
“Genderless nipples” account throwing off Instagram's algorithm - ors
http://www.papermag.com/this-genderless-nipples-account-is-throwing-off-instagrams-algorithm-2141925159.html
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berryg
I was just reading this article on smaller nipples being fashionable. And
Instagram's nipple blurring is one of the factors contributing to this
fashion. - [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jan/15/what-
do...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jan/15/what-does-the-
trend-for-smaller-nipples-say-about-us)

~~~
davidgerard
That article is press release churnalism. There is no evidence of any small
nipple craze. Here is the source press release:
[http://pressreleases.responsesource.com/news/92308/from-
bust...](http://pressreleases.responsesource.com/news/92308/from-bust-til-
dawn-2017-the-year-of-the-twighlight-tweakment-/) The plastic surgery industry
tries to drum up business this way on a regular basis.

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teach
I'm pretty sure it would be impossible to take a "genderless" photo of my
nipples because of all the chest hair in the way.

~~~
fredley
Some women do have hair there, so the presence of hair is not a guarantee you
are looking at a 'male' nipple.

~~~
nerfhammer
P(A|B) = P(A)P(B|A)/P(B)

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chimeracoder
The double standard around nipples always baffled me, for this exact reason.

Where I live (New York), women have the right to be topless anywhere that men
do. So that makes all beaches effectively "topless beaches" \- the same goes
for parks, or even just walking down the street.

Edit: Autocorrect!

~~~
unclenoriega
You can argue that it's impractical or misogynist, but does it really baffle
you? The double standard exists because (in American society) female nipples
are sexualized in a way that that male nipples are not.

~~~
sp332
That's circular. They're treated differently because they're treated
differently. But why do we put so much effort into maintaining it when it
seems pointless?

~~~
legodt
They're treated differently because western culture treats women and their
bodies as objects to be consumed and nothing more.

~~~
kpil
"Western"? So in the middle east, they are all relaxed about female nudity?

Arguably, almost all cultures and religions have rules related to nudity, sex
and in particular, females bodies and their sexual behavior.

~~~
sp332
That's pretty irrelevant though, because we're talking about NY.

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BrandoElFollito
Isn't there in the US a formal obligation of gender equality? In other words
is it legal to state that a man can do X but a woman cannot? Or state that,
say, a site will only accept pictures of men and women are not allowed? I was
under the impression that at least the formal part of non-discrimination was
strongly in place.

~~~
misingnoglic
There was supposed to be an amendment to our Constitution for that (look up
the ERA), but it was killed by conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly.

~~~
nsaslideface
It was actually killed many, many times. From Wikipedia:

> The amendment has been reintroduced in every session of Congress since 1982.

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jdlyga
Sounds like a job for a good machine learning algorithm.

~~~
h4nkoslo
...At which point we would get a series of think-pieces about whether the AI
was implicitly misogynist.

~~~
untog
No, we wouldn't. We might get a debate about whether programming such a
feature is misogynist (which it pretty much is), but I can't exactly imagine
the debate would be centered around an AI doing what it's programmed to do.

~~~
h4nkoslo
Expand your imagination, it is a predictable dynamic.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opinion/sunday/artificial...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opinion/sunday/artificial-
intelligences-white-guy-problem.html?_r=0)

[https://www.propublica.org/article/breaking-the-black-box-
ho...](https://www.propublica.org/article/breaking-the-black-box-how-machines-
learn-to-be-racist)

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/09/19/amazon-
echo...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/09/19/amazon-echos-alexa-
is-yet-another-virtual-assistant-reinforcing/)

~~~
untog
I'm not saying it isn't a valid debate, I'm saying in this instance the
premise is already misogynistic before a single line of code is written, so
the debate doesn't apply here.

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scotty79
If the nipple is unrecognisable then why ban it? If you strive to ban it you
should also strive to ban all close ups of unrecognisable patches of skin that
come from butt or genitals while letting through similar patches that came
from somewhere else.

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tunesmith
This is clever, but it's kind of a case study in pedantry - ignore the
surrounding context in favor of hyperfocus on one element, the focus level
being largely irrelevant to the surrounding context.

~~~
maxander
But who is being the pedant? The owners of the account, or Instagram, or the
unexamined cultural norm?

~~~
tunesmith
In my point, I'm saying the owners of the account. I'm personally appreciative
of the point that our cultural standards are hypocritical along these lines
and need to evolve. But I also recognize that from Instagram's perspective,
it's not really the nipple all by itself that needs to be flagged. I think
that's easy for others to recognize too, which is why I think this is pretty
much pedantic and pointless.

From Instagram's perspective, the display of the female nipple is a rather
accurate signal (aside from this account) that the female breast is also being
displayed, most likely in a manner that the US culture would interpret as
sexualized - and that, even if the poster posts it in some sort of empowerment
kind of way, it can also simultaneously play into objectification and sexual
violence, as a depersonalized thing for others to sexually enjoy, etc. I'm
also aware that it's quite possible to do that with breasts _without_ showing
the nipple, and that those photos are allowed, and that's silly overall - but
Instagram's silly distinction there reflects the same silly distinction that
American society has overall.

Instagram's exceptions are consistent with those views, as well -
breastfeeding pics are allowed, as it is clearly a depiction of breasts being
functionally represented as something other than sexual. Same with most
pictures of art, sculptures, etc.

A closeup picture of a genderless nipple is actually more valuable in helping
culture desexualize the nipple than it is in pointing out any kind of
hypocrisy on Instagram's part. Instagram probably just rolls their eyes at
this since they don't see these photos as contributing to sexualized
objectification or violence. So I wouldn't see it as pedantic if this weren't
chiefly about attacking Instagram. If their chief goal were to contribute
towards desexualizing US culture's interpretations of women, then there's
probably all kinds of things they could do.

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jjgoldman
Seems like it needs a simple tweak.

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kneel
This is really funny.

However protesting against Instagram's policy is really dumb. This is simply
just a 'gotcha' loophole. The struggle for equality is a lot bigger than this.

~~~
adventured
Such things are not mutually exclusive.

You can protest more than one thing at the same time. One person can work on
protesting something less important, while 50 other people protest more
important things. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

If one were to follow the logic you're suggesting, absolutely nothing can be
protested at any given time, except for the single most important thing (and
how is that going to be decided exactly). Otherwise, it would always come back
to: hey wait, this isn't our best use of time, because there is something more
important to focus on.

~~~
kneel
This isn't really a protest, you're missing the point.

If Instagram actually changed their policy to allow female nipples there would
be thousands of novelty pop up accounts that just post women's breasts.
Instagram already has a problem with borderline softcore porn. Why in the
world would they walk down this slippery slope?

This 'protest' isn't really proving anything. It's just a funny mockery of the
rules.

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IshKebab
There's no reason Instagram have to allow male nipples. They can just update
their policy to ban nudity, including ambiguous nudity.

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qntty
Good luck banning almost every beach photo ever...

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calbear81
Also most swimming photos of men or workout photos.

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yzdl_po
Women's breasts are considered to be nudity in our culture by majority of
people. Men's "breasts" are not considered to be nudity in our culture by
majority of people. There are biological and cultural reasons for those
things.

If women would complain they are seeing nude males in Instagram then it's
completely OK to ban male nipples too. But we haven't seen those complaints.

~~~
icebraining
Not sure what's your point. Or why you used quotes around the word breasts.

Since you assert that complaining is a valid way to get companies to change
their practices, then certainly you're in support of an account which is
designed to complain about Instagram's practices, right?

~~~
yzdl_po
It's ok to complain, I don't support their cause though.

Maybe this discussion should have been about cool image recognition algorithms
anyway but It didn't seem to be when I looked at the comments. :)

