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When Purchase Recommendations Go Bad
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.'"
With an infinite amount of monkeys typing away at a typewriter for an infinite amount of time you will get...this?
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
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.
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.
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.
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
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.
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
If I search for Foreigner's 4 album, am I going to get links to documentaries on immigrants Urgently dreaming of becoming Juke Box Heroes, telling themselves "I'm Gonna Win", trying not to Break It Up in the Night Life while waiting for Luanne, the Woman in Black, to come with their paycheck for the day, Waiting for a Girl Like You, giving us all a ray of hope, shining down upon us, and telling us, "Don't Let Go"?
If they could do that, THEN I would impressed.
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.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
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
So we can blame the unthinking machines and the corporations that use them for our own cultural and racial bigotry. Nice.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
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...
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.
skkkoooonnnggggkkk ptui
Check out the "also try" recommendations. :)
d s+with+guns&sm=Yahoo!+Search&toggle=1&ei=UTF-8&fr= FP-tab-web-t
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=ki
... or funny?
g .gif
E.g. http://www.speakeasy.org/~curby/swg/text/jellypon
I vote for funny.
--
"Extra Anus Kills Four-Legged Chick" -- Headline
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.)
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.
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.
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...
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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.
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...
On Amazon.com, when browsing for Essential .NET Amazon.com was nice enough to tell me that fellow purchasers also wore "Clean Underwear". I was a bit disturbed that Eddie Bauer felt it was needed to specify that the underwear I was buying was in fact clean.
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 possible to filter successfully, against a majority that wants access?
2)Should we pretend that 'Exception Filtering' is possible, and place blame on programmers, so as to avoid dealing with the true societal problems.
3)If we do filter, who will decide for us? The government? Which government(s)? Big companies? Every easly offended minority?
I wonder how many geeks there are, do we count as a minority? Maybe then we could muster some political clout, and get something accomplished, rather than complaining about how technology ignorant polititions are.
Racist algorithms! Run!
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, majoring in "eastern studies" is actually a very smart, "empowered" woman who is also interested in civil rights. And can enjoy a good powerpuff girls episode. Did I mention that the powerpuff girls have a arch enemy who resembles one of the apes in planet of the apes? I can't recall his name right now.
so he can educate everyone on how Walmart doesn't care about black people.
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. Yeah - great thanks.
Mojo-jojo... and I'm ashamed to even admit knowing that.
Isn't this a corruption of Hanlon's Razor 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.
Try again.
Knowledge of history is important. The world is not a memoryless system. How can you understand the present state of the system if you do not understand the past?
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 slur than the dumb system's recommendation. The system connected them most likely because someone had looked at the descriptions of both in a session. Wal-Mart connected them because they saw a racial slur which they had to claim their system was not making.
Categorization, and the fact that the whole neural net thing is capable of pushing out surprising results depending upon the actions of all those people that came before you, pushing in data. You know, I'm forty and Amazon still occasionally recommends crib toys for me? Trust me, it's a long story...
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Isnt it more concerning that the latest post is the least news worthy event of 2006... What ever happened to "Stuff that matters." ?
It is an entertaining cartoon. And I think it is more sophisticated than it has been given credit for in this particular thread. But a cartoon none the less. Of course, when I say cartoon, I'm not dismissing it, animation of all types is a wonderful medium of expression.
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?
wasn't the ppg by either the same group or same creative origination as dexters lab?
I know they have a very same/similar illustration appearance
or maybe I haven't reallly watched enough of either to notice the difference?
2^3 * 31 * 647
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 books. It wasn't long before I got it to say
'Customers who views this item ("Ernie Plush Doll 11" Sesame Street Doll by Gund") also viewed: "Homoeroticism in the Bible: A historical perspective" and "Obscenity, Child Pornography and Indecency"'
Obviously someone paid attention, since I don't seem to be able to do this very well anymore (they seem to adjust their scoring so that one person can't skew it, and that it's more likely to show items from the same part of Amazon).
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.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
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 town or "net-hood" only eat pizza and drink coke or pepsi? are you telling me that places like hard rock cafe don't actually sell food, they only talk about it?
The point i'm making is not that many people order their groceries online, and with the exception of pre-ordering and pre-paying for your food while making online reservations - which is a system i have not heard of, although someone is bound to do it soon - so you're assumption based on the above comment is that all purchases online are indicative of all people in a group somewhere, means that nobody on the planet or whichever region ever eats. So why are we all still here?
Just because an idea sounds good on paper for doing research, this is not a valid idea for judging all consumers. Now i'm going to leave out how the Gartner Group or some other group of a similar rep could do some polling of this nature for another poster to have a chance to refute my own claims, I just want to point out that I see both sides, I just think the parent post was not to well considered. Thanks, my $.02
/ begin side rant
I personally thought that Planet of the Apes was a good sci-fi movie of what if, not a social commentation nor an analogy of slavery. I have never sat down and wondered if it was a possible commentary on post-war (WWII) Europe, or an example of Communism gone bad, or what it would be like if my belly-button lint froze the sun or anything else.
All of those PC people out there that are so hung up on OOOOOHHH, WHAT DID HE SAY? can get off their soapbox and come back to work now. Unless they're too good for work. Like those people who had to get BUSSED from one natural disaster site, only to be in the middle of the next natural disaster site in the US southeast because they DIDN'T WORK SO THEY DIDN'T OWN THEIR OWN CARS. I know that I personally volunteered to drive my whole family from the SE US to somewhere safer, because I didn't want to have so many of our cars helping cause congestion on the highway, knowing what we were getting into, but there's a social commentary waiting to happen, the people whose government assisted living was washed away in New Orleans, LA
This has been a rant provided to you by one pissed off but levelheaded southerner - not a RACIST, just someone who has to work and expects all other able bodied citizens of the planet to as well.
/ End rant, thanks for pardoning me
2^3 * 31 * 647
No, but if we were Nerds then we could get the backing of Lamda Lamda Lamda
or is there a b in there somewhere? I know, I should google it, i'm too hopelessly lazy tho
2^3 * 31 * 647
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.
Imagine their president ordering this to take place. Wouldn't he just make statements directly to the press, like Henry Ford did?
Isn't it more likely that 1) An employee either mistakenly or on purpose set this up, or 2) The system had a failure (ie: a pointer to a link list got messed up?
Since Wal-Mart has not told how this foul up occured, we may never know. But what I do see that gives Wal-Mart some credence that this is not an slur by the company is that they immediatly addressed the problem when they found out about it.
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.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Wal-Mart apologized yesterday after its retail Web site directed potential buyers of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Planet of the Apes" DVDs to also consider purchasing DVDs with Italian American themes.
The world's largest retailer said in a statement that it was "heartsick" over the racially offensive grouping and that the site was linking "seemingly random combinations of titles."
"It's just simply not working correctly," said Mona Williams, vice president of corporate communications for Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
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 DVDs were recommended under the heading "Similar Items." Those included "Everybody Loves Raymond" with main character Ray Romano and "Friends" with Joey Tribiani.
Williams said similar titles were called up when the DVD of the movie "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" was requested. There were three such combinations involving those two movies and Italian Americans films, she said.
I have yet to work-out why this was recommended to me, by Amazon, but in there is "The Lesbian Karma Sutra"! I kid you not... I've never bought any books on lesbianism before; heck, I'm male for goodness sake! What need do I have for mutual carpet munching?!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I must prepare myself for the expected deluge of innuendo. This is /. after all.
Christopher Harrison
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 an immediate public outcry, and the alledged offender plunges headlong into trouble. Most cases are dismissed as groundless after a few months of scrutiny, but the halo remains. And it's a completely free stunt for the accuser.
Interestingly, most of these cases could be avoided by going to the sources (the Qu'ran would do nicely here) and check the facts instead of just screaming 'Racist!' across town.
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
What the big deal? They all are good films.
Is the tendency of intrenched interests (be they government or corporate) to get very nervous that the internet allows large groups of people to communicate. In the U.S. there is supposedly a "freedom to assemble". Until relatively recently that "freedom" was largely symbolic. Now, via the internet, large virtual assemblies of people can happen very quickly and largely outside of the control of the "establishment". In truth "Big Brother is Watching You". He just has'nt quite decided what to do with you yet.
The original Planet of the Apes films used sci-fi to explore civil rights themes. THAT is how it's related to stuff about MLK, etc. The system probably didn't differentiate between the original films and the DVDs of the TV series (which I haven't seen, so I don't know if it really could be said to explore those same civil rights themes), and just based the recommendations on the existence of the words "Planet of the Apes" in the title and probably a "civil rights" tag in its database entry.
It is a perfectly valid recommendation unless you're one of those moronic individuals who can find racism anywhere if you just look hard enough. Wal-Mart's system was fine, and was not tampered with-- until, of course, they "fixed" this. Once they start peppering their database with "exceptions" that might offend some hyper-sensitive P.C. douchebag, they've started down a slippery slope that will only undermine the integrity of their recommendations.
At that point, they might as well just choose three random titles to recommend. But then, oh no! They'll have to start checking the results to make sure that unfortunate random selections don't offend anyone!
It allows individuals to perpetuate a culture of people who have low self esteem and use PC social taboos to manipulate others in a way that makes them feel better, but only because they have power over others and not because they are overcoming their own problems.
Twinstiq, game news
Walmart doesn't care about black people.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The slave trade in young America was the economic foundation of half the the country. I'd suggest that this is more than simply a difference in size. The reason the Southeastern plantation were economically viable was the low price of the labor. Europe had a more diversified economy at the time and was, therefore, able to give up slaves; the slaves were simply a luxury.
Further, it was visually simple to distinguish those enslaved from those enslaving. Since we all try to think of ourselves as the good guy (or at least not the worst guy), the easiest resolution is to think of the enslaved as "inferior" and "needing protection, like children." This led to attitudes about those we enslaved long after slavery ended. And this distinction, codified into laws that made miscegenation (marrying across racial lines) as well as a large number of race-related laws (the Jim Crow laws), continue the effects of the original slavery even to current times.
I understand a European may have trouble understanding this, but you've seen anti-semitic issues, and those (while really not as pernicious as slavery was for us) should begin to make you understand why we are "overly" sensitive now; it is tough to be thought of as sub-human, and it is tough to forgive those who continue to act as if that is what they believe.
There's money to be had in charging racism. Now that real racism (towards blacks) is hard to find, the racism industry has to look at the most miniscule and trivial things to keep the media attention on them and the bucks flowing in.
Real racism is killing people because of their race, like what happens if a white guy walks through Memphis or south Chicago. It's separating people by race like what happened in the U.S south before the 60's and in South Africa during apartheid. It's dragging some guy to death behind a pickup because he's black.
Racism is not listing Planet of the Apes and M.L. King on the same web page.
If these jackasses causing the hullabaloo see themselves as apes, and want to take offense every time they see a reference to apes, fine. Let them. There's all kinds of freaks in this world and we usually take the attitude that "as long as they're not bothering anybody let them be".
Let's do this here. Let them be. No news coverage. No wailing and gnashing of teeth over a "racist incident" where no racism exists.
So are there some algorithms out there who believe there
are connections between Africans and apes?
Actually, in Planet of the Apes, it would be more appropriate to associate the Apes to slave owners and the human populace to slaves. So the correct analogy would be Whites=Apes and Blacks=Human on the Apes' planet.
They're probably talking about buying the new version. Which almost entirely misses that point.
Its about an astronaut fighting against a single ape on a planet that probably isn't earth.
And he's good and pure. No racism from him.
So its easy to miss the connection on that one.
All of this is entirely beside the point. Probably the engineers that wrote the code are scratching their heads and wondering what's wrong with the management. The most likely possibility is that people who buy Planet of the Apes are historically more likely to buy the other recommendations than anything else, and they do that because it's happened before.
Statistical learning programs are easy to write. They don't think. They make impartial associations. You don't like them? Tough. They're true. If most of the people who bought "Lion King" also bought "Savannah Orgy" they'd be right in recommending it. Unless you code them wrong, of course. But what's the likelihood of that? We're talking about very well tested methods here, not some new prototype learning algorithms.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Well, they *did* have an episode about Susan B. Anthony. (yes, seriously! check it out.)
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
What's that supposed to mean? I'd say the many European and Canadian laws against racist thoughtcrime are more over-the-top than our own racial grievance mongers, however noisy they may be. Public criticism and corporate boycotts are not comparable to being locked in prison for your beliefs.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
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by Mao Tse-Tung
"The force at the core leading our cause forward is the Chinese Communist Party..." (more)
(22 customer reviews)
List Price: $9.95
Better Together Buy this book with The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx today!
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The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Heston was a lot more than just a scenery chewing actor and gun nut.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
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?
A few years ago, Amazon offered me this bizarre, yet strangely appropriate, recommendation. I believe the screenshot I took speaks for itself (yes, it's real and undoctored):
http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/8897/sa6iz.png
In your mind, if you see a relationship of black people to monkeys then that automatically makes you a racist, probably the worst kind. Showing empathy would be like putting gasoline on fire because you are basically admitting openly that there is some kind of connection.
Racism is bad, and you've just componded the problem sir.
There were African slaves all over Europe before there ever was a United States of America, or for that matter before the New World had been discovered.
The Portuguese and Spaniards began enslaving black Africans in the 1300's. The Dutch and English were also vigorous slave traders for centuries.
Of course, the all-time gold standard for rapacious colonialist cruelty was reached in the French and Belgian colonies in Africa, when entire nations were turned into slave camps.
Moreover, I think that Europeans have not been given near enough credit for the abolition of slavery. If there are two institutions which did more than any other to eliminate chattel slavery, they would be the Royal Navy and the Union Army. (The Muslims, of course, were enthusiastic slavers before, during, and after the period of European slavery, and continue to this day. I'll never understand why so many black activists adopt Muslim names.)
You are obviously the product of an American pubblik skoul edumakashun. It's not your fault. Blame the Gramscian termites of the educational establishment, whose teaching and textbooks are becoming ever more devoted to the idea that the USA is the fount of all evil that has ever existed under the sun.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
While I don't know of any offensive recommendations made by our system, there were some funny ones. For example, there was a link from C++ to What's she trying to say? (a community for men who don't understand women). Another interesting relation was between Chocolate and PMS.
Breakfast served all day!
- How to Date a White Woman: A Practical Guide for Asian Men
- The Complete A**hole's Guide to Handling Chicks
- How to Date an Exotic Dancer: For Men Who Prefer Extraordinary Women
- How to Pick Up Japanese Chicks and Doom Your Immortal Soul
- It Ain't All Good: Why Black Men Should Not Date White Women
His point was that people who are buying Civ 4 have serious issues getting chicks and as a result, they're willing to "Doom Your Immortal Soul" to get some ass.[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
so he can stand by and look incredibly uncomfortable
This quote from IFilm sums up Kayne West: That was like watching a gradeschooler give a report based on things he heard from his ignorant father or something.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
If people had any REAL problems, they wouldn't be so damn oversensitive.
There is no real oppression, no worry of starvation, no in real danger. They take the smallest thing and turn it into an attack on themselves because they can "win" something.
Planet of the Apes is an example of how science fiction can talk about issues that are too taboo to speak of publicly. Racism, slavery and nuclear war were huge issues that needed addressed publicly and tricking people into thinking is what makes fiction of all types great.
Screaming about the ape reference is an excuse to cry "poor me". Apes fit in the context of the movie and are more human than any other animal. Would the movie have been able to capture audiences in the 60's if it had been "Planet of the Negros"? Hell no. It had to be disguised. Maybe today we could use CG roaches or something, but at the time apes were a huge accomplishment for the makeup department. They won many awards for the breathtaking special effects that are now cliche and cheezy.
Someday we will run this country into the ground and people will have real problems to deal with. Only then will the PC cround quit whining about unintended inferrences and imagined slurs and begin to work on real problems at hand.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
I odn't think you have many people in America anymore calling people "monkeys" just because they are black.
Think aboout what "Planet of the Apes" is saying, the message it was sending is the same one King was - that racism is wrong and backwards. Indeed the in the movie the white people are "black" for all intents and purposes to illustrate just how wrong racism really is.
I at first thought it was wierd but now I think it's not only appropriate, but I think people viewing Kings works would not be amiss in also viewing Planet of the Apes for a different take on the same message - a little cruder to be sure as it was made some time ago, but a window into what racism was and what it can be unless we are careful.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah, but if you click on the "black kids with guns" recommendation, it shows a guy with a machine gun (I think), a RC truck, two kittens, and other random stuff. I don't see any actual kids with guns in the results. How that works, I don't quite know.
d s&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt
t tle+kids&rs=1&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&fr=FP-tab-web-t&vf=
On a side note, take a look at the suggested terms under "more"(as of noon-ish Saturday, anyway).
Your suggested searches also includes "Iraqi kids with guns," which is the only suggested search that actually produces semi-reasonable results.
I could argue that Yahoo's relations algorithms aren't working well. On top of that, they're probably responding to and including aggregate data based on user search queries. This is conjecture, but I'd guess that they found a correlation between people searching for "kids with guns" and "black kids with guns."
Let's have a little fun with the Yahoo! images recommendations system and see what else it recommends. Let's search for "kids."
1. "kids" - http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=ki
Click more, and then "show all." You'll find several different groups called out as suggested search terms. "Black kids" turns up, along with "Russian kids," "Asian kids," "African kids," and whatever else.
What gets interesting is that it makes somewhat "suggestive" suggestions. You also find things like "hot kids," "drunk college kids," and even stuff as far out there as "kids speedos," "kids gone wild," and even "kids fuc" (apparently someone can't spell, and the search engine isn't intelligent enough to disregard misspelled "naughty words"). Remember, this is an image search. We also find your "kids with guns" search term.
2. Let's select "little kids," our second suggestion. It links me to these results: http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=li
Once again, select, "more," and then "show all" to get a full listing of suggestions.
Now, within this list, we find such oddities as "little kids smoking," "little kids shower," and "michael jackson with little kids." Some people that the FBI would probably like to talk to were probably included in the dataset that generated these results, since you also find suggestions like "hot little kids," "raping little kids," "little kids humping," and "little kids doing it."
Of course, you find at the very, very bottom, "coloring pages for little kids." Just because it was so odd, I took a screen capture and placed it online for safe keeping. I'll stop here, since you get the idea. I actually figured it would be a little harder to get the engine to give me nonsensical or strange results.
I don't think this is Yahoo's fault; they're probably responding to data from their users. I would wonder how long this feature stays active on the site, if it turns up results like that though. They probably need something like Google's "SafeSearch" option. Oh. Wait... SafeSearch was on (screen shot).
Something needs to be fixed.
Michael C. Hollinger
There's not much of a leap from "nature" to "mature."
Are you adequate?
The most interesting recommendations usually pop up when searching for that Puzzle Bobble clone, Bust-A-Move :P
If they don't like it, move back to Mother Africa and make it a better place.
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 are the same. Who knows, since they are an intermediate race, they can also interbreed with some monkey species.
Hopefully unneeded disclaimer: Those are not my opinions, but those I believe are/were typical racist thoughts on the matter
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.
Read past the first paragraph please, sir.
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.
My worry isn't the computer or the algorithm. Computers fuck up, algorithms can't predict everything. My worry is the bunch of geeks sitting around here trying to rationalize satisfactory explanations for the fuck up, and patting themselves on the back when they think they've done it.
In your mind, if you see a relationship of black people to monkeys...
No, I don't see a relationship between black people and monkeys, any more than I see that relationship between any human and monkeys. But it's not uncommon in racist commentary to look at blacks as being less evolved than the rest of the human race, which is where the racist slight comes from.
Now, if there are any more words you want to put in my mouth, please go nuts. If not, shut the fuck up.
I don't recall if it was some online dating site, or a banner ad for one, but it had the usual layout: "I am a {M | F} looking for a {M | F} between ages {20 | 90} and {21 | 91}".
Some of the CSS got fucked up, the font was too big and the <select> box too small, so it chopped off the "0" in "20"; "I am a {M | F} looking for a {M | F} between ages 2 and 2".
ZOMG THEY'RE SUPPORTING PAEDOPHILES! No, not really. Formatting error.
This is, of course, different, since Planet of the Apes was about slavery and racism, and the keyword matching probably found similar summaries in the MLK stuffs. But the fact remains, how much more or less offended would you be by my little example above? (Incidentally, I thought it was fscking hilarious. I have a screenshot, somewhere.)
I think the problem with everyone's view of this is that it is being seen in one way only by most. This is an innocent match of titles that offended some, and those who say people are overreacting by making this a national issue are correct. In addition it is something that many minorities, particularly African Americans will find offensive. Those with a healthy attitude would laugh at the poor pairing and call it a day, but they should still be a little offended. Would we be less likely to care if we had "real problems", of course we would. In our society many of us have less "real problems" than some other parts of the world or even some of those in our own country. This is a reflection of the wealth of the society as a whole, and that the majority are not facing the "real problems" some people face. As one looks at various countries around the world the number of "real problems" they face is a function of the wealth of the nation. Are those of us who find this offensive oversensitive, I don't think so. As was said earlier, when people have been likened to monkeys in the past, and still face some significant inequalities in society are likely to have a very different perspective on the subject. One of the posts mentioned the different types of racism and separated perceived racism from actual racism. Unfortunately the two are not mutually exclusive, one is born from the other. The xenophobic nature of man is very prevalent throughout the world and its hsitory. The Catholics and the Protestants in England and Ireland, and the Afrikaans, English, and Africans in South Africa are good examples. These are extreme so lets look at the U.S.A.; The Irish immigrants when they first began arriving in numbers were disliked and shut out, the Chinese, the Italians, etc.. The African-Americans are a unique case having been forcefully brought here and treated sub human. This first began in the 1640's and grew exponentially til about 1790 and continued til 1865, only to be replaced by various forms of indentured servitude and of course segregation. All of that being peppered with violence towards African-Americans and the damage done by being relegated to a second class status, the effects we are still dealing with today. About 300 years of this has led to the second type of racism. The perception can be incorrect and at times oversensitive, but let us not think that it is born from a vacuum, it is created by the history. Things have become better, but it has been a very short number of years, not even one lifetime, since the civil rights movement and we still do have work to do. In time I do think it will fade, but you can't erase 300 years with less than a sixth of that time. When my friends who are in the majority ask me to help them to understand what racism today is like, and how it can be disturbing, frightening, apalling, and sometimes humourous, I usually fail. I think until you have been refused service or entry somewhere, had trouble finding work, or been physically/verbally threatened or harassed by not only other citizens but the authorities as well it is hard to really understand. In summary, it makes sense to be offended, but not to make it national news.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"
Problem is, maliciousness is often a direct result of stupidity.
There are two levels of stupidity:
1) Being stupid, but desiring good for others.
2) Being led by desires without thinking of consequences for others.
Your statement is in category #2, but the other statement is in category #1. They are totally unrelated if you examine them further.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Are you saying that the assumtion of victimhood, based on the color of my own skin is not racism against myself?
We are all just people.
Really? Is it right to criticise people for being black, as long as you don't discriminate against them? I guess so, according to your logic. But that wasn't my point.
See the parent of my reply for context. My point was that we still use the same associations to attack people now as we did 75 years ago. Has anything changed? No, just the people we discriminate against.
Brent
When you're looking for stalkers walking home at night, the churchyard will be full of it. Only when you take a deep breath and relax, dropping the whole idea, will you be able to walk without fear of stalkers.
In other words: You are tormenting yourself. Life may seem very unfair. Some are born rich, others born poor, some are born to die within a few years, others last over a century.
Most of the "racists" of today, as you see them, will remain so till they die. Nothing you say will instantly make them see the fault of their way. So why go on harping on the same string, which is making you sad?
Just drop it, and do your best in whatever situation you are in, and you'll be fine. Some people will never learn, others will, because they have a genuine interest in self-development and connection with other people. And good luck! You may not believe it, but some of us doesn't care what skin colour someone has. Unfortunately, people I would like to meet of a different skin colour doesn't seem to want to socialize. So it goes both ways. Of course, it may also be a bit unfamiliar to be with someone looking a bit different. However, given the chance, I will give everybody my full attention and love, and do what I can to overcome the obstacles between us.
Let the past rest.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
"targeted for the late-high school to college age crowd", which is what I meant by recommending it for "younger audiences".
i was going to rent the mlk dvd since i am a fan of pota and wal-mart recommended me it, but now that they removed the recommendation i can see that mlk has nothing to offer me. thanks wl-mart!
Trying to match user preferences based on matching text strings!
How stupid can you get?
Everybody else matches on previous customer preferences. You click on an item, they check everybody else's purchases of that item, and then see what else everybody else bought, and recommend the same to you. That makes some sense. It uses humans as the matching algorithm.
Trying to match "black" with "chocolate" is just fucking stupid.
Computers do NOT do conceptual processing. Until they do, this sort of thing is braindead.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
But they're _not_ black or brown. In the case of chimps, they're caucasian colored, with straight brown hair all over their bodies, just like caucasions. Africans have less body hair, and what hair they have is curly. I mean, it's a bit ridiculous to argue about who looks more like an ape, but I'm just saying it's not clear to me that any race is more like an ape than any other.
Cheers.
I though that this system often worked on a "People who bought this item also bought item X Y Z" principle. That being so, maybe a lot of people who bought those particular movies also bought a lot of black-topic films?
You're looking too close. When we think of the color of a furred animal, we think of the color of their fur. Black cats don't have black skin. Sure, monkeys have a few bald patches, but they're still 95% the color of their fur when you look at them.
Now, from a scientific standpoint of determening hertage, your argument makes sense, but from a gut feeling standpoint, I think the other way holds more water. Especially if we're talking about a white racist rationalizing his ideas.
I agree it's a silly thing to argue about. And no argument can really claim any stringency in this area, and we're probably splitting hairs beyond any reasonableness by now...
I have put it up since I kept a screenshot. I think it is a riot
Six Step to whatever , In this case I think it is the Gay community that should take offence.
Help fight continental drift.
Hard to tell who should be more offended.
Help fight continental drift.
Why do people have such a hard time with the word evil? Isn't it just a stronger synonym for wrong? I'm not so sure that the "second type of racism" is really racism, but it's certainly evil. The "second racist" attributes terrible motives to someone innocent of those motives (or at least whose actions haven't proved such), while misrepresenting his own motives. At the same time, the free expression and action of those who (understandably) don't want to be considered racist is stifled.
HTH. HAND.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
A simular kind of thing exists with Google Ads and eBay. I'm sure most everyone who uses Google has noticed that for many searches you get a generic ad for eBay along the lines of "Buy $SEARCH_TERM on eBay! Click Now!". Well, try using "slaves" or "negroes" as a search term for some more interesting ads.
>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.
Microsoft had a problem like this a few years back.
Clip Art Gallery let you search for images by keyword. There was a picture of people at a playground next to a set of monkey bars. So one label on the picture was "monkey bars", the keyword sesarch allowed partial matches, and the group of people around the playground equipment included an African-American.
Yep. You put the pieces together correctly. It was possible to type "monkey" into the search box and get a picture of an African-American.
I don't remember the Slashdot reaction, if any, but Microsoft did get sued.
Do you seriously think WalMart CIOs had anything to do with HOW the software made it's decisions? Maybe in small companies, MAYBE. But not in a company the size of Walmart or even a quarter of that size.
Given YOU don't know how it works, how can you expect the CIO of a company that large to know?
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
No, it's brand new for those who want to really listen. The "old" stuff is in your mind - your memory!
"Drop it" doesn't mean do not do anything. "Drop it" means to let it go in your mind. The stalkers are in your mind. Unless you really meet one, it is best to let them go and take the necessary precautions. Letting the situation make you emotionally upset will only make you do the wrong things, instead of seeing clearly what needs to be done and wether this really is oppression, or if it is a ghost of the past.
It is good to hear you are active. I wish everybody would wake up to that. By being active you learn by your mistakes so fast, it's incredible fun! However, this requires an active consciousness too, or else you will only relive the past and go on and on about it.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Amazon bombing! Choose some children's books. Find the worst porn DVD's . Create lots of amazon accounts. Write a script to rate up both the porn & the books. Yey! Fun for the whole family! :)
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
lol, you rock.
I took a look at the reviews for "How to Date a White Woman: A Practical Guide for Asian Men" and found this gem, which everyone should vote up:
I was So Lonely, January 3, 2006
Reviewer: chosen "chosen" (shadowbane)
I have been used book this. Book so good i get blonde. She blonde vietnamese, i no care. I love her good. she love me too. i no lose kidney.
lol
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I was referring to the "little suzy" comment, not yours. I agree with you. To me "little suzy" is a little younger.
Why, perhaps it's about the theme of "idiots in power"?
1) Being stupid, but desiring good for others.
2) Being led by desires without thinking of consequences for others.
Your statement is in category #2, but the other statement is in category #1. They are totally unrelated if you examine them further.
True enough.
However, the problem is that destructive acts which might well be attributed to stupid people are rather often in fact perpetrated by malicious stupid people. I've seen this time and again. For the simple sake of self-preservation, I find it wise to not forgive and forget malice by simply assuming misguided good intentions and allowing the perpetrator to go about his business in the hopes that he will attempt to self-correct upon observing the results of his actions.
A good intentioned person can learn, whereas a shark is a shark. It's best not to assume innocence but to look at the scenario to find out exactly what is really going on so as to enable truly informed action.
-FL