Snapchat Faces An Outcry Against 'Whitewashing' Filters (mashable.com) 206
Last month Snapchat was thrown under the bus for a feature that many found downright racist. The photo-sharing app had added a face-altering filter that made users look like Bob Marley. Less than a month to it, Snapchat is getting blasted over another controversial feature. Several users are reporting about a "whitewash" filter that aims to "beautify" their looks. Mashable reports: Users of the app have noticed that many of the face-altering filters "whitewash." Upset Snapchatters point to the flower crown filter and the beautifying filter, both of which seem to lighten skin and eyes and contour the face to make one's chin and nose appear smaller. Since the debut, and subsequent popularity, of the Coachella-inspired filter, Snapchat users have taken to forums to voice their disproval with the app.
News for nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
stuff that doesn't matter
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
If you aren't interested, scroll down to the next story. Why take offence?
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Right? Slashdot commenters are always looking for the next story to be outraged by.
Re:News for nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
SJW-interest stories belong on Reddit, not Slashdot. You're a rare member of the intersection of the Venn diagrams.
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If you don't like the Snapchat filter, use the next one. Why take offense?
Rob
Re:News for nerds (Score:4, Insightful)
Because these stories get a little out of hand.
You know, /. used to be a hangout for geeks. Geeks, ya know? The people whose social life could be summed up with "friends? Yeah, I have like 20. Yes, on Facebook, why, there's other ways?"
In other words, "social" issues don't bother us. It's not that we don't give a shit about humans, ok, that too, but that's not the reason. The reason is that most of us simply don't get the whole "he's black, he's white, let's make a huge difference bullshit bingo out of it" thing. I can neither see your skin color or your gender online, and whether you're straight or gay might at best matter to those that are into online sexting. And I'm fairly sure they don't really care about that either as long as they get their rocks off.
In come SJWs and pretend like we have to take up a position in their "fight". No, we don't. I am still on my "don't give a shit" position and I have a really hard time seeing why the fuck I should bother moving away from it. I have no stake in that fight. It's as much a concern as whether some celebrity marries some other celebrity. Doesn't affect me, don't care.
I might care if it was in any way interesting. Like, say, a new self driving car. I probably won't buy one, but at least it's interesting from a technological point of view. Li'l Kim building rockets in Korea, that's maybe a fringe thing because rockets are cool, and it's fun to see idiots pissing their pants because they can't understand that it takes LOTS more than the ability to lob these things somehow into the air to actually carry out a ICBM strike.
But this? Really? Explain to me how this is interesting. The whitewashing filters themselves are maybe, but the "outcry" around them simply isn't.
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Because these stories get a little out of hand.
From your reaction, I'd say it's the anti-SJWs that have gotten out of hand. Look at exactly what this story is about. Okay the summary is the usual Slashdot clickbait with slightly inflammatory language, what else is new? But look at the actual story.
It's not someone telling you that you must take a position, or even claiming that there is some overt racism here. It's just pointing out that, like filters which automatically airbrush images to make people look unnaturally thin there are social problems crea
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Technology has by definition no morals. Dynamite can be used to connect towns in valleys separated by mountains by blasting a hole into said mountain, or it can be used by either town to blow the other one up. Rockets can be used to enable us to reach other planets or they can deliver material to destroy the one we are on now.
That may or may not concern you, and you may certainly wish to discuss the aspect of their use for good or ill on a board that deals with social ramifications of technology, but I am n
Re:News for nerds (Score:4, Insightful)
This is just semantics now. You point out that dynamite can be used for social good or social bad. Well, I agree that the technology itself has no morals, but clearly a large part of being an engineer is considering how technology is used. You mentioned driverless cars before, well much of the debate about them is around things like liability, how other drivers will react, how they will change the way we live, the social impact.
This whole thread is about how some technology affects ... no, wait, it ain't even that.
It should be that, that's what TFA is about. It's just been derailed by people out to derail discussion of things they don't like. We used to call that trolling. Just to be absolutely clear, I'm NOT accusing you of trolling.
We're not talking about how this works, or what technological impact this could have, on future technology, maybe how it could affect technology itself and other technologies.
We should be. Auto-photoshopping is a feature of many modern devices. Google has auto-awesome that airbrushes your skin, Apple's camera app heavily processes images to look better. But at some point it gets problematic... How hard should the software try to remove every skin blemish, to adjust lighting to make you look thinner, airbrush out that double chin? Soon it will reach the stage where every shot will look like something out of a magazine.
Clearly these apps do a lot of good too. They compensate for poor cameras, Google can composite images so you end up with one where everyone is smiling etc.
Another good example is those HP webcams that couldn't track black faces. Lighter skin was fine, but anyone with very dark skin was invisible to it. That's a pure tech problem, but unfortunately it got cast as "racism" (I suppose maybe some institutional racism, as in there weren't any really dark people on the testing team), which is quite unhelpful.
And sorry, feelings are something I wouldn't really call "news for nerds".
Psychology though? I know it's the joke science where nothing is repeatable, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful or worth considering.
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Sorry, but the article is NOT about how technology affects anyone. It is about how people FEEL about something, and that they FEEL it could affect someone. If there is a picture of you, and someone manipulates this picture to make fun of you, then yes, you are affected by this technology. Because someone is abusing it to cause you anguish. Because they abuse your picture for a cheap laugh. That's something that affects you. Granted.
If it isn't you whose picture is manipulated and changed, you are not direct
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I have emotions, of course. I also have a rather healthy digestion, but that doesn't mean I discuss the content of my most recent bowel movement on a page that allegedly deals with development in technology.
Then again, discussing the latest Linux distribution might not be very suitable for a discussion board about nutrition and whether your fiber intake is sufficient.
I hope you finally understand.
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Re:News for nerds (Score:4)
Came in to say just that.
I find myself reading this site less and less these days.
Stop posting, and we'll al be happy.
Re:News for nerds (Score:5, Interesting)
These threads are nothing but excuses for flamewars, and invite all the retards from both sides of the spectrum, posters and mods alike, to stir up a goddamn shitstorm. In this thread, the reactionary-tards seem to be winning.
So fuck all your mothers' cunts with a rusty cactus and then kill yourselves you worthless goddamn niggerfaggots.
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What? Why?
Whew, it's still there. Dude, don't scare me like that! Though ... I haven't heard anyone call it "privilege" before. Is that some New York slang?
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Well, anorexia probably isn't the beauty standard in Ethiopia...
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Countries with brown people have set their own standards for beauty that include light skin, primarily because lower classes are ones that work outside and get darkened by the sun. Indian films, for example, portray a much lighter skin color than the average populace, particularly when portraying the wealthy or leading role types.
This story, of course, deserves no attention, because it is just one news cycle of sensationalist headline based on nothing.
oh for fucks sake (Score:5, Insightful)
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Admit it, you never touched ganja in your life; you are just an FBI troll who makes these posts to make it appear that marijuana is linked to shitposting.
Re:oh for fucks sake (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the generation of "perpetually offended"..............
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And here's another name for them: intolerant moral authoritarians, which I think better reflects the inevitable end-game of their offendedness and demands for the world and its dog to comply with their 'values'.
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Right, look at the number of people arguing that we shouldn't even talk about this stuff. It has literally no effect on them, beyond an extra click or two of the scroll wheel, but they shout and scream to get it shut down anyway.
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Interesting logic. If you post defending non-violent Christians 50 times, does that mean you are a Christian?
Wait, I've defended women at least 50 times... And people called me a "pussy" and a "mangina"... Maybe that means I am a woman?!
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See now why I said the feminist movement is more and more turning into a religion? Everything you just said fits just as perfectly on the average bible thumper.
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Yes, and justifying censorship and totalitarian law over their butthurt feelings. In a sense, they are killing our lawns with their acidic urine.
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They aren't trying to censor anything, they are exercising their basic right to freedom of speech. It's the people like you screaming that they should be silenced who are trying to censor.
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OMG! They aren't even human to begin with! It all makes sense now!
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So we're back at whitewashing [wikipedia.org], I guess...
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The differences are real and measurable but:
1) they are very slight, and
2) there have been a lot of negative things associated with people exaggerating the significance of race.
so the cost/benefit analysis tells us that just ignoring it altogether is a good idea.
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The differences are real and measurable but:
There is no "but", there are measurable differences between races and sexes. Claiming it's a "social construct" is absolutely false, the end. You attempting to minimize it also does not make it false. From where I sit right now I see several very distinct races and genders. If I were to ask the Chinese woman about her African Penis she would have every right to request my institutionalization. If you truly believe that there is no difference, please submit yourself for medical treatment.
If you are atte
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The differences are real and measurable but:
there are measurable differences between races and sexes.
So.... we're all in agreement then?
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The differences are real and measurable:
there are measurable differences between races and sexes.
So.... we're all in agreement then?
Remove the conjunction which does not exist and "yes", I agree. Amazingly, this is where I started and you attempted to contradict. Wow! Isn't logic fun? (That's rhetorical, just in case you miss it.)
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I have no problem writing Obama and telling him he's a numbnut. Why should that be a problem?
Fuckwit asshat moron shitstain (Score:2, Informative)
Holy fuck this thread is full of retarded mods, otherwise you've got some kind of sockpuppet army.
I don't even know where the fuck to begin with how full of shit you are.
There are genetic, biological differences between peoples, obviously. But they do not divide nearly into the racial categories we, or any other society, think in terms of. Where to draw the lines between which groups of people with what genetic differences is entirely a social matter that doesn't line up at all with where the biology would
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Nobody who lives in Africa would call the peoples of Africa "one race". They can easily identify the different peoples by their appearance.
Just as you might not be able to tell the difference between Korean, Lao, Japanese, Mongol, etc., the people who live there can easily spot the differences. I don't think anyone would argue that the Aboriginal people of Australia are simply a social construct. They split off from the rest of humanity as much as 75,000 years ago. That's a reasonably long time for a popu
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Re:oh for fucks sake (Score:5, Insightful)
no this is just a bunch of perpetually offended morons who would do us all a huge favor if they all got hit by a bus
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Scroll down a bit, they have one purely for skin lightening. Skin lightening products are a thing in real life too, and unsurprisingly quite bad for your health. You can also get little strips of double sided tape to hold your eyelids up and make your eyes look bigger.
We are making headway on using Photoshop to make models anorexicly thin, and it's widely accepted that such images do make people unhappy (you can't expect children to not care). Why is it so hard to accept this is also unhealthy and a bad thi
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Photoshop creates women. Out of food [youtube.com] if need be.
(And yes, it's fake, but then again, it's photoshopped, so what do you expect?)
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And even if not, how does the bus company deserve to suffer for the greater good?
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Oh shut the fuck up.
Asians have always been obsessed with white skin.
To them having dark skin is traditionally a sign that you are a poor field peasant working in the fields.
Nothing to do with so called western beauty standards.
People jump to the conclusion that this is some kind of conspiracy by white people at every opportunity.
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Same for us "caucasians". The term "blue blood" for aristocracy doesn't stem from them bleeding in blue, but them having such fair skin that you can see the blue veins under their arms, something you could no with the sun-tanned peasants working on the fields.
People have always admired wealth, or rather, not having to work, and the beauty standard reflects this. In earlier times the beauty standard was to be pale and fat, because both mean that you had money for food and needn't toil in the fields. Today th
Science is the Debil! (Score:3, Insightful)
Let us remove all the emotional crap about beauty "standards" and replace them with what they are. Biological triggers for reproduction. Symmetric features, healthy body shape, healthy hair, healthy smell, and yes healthy skin (1) are all measures we have evolved with to find mates we will most likely succeed in having healthy children with.
1. Healthy skin is not just color, though it is much easier to see poor health on lighter skin. Oily skin, acne, blotchy skin, ringworm, ticks, etc... etc... are all
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No, it's social. Take those remote Amazonian tribes where it's normal to be pretty much naked all the time. Women's breasts being on display are no big deal, because their society considers it normal and doesn't fetishize them. At the other extreme you have Victorian England, where people covered up table legs and ankle judging competitions were a chap's best chance to oogle some women's bodies.
While race is indeed genetic, what human beings consider attractive is a mixture of both genetics and social const
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It's so bad that the Asian half of my family were always trying skin lightening products and trying to make photos look whiter (this was before Photoshop).
Snapchat isn't helping. To be fair, they are hardly the only ones doing it, but let's call it out what we see it.
Which is kind of ironic when you keep in mind that europeans grill them in tanning beds until the get skin cancer just to have their skin getting darker,
Makes me wonder if there isn't a "perfect" skin tone that is considrered beautiful
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I think it's just that society tends to value what is unusual, because if it is common it doesn't stand out. My fiancée is Chinese and says she likes my nose, which to her is very big and which I hate. There is no rational reason for either view, and the "ideal" nose size seems to depend on the other proportions of the face.
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Note that I didn't argue it was racist, I think you are confusing me with the summary.
The issue is holding up light skin as the ideal. It's done for a number of reasons, many of them not racist. There is some institutional racism as a result, but that's obviously very different to saying that it's done for racist reasons.
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Hollywood women the past decade or more have been largely pastey white, too, essentially never tanning (carrot pills and colored creams aside). Sun has been a no no ever since National Geographic published the photos of the 60 year old Andes woman who had spent much of her life outdoors, looking like a leather bag, and an 80 year old Tibetan monk who had spent almost his whole life indoors, skin fresh and smooth.
Nobody tans anymore except idiots.
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While this may play a role, the beauty standards of various cultures are older than colonialism. The caste system of India is partly, or supposedly, based on skin color. Egyptian pharaohs were often described as being "lighter skinned" and a papyrus speaks of a father pretty much begging his son to become a scribe for then he will not have the "burned face of the serfs". I still think this has more to do with power and wealth, and these things being associated with not working in the field, under the sun.
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Yes, because complaints over a picture filter are just as valid as the complaints of segregation and Jim Crow laws... How absurd. I hope you get some perspective at some point in your life.
As another poster said further below in this threat; Isn't it something that people don't have to complain about food, shelter, disease, war, or legitimate institutionalized racism? Instead, the loudest complaints are about video games and pictures that literally hurt no one.
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Dude, learning from your imaginary friend how to be cool may be cool while you're in kindergarten, but once you let go of the comfy blanket it's time to drop the pretend friends and try finding some real ones. If only on Facebook.
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Why, Office is absolutely progressive! It's black in the foreground and white in the background.
No one cares (Score:3, Insightful)
No one cares. This affects nobody in a substantial way. It's just a bunch of whiny SJWs.
These people need jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
Lately it seems there are entirely too many people with entirely too much free time to sit around being offended by the most insignificant and banal shit. Don't these people work, or have anything else better to do with their time?
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News flash: lots of people out of work, consequently poor, rage against society in their subsequent free time. Film at 11.
Maybe if people had the opportunity to do something with their lives they'd both have better things to do than complain and less reason to do so as well.
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Be honest: Would you hire them?
Some people are unemployable due to their skills. Some due to their personality.
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stump for Hillary or Bernie
I support free speech so I'm not going to object to you insulting them, but putting Hillary and Bernie in the same camp is just plain vicious to *each* side.
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Presupposing basic income will lead to people working less, rather than (coupled with the elimination of minimum wage that would logically accompany it) creating more jobs for everyone now that more people can accept a lower wage and still survive. People don't want to just survive: they want stuff, and more stuff, and if they can go work to get it, they will.
SJW (Score:5, Funny)
Hey everybody it's Social Justice Wednesday!
Reply to this thread if you genuinely give a fuck about Snapchat's filters and believe this topic belongs on Slashdot.
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The fact that this was downmodded so quickly is proof that SJWs did 9/11.
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This is a confluence of a nerd issue (Snapchat filters) and SJW-itis. Why is it here? Which one?
Racist anti-racists (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, I think it's useful (Score:5, Funny)
...to identify people I hope I never have to talk to.
From TFA:
"The whitewashing snapchat filters are making me internalise Eurocentric beauty standards(I've avoided doing this until now)&it needs to STOP"
Please Lord, let me never meet this person.
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Unless you happen to live in the same basement.
I'm so confused these days... (Score:2)
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Maybe in some cases I would agree but in this case I don't. The new sense of whitewash is very similar to the old one -- covering up an undesirable thing in a light-colored covering. Even without the racial pun on 'white' it would still be a meaningful phrase, and with that pun it's really quite cromulent.
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I may be mistaken as English isn't my first language, but I think I've seen whitewash referring to the treatment of brick walls to give them a uniform surface that is easier to paint. As the word would suggest, it leaves the wall white (actually a kind of grey but details).
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Covering up something unsavory isn't racist.
It's misogynist.
It's the Michael Jackson app (Score:5, Funny)
Who knew he was a developer?
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But he died...does that make this filter a zombie process?
Fuck Snapchat (Score:2)
I installed it 14 months ago to speak with someone for its... intended use so to speak.
We used it for day to day communication for nearly a year I would say, it became a misery of an App.
Android version has bugs which haven't changed in 14 months, despite bug reports from me and more than 1 (flash focus bug, black screen bug)
I contacted them and asked them to add an option of 'trusted snappers' which works in inverse, all your text / chat is PERMANENT and only optional stuff disappears.
Nope, nothing, so you
Just lighter (Score:3)
I looked at all the side-by-side comparisons I could find on that page and to me it looks like simple color correction. People were taking a bunch of dark photos and the filter corrected them to be medium lightness. It didn't lighten their skin; it lightened the entire photo which their skin is part of. Look at the first example, she has dark hair which is completely washed-out black in the original, with no detail visible, and then in the filtered version you can see some more detail because they lightened the colors.
I'd like to see someone take a photo, do color correction first, then run it through this filter. Does it pick out brown skin tones and turn them whiter? I doubt it but if so then that might be a little bit offensive.
These things are horrible (Score:2)
Real estate agents use these filters to make nasty old fences that haven't been maintained look new. It's fraud, I say, fraud.
I'm tired of this attitude (Score:3)
Rather than:
"I'm offended by this! So I just won't use it."
People are all...
"I'm offended by this! IT MUST BE BANNED!"
If this keeps catching on, it'll be like Chinese censorship in no time.
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Rather than:
"I'm offended by this! So I just won't use it."
People are all...
"Someone out there with the resilience of an infant might be offended by this - Therefore, I'm offended by this! IT MUST BE BANNED!"
If this keeps catching on, it'll be like Chinese censorship in no time.
There, fixed that for you
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The problem is mostly twofold: First, emancipation movements changed from the rally call "You have, and we don't, so we want it to, too!" (which is, btw, absolutely within everyone's rights and actually part of the US constitution!) to the call "You have, and we don't, so YOU CANNOT HAVE IT!". The difference is that one demands to get something, which means equality will be reached at the level of those that have it better, meaning everyone having more on average, the other one demands someone else to lose
Dear special snowflakes. (Score:3)
Fuck you. Your "feels" don't fucking matter in the real world.
Please learn this as quickly as possible so you can stop being a festering boil on the ass of society and can start contributing something to humanity other than childish bitching and moaning (we're more than full up on that).
You're not a victim (you're just an every-day asshole). So stop trying to seize victimhood as a status symbol.
If you don't, you're going to be mocked, mercilessly, for the rest of your existence.
(Oh, and did we mention that we sell razors? Down the road, not across the tracks!)
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What did you expect after we promoted "feeling offended by everything" to actually being a job description [wikipedia.org]?
That's racist! (Score:2)
Didn't they get the memo? That has to be "blackwashing" filters now!
Oh! Sorry! Sorry! "non-whitewashing" it is, I think? Or did that change again to something even more ridiculous by now?
Says who? (Score:2)
A "blackface filter" I could see some having a problem with. Particularly if it did something really offensive like make you look like a white performer in a 1920's minstrel show. But I follow a lot of the big names in "Black Twitter", and not only have I yet to see anyone up in arms about this, I've seen several (eg: @Deray) use the flower-crown filter themselves.
Honestly, real activists generally have better things to worry about. Like not getting shot in the streets for nothing, or asked for identity pa
Re:What a pussy (Score:4, Insightful)
True, but then again, so is learning how to post your comment under the right story.
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I still have no idea how people can post their comments in the wrong thread.
Re: Brightness sliders (Score:2)
The flower crown thing washes out the whole damn picture. My daughter thought it was funny to take pictures of me in the car the other day with the dog face filter and the flower crown filter. The flower crown filter picture is complete crap, with most of the dynamic range thrown out. I posted them both up to my Facebook, side-by-side if anybody cares to look at what nonsense this complaint is. It would be a waste of your time though.
Re:Brightness sliders (Score:5, Funny)
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With an average setting that's being called "Mexcian". Or wait, that's too long, just label it "Spic". It's short for "spic-and-span", of course.
Re:remember when (Score:4, Insightful)
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It sure worked for "terrorism". Everyone taking a crap now the wrong way is a "terrorist". To the point where the label itself means literally jack shit anymore and we have to give the idiots that blow shit up and plaster their own shit everywhere in the process a new name.
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zomg the laws of physics are racist!
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Probably less than the amount spent on fake tanning spray by Donald Trump.
http://web-images.chacha.com/i... [chacha.com]
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Should've saved some of that dough for a decent rug. Seriously, that hairpiece looks like someone nailed a dead skunk to his head and bleached it.
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You know, at some level, it has to be an indicator of the man's judgement that he can look in the mirror and say, "looking good".
Plus the fact that his wife and kids don't show a little concern and tell him to back off the hairspray and man-tan.
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Trump 2016
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We're not interested in your sexual preferences.
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These people have it so good, that's all they've got to complain about. Lucky them!
That's because most people are going to whine no matter what. The trick is not paying attention to them.
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I'm offensive and I consider this very black!
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Sorry, but that's plain wrong:
Evidence A: Tanning beds
Evidence B: self bronzer
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We're talking about Snapchat, what's that got to do with "nice things"?