Black Lives Matter – such As Google racist terms seeks to demonstrations against racism abolish the tech companies force you to take a position. You do this in different ways – some more skillfully than others.Matthias Schüssler0 KommentareDas is also a sign: The huge Black-Lives-Matter-lettering on the road to the White house shows up immediately in Apple Maps.Screenshot: shake.

The Black-Lives-Matter-movement is of the essence not only on the streets, but also in the social media and the virtual space. The tech companies don’t come around to take a position. Most of the companies show solidarity and are committed to diversity.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has written in the manner of his predecessor, Steve Jobs an open letter and unequivocally on the side of the demonstrators beaten. Cook mentioned in the letter, a donation to the nonprofit organization Equal Justice Initiative, without specifying the amount. A subtle sign of the iPhone-the group uses in its maps App: The huge lettering of “Black Lives Matter”, the Washington mayor Mayor Muriel Bowser was on to the White house-leading 16th Street brushes, showed up immediately in the satellite view in Apple Maps.

Microsoft have to grease pans

Not all corporations are similarly sent. Microsoft has engaged the artist Shantell Martin, in front of the Microsoft Store on 5th Avenue, a mural to be affixed, and the Black-Lives-Matter-honoring movement. However, in a Mail, the group has expressed very unhappy: The artist to make the mural as quickly as possible, “as long as the protests are still relevant”.

Martin has made this Mail public, what the marketing heads have immediately and emphatically apologized.

The artist Shantell Martin has asked Microsoft for a crashed Mail in the laces.Shantell Martin, Pop Tech 2013 Camden, ME/Flickr.com, CC-BY-SA 2.0

Also, Google turned to the side of the protesters. On the home page of the search engine and on the video platform Youtube confessions were read to the equality. And Youtube found a Million dollars for the fight against social injustice in view.

The search engine group does not want to leave it at the characters, but also against the everyday racism provide. The company also knows from the inside: in 2019, a member of staff has brought before his departure, a Memo circulated in which he describes the racism he has experienced as a person with darker skin color in the branch in New York. Even though he feel more comfortable to confront at such moments of everyday racism, the colleagues, he stopped, “never to feel the burden of the black one in Google”.

the block list instead of “Blacklist”

A measure aimed at the subject terms that the developers use in their documentation. The need to not only be drafted in a gender-neutral, but also without racial discrimination to get along. A guide for the Chromium project (Google Chrome Browser) prohibits, for example, the terms Whitelist and Blacklist: blacklists contain prohibited elements, white explicitly approved.

This terminology, reinforcing the perception that black is bad and white is good, argues the code of conduct. As a substitute, the terms to be used in the block list and positive list. The measure will appear as a small step, but there are more than 2000 mentions of Blacklists in the program code of the browser.

especially this preset sharpens the perception of the problem. The tech companies see themselves also confronted with the Problem that Algorithms can be racist. The mechanisms for machine Learning prejudices of the development team, and then transfer to the products. The Foundation’s money funded research network Pro Publica has shown that a System should assess the rehabilitation prospects of the White a better chance of giving as a Black. Reuters has reported to 2018, as Amazon had to pull a tool for the assessment of application dossiers from the traffic, because it is preferred men and women to be at a disadvantage. And studies show that the face recognition for white faces works better than black.

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