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Snapchat Faces An Outcry Against 'Whitewashing' Filters (mashable.com)

Posted by msmash on from the playing-with-fire dept.

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.

14 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. News for nerds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    stuff that doesn't matter

    1. Re:News for nerds by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you aren't interested, scroll down to the next story. Why take offence?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re:News for nerds by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      SJW-interest stories belong on Reddit, not Slashdot. You're a rare member of the intersection of the Venn diagrams.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    3. Re:News for nerds by Opportunist · · Score: 3, 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.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    4. Re:News for nerds by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, 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.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. oh for fucks sake by ganjadude · · Score: 5, Insightful

    really??? if you dont like a filter.... dont use it!!! What is so complicated here?

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    1. Re:oh for fucks sake by geek · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is the generation of "perpetually offended"..............

    2. Re:oh for fucks sake by ganjadude · · Score: 4, Insightful

      the filter adds flowers to ones head and makes it seem as if they are outside, making it brighter, and therefore whiter....

      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

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  3. No one cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No one cares. This affects nobody in a substantial way. It's just a bunch of whiny SJWs.

  4. These people need jobs by Anonymous Coward · · 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?

  5. Racist anti-racists by joboss · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There is nothing racist about this at all. The people who are prone to things such as racism are the very same people who equate this to racism using the same fallacies and poor thinking that themselves gave rise and continue to give rise to real racism. You have to be careful with sensitivity. There's being insensitive and being too sensitive. These whiners fall into the latter category. The best way to deal with them is to ignore them and get on with their lives. As everyone else has the common sense to say, if they don't like this feature, they don't have to use it.

  6. Re:What a pussy by SecurityGuy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Learning how to handle assholes is part of being a normal adult.

    True, but then again, so is learning how to post your comment under the right story.

  7. Re:remember when by ganjadude · · Score: 3, Insightful

    no...that wasnt racist either. can we just stop with the labeling of everything as racist? it has literally made the word useless

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  8. Science is the Debil! by s.petry · · Score: 2, 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 signs of unhealthy skin. Claiming color is the only factor ignores reality, and has become a false narrative for these SJW (Cultural Marxist) movements.

    Claiming we should ignore a person's health when choosing a mate is akin to saying the thing we mate with makes no difference, and the gender makes no difference, and the age makes no difference (who needs puberty right SJWs?) Interestingly the same thing these people tell you does not matter when it comes to using private spaces like rest rooms.

    If you want to build a bullshit narrative to promote your communist beliefs at least have the audacity to use facts to do so.

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.