blame their personal failures on everyone else. This story should be humorous.

  • Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @07:19AM (#14416227) Journal
    Instead of making the unlikely assumption that Walmart has a racist policy based on the recommendation of 3 films buy a computer, did anyone stop to ask why the system did this? I mean perhaps the films do have something in common, does anyone star in more than one of them? Do they have the same release date/year? or DVD release date? Do they share composers, directors or crew? Are they all catogorised under "American History"? Maybe the most fucking obvious reason is that several people who bought Planet of the Apes also bought these other films!!

    The press is always ready for a scandel and never ready to actually follow it up with some investigative journalism. I guess its cheaper to just re-broadcast a video feed and pay the royalties or print something direct from AP.

    • Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by d-e-w ( 173678 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @12:41PM (#14417264)
      Based on what's been said in a couple of other comments, it sounds like the Wal-mart recommendations system operates via a set of assigned keywords or metadata. Having worked on a similar type of system in the past--they probably have a defined set of keywords that can be assigned for each DVD. When the DVD is entered into the database, it is the data entry person's responsibility to chose a proper set of keywords for the DVD.

      This type of system develops strange biases in several ways, most noteably through human interpretation. Say you have a keyword "black/white relations." One data entry person might only assign that keyword to nonfictional documentaries, while another might assign that keyword to based-on-real-life movies as well. And another person who's particularly sensitive to the underlying messages of movies might assign that keyword to Planet of the Apes (as well as possibly to box collections of ST:TOS).

      Somebody selects one of those movies, and gets a bizarre selection of "related" movies which simply reflects the fact that three different people viewed the use of a defined keyword and thus assigned it in three different ways. It's hard to even design business rules to prevent this from happening because it overly limits what the system was designed to do. If a business rule says that only nonfiction documentaries and based-on-real-life movies can receive the "black/white relations" tag, you might end up missing a movie like Crash. If the business rule says instead that you can't assign a tag based on the "underlying" message of a movie, how do you define underlying message? Racism or "black/white relations" (my bet is that the Wal-mart keyword was closer to "black/white relations" rather than "racism" because all the movies that apparently popped up as suggestions were about that particular subset of racism) is the in-your-face message of Planet of the Apes. It's so thinly masked by the story that I'm not sure I'd define it was the "underlying" message. I'm the type of person that probably *would* assign Planet to the "black/white relations" tag, because its consideration of that theme is about the only redeeming factor of the movie.

      Of course, I grew in an area where--due to integration--racism was a pretty major issue and I thought I'd learned most of the various "bad" terms that members of one race (hell, one European background) called members of another race (or other European backgrounds) when I was young. "Monkey" had definitely fallen out of use in my area by the 1980s; first time I was ever introduced to it as a racist term was online about four years ago.

  • Well, I'll say it -- I'm offended! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KFu7 ( 856065 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @12:04PM (#14417126)
    I guess I shouldn't be surprised that most of the posters here don't "get it." But I guess I still can be.

    Forgive me for lecturing, but I'll stereotype a bit here and suggest that the majority of /. readers don't fall into the group of people who can see offense in this situation either out of ignorance, or unfamiliarity with minorities and their history. I know there's a large contingent out there that believes the white male is an "oppressed" group in America due to affirmative action, Title IX, or other assorted anti-harassment and anti-discrimination laws or rules. I'm sure the strain must be unbearable...

    I love this site and my fellow slashdotters and I come here every day -- but sometimes things are just wrong.

    I Am Not A Conspiracy Theorist (IANACT?) but there could be something more sinister at work here than some computer algorithm linking the social commentary of "The Planet of the Apes" with Martin Luther King's role in the civil rights struggle. Discrimination and offensive racial stereotyping are not dead issues -- they often lie just beneath the surface because there are many who still believe that some people are inferior to others simply because of their ethnicity, skin color or gender. And speaking as an African American (and I don't get up on this soapbox often, folks), this was offensive and I am not amused.

    We all know the posters on this site wouldn't let Microsoft off the hook so easily or rush to defend them so quickly if the folks in Redmond were behind this.

    Now, let the bashing begin! Who needs positive karma?

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