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FaceApp apparently now has race filters. I never got the humor in these.

L

Laiza

Member
This is one of those times we're I'm on the side that says there's nothing particularly offensive or unethical about this. I don't think there was any compelling reason to take the app down. If anything, more specific variations (like having a "Southeast Asian" filter in addition to the "Indian" (i.e. "South Asian") and "East Asian" filter) would have been nice to see. I'm pretty sure they could create alternate filters for specific ethnicities as well, like they way they have a "female" filter and a "female 2" filter.

I hope they bring it back at some point. It was really fun to take a bunch of selfies and see the many different ways the app would mutate my face.
 
T

televator

Member
Lois_Lane said:
Wait Mexico doesn't have any minorities within it entire nation? None at all?
Click to expand...

We do. There's just a passive denial about it with most folks. Which is stupid imo. My dad is white, I have cousins who are black... They all say they're just Mexican, but none the less... guess who gets treated with more respect?
 
B

Black Republican

Member
they only got rid of the app because they knew black folk would be switching online profiles to white face, Mike Brown/Trayvon as white? heh

televator said:
We do. There's just a passive denial about it with most folks. Which is stupid imo. My dad is white, I have cousins who are black... They all say they're just Mexican, but none the less... guess who gets treated with more respect?
Click to expand...

Black? :)
 
G

GSG Flash

Nobody ruins my family vacation but me...and maybe the boy!
I thought the results were hilarious, I'm pretty pissed that they took them down.
 
G

ghostofsparta

Member
televator said:
We do. There's just a passive denial about it with most folks. Which is stupid imo. My dad is white, I have cousins who are black... They all say they're just Mexican, but none the less... guess who gets treated with more respect?
Click to expand...

Latin America killed races, but not racism. It's strange
 
Y

You Are Viewtiful

Member
Oh man, I got to use it and it was hilarious. Just opened the app right now because I wanted to share the picture with my friends and now it's gone. :( nofunallowed.jpg
 
I

Izuna

Banned
Looking over the internet to find some we didn't do

6DSUohW.jpg


--

Asian TayTay is bae
 
D

Dabanton

Member
I hope they bring them back. Some of the tweets I saw moaning about the filters were the height of looking for outrage where none exists.
 
C

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Alienous said:
Those subsets go all the way down to the individual. But there are distinct, broad racial groups.

The app takes a face and makes it look more like the aggregated average of the faces (presumably celebrity faces) within broad racial groups. 'White', 'Black', 'Asian'. It doesn't purport to do anything else.
Click to expand...
BlackRainbowFT said:
I'm not sure I understand but, in any case, if it has been done with neural networks, then there are two scenarios I can think of: a) the learning material was biased b) "on average" those "races" really have those features.

So yes, you can build a prototypical white guy, or a prototypical black guy. But I do know that an Eritrean doesn't look like at all like a Congolese. Like an Italian doesn't look like a Norwegian. There's an average and then there's variability. The neural networks takes that variability as an input to compute said average...

it all depends on what you feed the neural network with.
Click to expand...
Again treating race as a monolith is pretty problematic.
 
S

Surfinn

Member
Laiza said:
Yeah, wow. I'm still scratching my head at this. I can't see the app as racist no matter how hard I try.
Click to expand...

Just from the quick search I did, I saw scores of people posting collages with stuff like "HAHA so funny, look at how I've changed my face!"
 
A

Alienous

Member
Crossing Eden said:
Again treating race as a monolith is pretty problematic.
Click to expand...

If you want it to be, sure. As problematic as any visual generalization of a racial group, such as in, say, a textbook.

There are predominant commonalities, that persist more than others through the likely thousands of faces used to prime their algorithm, and that's what the app seeks to augment a picture towards.
 
P

Plumbob

Member
I can understand how people might think this is racist but I think it's fascinating.


Looking at pictures side by side you get to see the facial features that make people look similar beyond their skin color. Really cool stuff.
 
S

Surfinn

Member
Plumbob said:
I can understand how people might think this is racist but I think it's fascinating.


Looking at pictures side by side you get to see the facial features that make people look similar beyond their skin color. Really cool stuff.
Click to expand...

It's pretty racist if you look at what people have done with it outside of this thread lol
 
D

darklin0

Banned
televator said:
We do. There's just a passive denial about it with most folks. Which is stupid imo. My dad is white, I have cousins who are black... They all say they're just Mexican, but none the less... guess who gets treated with more respect?
Click to expand...
Yeah, my family has a whole spectrum and it is just counting my first cousins. Mexico is very diverse.

I also agree that there is a denial about race issues in Mexico. I still remember Nito's original branding.
Black Republican said:
they only got rid of the app because they knew black folk would be switching online profiles to white face, Mike Brown/Trayvon as white? heh



Black? :)
Click to expand...
If only.
 
L

Laiza

Member
Prodigal Son said:
reading twitter some people are saying the gender filters are transphobic too.

im gonna go get a smoothie lol i cant today
Click to expand...
Yeah, that one was a real headscratcher for me, too. At the same time, Poe's Law is in full effect, so...
Surfinn said:
It's pretty racist if you look at what people have done with it outside of this thread lol
Click to expand...
Surfinn said:
Just from the quick search I did, I saw scores of people posting collages with stuff like "HAHA so funny, look at how I've changed my face!"
Click to expand...
I'm... not seeing the issue?

People using it to express their racism is something the app developers are not responsible for. (If anything, that's Twitter's problem to solve, since people are using their service to be annoying.)

I'd rather people be able to see these things and understand just how little difference there actually is between the many different ethnicities on the planet, even if a bunch of folks just use it as the object of a joke.
MetalGearZed said:
its weird because this feels like the first time that i've been outside of the outrage bubble. i mean im all for racial and cultural sensitivity but...idk
Click to expand...
You and me both. I mean, I'm a trans-feminist and SE Asian and this just doesn't strike me as something worth getting angry about on any level. Sorry to those who do care about it in that way, but I'm just not seeing it.
 
M

MetalGearZed

Member
Prodigal Son said:
reading twitter some people are saying the gender filters are transphobic too.

im gonna go get a smoothie lol i cant today
Click to expand...
its weird because this feels like the first time that i've been outside of the outrage bubble. i mean im all for racial and cultural sensitivity but...idk
 
G

GuitarAtomik

Member
Lame. I wanted to try some more photos.

Well, with what's still there, the female version of me eerily looks like my mom, and the old version of me looks like a weird hybrid of my grandmother and dad.

Izuna said:
https://twitter.com/lucasmtny/statu...ll-advised-new-update-adds-ethnicity-filters/

Here's ... fuck I forgot his name.

Vice President

Funny how so many white people call this app racist on twitter

mVVnv6j.jpg
Click to expand...

Lol. Black Pence looks just like Obama. Asian Pence just looks like stoned White Pence.
 
B

BlackBanditSho

Member
Plumbob said:
I can understand how people might think this is racist but I think it's fascinating.


Looking at pictures side by side you get to see the facial features that make people look similar beyond their skin color. Really cool stuff.
Click to expand...

I agree with this. The more I looked at the images, the more fascinating it became. We're all so similar. When I look at African Americans in this country, all i see is how much fuckery happened through slave masters impregnating slaves. Eventually, races began to mix to every conceivable blend and you get these beautiful pairings that's very unique to the US. I would've enjoyed playing with this some more.

I get why the kneejerk is anger, though. Some of the results look nightmarish and seem to play into the deepest stereotypes. That said, as a black guy who has a preference for black women, it was fascinating seeing non-black women look radically different, and vice-versa.

Ah well.
 
N

norm9

Member
Found previous versions but those don't have the filter. Newest version doesn't have it either so it must have updated to include it today and then poof a few hours later.
 
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