It's authoritarian and the new heresy, full stop. It's no different than evangelicals who try to impose their morality on everyone else. "That word is sinful. Here's the proper word and idea." They also think it's simply about being a good person and defend it with that frame. To be a good person use the correct words and correct ideas as defined by us, the good people. If you disagree you are a bad person.
It's simply adding context to words and giving you the option to change it.
This is useful for speaking on the international scene. It is impossible to be aware of all possibly harmful words.
Take for example "Eskimo". Many people outside Canada would not know that the people who it is used on prefers to be called Inuit or better yet the names of their own language (Inupiaq or Yupik). But to a Canadian, this would be a glaring mistake as many consider "Eskimo" to be insulting.
If I am writing a support text for that demographic and use the wrong word, I will be happy that my text editor adds a little hint that says "Are you sure you want to use this word? It might make people angry."
The alternative is to use the dictionary search feature on every single noun. I can think of a lot of such words. This is heavy and slow, so tech comes to the rescue. This feature already exists on a lot of spellchecker.
It’s not “context”. Context implies a universal truth or law of nature level of absolute. This is a highly subjective, fundamentalist, quasi-religious definition of “context”.
"The name Eskimo is considered derogatory because it was given by non-Inuit people and was said to mean 'eater of raw meat."
is a historical and sociological context.
If you are writing about the uses of the word "Eskimo", you click "skip this word" and the word will remain in your text.
If the added context has you believe that using the word in your text might anger the very demographic you are writing a text on, you click "replace word".
If you choose to ignore the context and keep using the word at the risk of angering the community you are writing about, you click "never show this again". But at this point, don't complain if people are angry at your text.
That's it.
I bet you can simply turn off the feature altogether like you can in other software.
> "The name Eskimo is considered derogatory because it was given by non-Inuit people and was said to mean 'eater of raw meat." is a historical and sociological context.
It is not universal or unimpeachable context, it carries a certain set of assumptions that may or may not be true:
- "is considered derogatory" suggests that everyone (or nearly everyone) considers this offensive, when in fact some people still call themselves Eskimo. To suggest that "Eskimo" is always or usually derogatory is therefore non-inclusive of people who use the word to describe themselves.
- The theory that Eskimo means "eater of raw meat" has been called into question; an alternative theory is that it derived from the French word esquimaux, meaning one who nets snowshoes. To circulate the arguably more offensive association of the word may itself be reinforcing untrue and possibly offensive connotations of a word that some people prefer.
Any attempt to present one particular interpretation of a word as universal truth, or one framing as the true "context", is often overly reductionist and prescriptive, even non-inclusive.
Another great example of this: indigenous people in the USA generally prefer the term "Indian" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh88fVP2FWQ), and yet polite American society will pressure you to say Native American instead. Something tells me that this feature in Docs will not be suggesting that you change "Native American" to "Indian", despite the fact that the people themselves often prefer it.
It's word policing that doesn't take into account context, ie the person that it's being written for or how it's being used.
It itself is not adding context, and it should be disabled by default if added at all.
If PC nazis want this they can install an extension or enable it.
I don't need Google to give me moral lessons or be the arbiter of truth and feelings.
Dear Google docs team, just stick to spelling and grammar checking in your word processor, thank you.
Maybe next they can add a Clippy with a neckbeard that pops up and says "ackhtually... this is bad, would you like to censor yourself?"
It's not about feelings, it's about conditioning self censorship.
EDIT: @madeofpalk, spelling is not subjective, grammar is but it's a style guide based on structure. PC rules change on a dime based on feelings and politics. But yes you can be a grammar nazi and a PC nazi. Generally the two overlap because it's a certain type of zealot personality.
This is why it is a hint that asks for an action. It also covers active/passive sentences, run-on sentences, etc. In other words, all the features that modern grammar & spellchecker have.
The added colors that are not present in Google Docs are incredibly helpful.
The fact that you feel threatened by a tooltip that includes text that is present in most dictionnary is irrational.
See for example what Merriam-Webster already has under "Eskimos":
"Eskimo is a word that presents challenges for anyone who is concerned about avoiding the use of offensive language. Its offensiveness stems partly from a now-discredited belief that it was originally a pejorative term meaning "eater of raw flesh," but perhaps more significantly from its being a word imposed on aboriginal peoples by outsiders. It has long been considered a word to be avoided in Canada, where the native people refer to themselves as Inuit, a word that means "people" in their language. But not all the native people who are referred to as Eskimos (such as the Yupik people of southwestern Alaska and eastern Siberia) are Inuit. Eskimo has no exact synonym; it has a general meaning that encompasses a number of indigenous peoples, and it continues for now in widespread use in many parts of the English-speaking world."
Meanwhile Cambridge Dictionary has "Note: Some of these people consider the term Eskimo offensive, and prefer the word Inuit."
Collins has: "These peoples now usually call themselves Inuits or Yupiks, and the term Eskimo could cause offence."
This is not new information pushed by Google. This is simply technology making our lives easier.
> This is why it is a hint that asks for an action.
If you want or need a PC word checker to not piss off liberals thats's fine (they are the ones getting offended on other's behalf, not the people they are "fighting" for), but most people don't.
I see no reason to have this enabled by default.
EDIT: @Karawebnetwork, I don't see any Inuits proposing this, just liberals who love censorship, love getting offended on other's behalf and redefining words to make themselves feel like they've done something.
Are you advancing that the Inuit population is majoritarily liberals?
There is more than one country in this word. Not everything is about the American political dichotomy.
Professional editors already do the work that is provided by this feature, they simply use dictionaries and their professional experience instead. Now even the writer is able to see and adapt the text as they write, which results in more natural texts.
This is just what those features are, a replacement for an editor. And like of a human editor that sends back a text with lines under words and comments in the margins you can simply ignore it.
Edit:
As per your edit, I would recommend you leave your house, drive north and ask. I can assure you that people want to use the names of their people and not an arbitrary word that has been pushed on them by strangers.
A way to explain it that I have used before is to compare it with people who call Americans "Burgers".
Sure, most people don't mind it. You chuckle, roll you eyes and continue with your day. But if from now on all official texts no longer had "Americans" in it but "Burgers", you can be sure there would be anger.
Especially if when people said "We were called Americans before and never stopped calling ourselves as such" they were answered with "No one actually cares about this, I have called you Burgers for decades. Don't get mad, that's just how we call you over here."
> As per your edit, I would recommend you leave your house, drive north and ask. I can assure you that people want to use the names of their people and not an arbitrary word that has been pushed on them by strangers.
I'm not applying this social pressure to self censor, maybe the people doing so could drive north and ask. Have you?
> Sure, most people don't mind it. You chuckle, roll you eyes and continue with your day. But if from now on all official texts no longer had "Americans" in it but "Burgers", you can be sure there would be anger.
Your hypothetical is nonsensical. A group decides what to call themselves. Americans themselves would need to decide that in your scenario.
What outside communities call you (yankees, etc.) is separate and cannot be controlled.
In general, I'd suggest not getting offended on other people's behalf or looking for things to be offended about. Words don't hurt you unless you let them.
> I'm not applying this social pressure to self censor
The pressure is on being educated enough to be polite with the people you discourse with.
I do not know how we can meet in the middle ground since you believe that using accurate words to describe people is censor.
Yes, what outside communities call you is outside of your control. However, what you call outside community is within your control.
Since it is within your control and you can choose to use any word you want (as long as you are fine with the repercussions), this is not censor. You can absolutely call anyone by any word you want.
That said, refusing to expand your vocabulary will diminish the range of you thoughts. Keeping with the previous example, calling two different and unassociated tribes by the same name will prevent you from learning about them separately.
> The pressure is on being educated enough to be polite with the people you discourse with.
Oh I'm well aware of the PC rules, I disagree with them. They have nothing to do with being polite or educated.
> I do not know how we can meet in the middle ground since you believe that using accurate words to describe people is censor.
Most of the time the PC words are not accurate at all. They are confusing to everyone involved, by design.
> Since it is within your control and you can choose to use any word you want (as long as you are fine with the repercussions), this is not censor. You can absolutely call anyone by any word you want.
This is why I said self censor, you're bullying people to conform to your silly rules.
> That said, refusing to expand your vocabulary will diminish the range of you thoughts. Keeping with the previous example, calling two different and unassociated tribes by the same name will prevent you from learning about them separately.
Oh I know your PC words and my thoughts are expansive. I just disagree with the entire premise.
I call Inuits as such, if I've ever referenced them? I don't think I've even used the word Eskimo ever before, as it just doesn't come up.
Sure if you're referring to people of a specific tribe, and it's important in the context that they're from that particular tribe, then it would make sense.
If you're referring generally to people from that part of the world 99.99% of people would understand Eskimo to mean a person from any one of the many Native American tribes in the far northern part of North America. It's not any different than saying "Middle Eastern" or "Asian" or any other indication of geographic origin and it doesn't carry any derogatory connotation.
Only the 0.01% of people who go out of their way to look for things to get offended about are going to get offended.
> Only the 0.01% of people who go out of their way to look for things to get offended about are going to get offended.
Or the people who are.. constantly reminded of the ignorance around them. Consider that people who are actually called Eskimo by others, might hear this more often than someone who doesn't look the part.
Frequency really changes the game here. Everybody who had a little brother will know: someone saying something annoying to you once is easy to shake off, someone who saying the same annoying thing to you constantly, day in and day out can be nervewrecking. Now imagine how much worse it is if the annoying thing comes from whole parts of society and every day. If you talk to people affected by such things (e.g. women by sexist remarks) the main thing that makes the difference is how frequent those things happen and my feeling is that many people can't even imagine.
It is nice to see that many people can not relate to this, because they had it easier, but confusing your own perspective with all shared reality is not an advantage.
Or one could also choose to not deliberately misinterpret words and thus not get annoyed about it.
Like if you’re a software engineer and someone refers to you as an engineer, you don’t get all annoyed and pedantically explain that you’re not someone who drives trains, because you know that’s not the sense in which the person meant the word.
Have you met software engineers?
I imagine there are plenty who very pedantically explain the difference.
In my experience, it’s hard not to take offense when the word being used is frequently used by people who are intending offense. Our brains are hardwired to perceive attacks, and if I’ve been attacked by people using similar wording before lower-level functions are assuming anyone using that wording is attacking me.
The example used in this thread, Eskimo, is probably harmless from people who don’t interact much with Inuit people. But to an Inuit person, the people who live near them using the word Eskimo are probably being insulting. Sure they might judge that e.g. a Belgian internet commentator didn’t mean offense, but their brain is jumping to that conclusion and then being talked off that ledge.
Okay, so show those suggestions to IP addresses geolocated in the relevant communities. But don’t chastise me for writing “Eskimo kiss” on the other side of the planet, thousands of miles away from the nearest Eskimo. North America has no right to police the language of the rest of the world.
I'd suggest that the set of words which are appropriate or inappropriate are strongly dependent on the writer, context and the type of writing, and attempting to impose a single specific set of words as a privileged set of appropriateness/inappropriateness is indeed simply imposing their morality on everyone else.
In many cases they are making a false assertion that a particular word is inappropriate, simply because it's inappropriate for them in their context/culture/morality while it's entirely appropriate for the writer's context/culture/morality; and those false assertions essentially attempt to change the writers' own notion of what's appropriate or not towards what Google considers appropriate - and I don't agree that Google should be allowed to apply such social influence.
They’re not enforcing shit, they’re just letting people know that the word can have a negative connotation. This could be extremely helpful for a newer English speaker, someone from another culture, or god forbid someone who just wants to use language that won’t make someone upset.
Yep, it would have helped you to capitalize "God" and not offend Christians. Or better yet, not even written the word itself. You can use "G*d" to be safe.
This is a nuanced take that I hadn't considered, fair enough. For people just trying to go along to get along in their communications and feel there are minefields everywhere, I could see this tool being a relief/helpful. I personally don't think that relief is worth the tradeoff, but I def can agree to disagree.
Would you say it isn't enforcement then, and if so how?
I certainly spell my words differently if I get a red squiggly line. Do you not?
Tech rarely "enforces" via direct controls unless a regulation is forcing it. What it does instead are nudges like this, and pretending the nudges don't have notable and similar impact is either naive or in suggested bad faith due to the company one works at.
> I certainly spell my words differently if I get a red squiggly line. Do you not?
You always have the option to just not. It's called enFORCEment, not enSUGGESTment. I presume the reason you choose to correct spelling is that you know it will be received better by your audience if the words are spelled according to convention. If you are spelling a word outside of the dictionary and you get a red line under the word, do you then change it to something you know to be not what you wanted? Of course not. If however you could only write words in the dictionary, then that would be enforcement (especially if you couldn't add words to the dictionary).
Presumably you have the same choice here. I really don't see the difference.
It's really striking to me that a number of issues today where everyone is exercising their free will are somehow twisted to be authoritarian overreach. Someone is upthread calling it authoritarian and a new heresy. I mean... come on. The histrionics are getting out of hand. Now a squiggle is "authoritarian".
The first english* dictionary which leads into the knowledge-base that generates the red squiggly line is from 1604.
The first problematic word dictionary that leads to the green (?) squiggly line in this tool came out of a nlp neural network in the past few few years, folks aren't quite sure how it works, and it has some additional best-effort labeling of phrases from the product team.
That's 400+ years of semantic/syntactic development vs. <20, likely <10 years, but let's start shifting the language all the same because we're a FAANG?
If you really don't see the difference, again it is bad faith, or naive. The conceit from teams that build and launch these tools without any consideration for the above is astounding.
> If you really don't see the difference, again it is bad faith, or naive.
Great way to engage with someone. Am I supposed to take your personal attacks against me as demonstration of your good faith attempt to participate in debate? Please refrain from this rhetoric in the future.
Anyway, I'm not sure I understand your point. What does the age of the first dictionary have to do with any of this? I can kind of see a point if I squint, but I'm a bit lost. Your position seems to be couched in the idea that this kind of thing will "shift" language but I don't understand the mechanism by which you feel this will happen. Maybe in your next reply you could expand on this idea (if I'm right about the thrust of your comment), omitting any personal attacks please.
Because the way I see it, if you want to say something you can still say it, and if you disagree with any suggestions Docs gives you, you are free to hold firm to that disagreement and use any language you want. Your idea would only seem to apply if you think that Google has hegemonic dominance over document production... which I don't think is remotely true.
> Maybe in your next reply you could expand on this idea
From my earlier post in this same thread:
"I didn't imply GOOG was setting up gulags, but I will refer to my early comment in response - it's either naive or bad faith to say that network effects from dominant players do not lead to enforcement in everything but name, and that the scope of concerns from engineers and the products they build should stop at "well, its just a feature." Algorithmic news feeds on social media was just a feature too.
Enforcements, mandates, suggestions, impacts, governances, features - spitting hairs semantically on the overall issue that tech "features" shape areas that tech and its product owners have no business shaping/influencing/impacting/enforcing but still do anyway, let alone even understand, and the downstream ramifications are significant.
They get away with it partially via enablers like your view which minimize the dynamic to local examples that open up framing the counterpoint as something absurd - yes, Google's gulags aren't built yet.
Edit - to put at least one impact of tech like this another way, it's not Google that puts a user in a gulag. It's the coworker of the user who notices a phrase the coworker also typed, was caught by Google, and the coworker corrected - why didn't that user also change it? All these second order effects were doubtlessly considered by that Google product team, I'm sure? Putting aside my original point that Google doesn't even belong in this space by a mile."
I didn't imply GOOG was setting up gulags, but I will refer to my early comment in response - it's either naive or bad faith to say that network effects from dominant players do not lead to enforcement in everything but name, and that the scope of concerns from engineers and the products they build should stop at "well, its just a feature." Algorithmic news feeds on social media was just a feature too.
Enforcements, mandates, suggestions, impacts, governances, features - spitting hairs semantically on the overall issue that tech "features" shape areas that tech and its product owners have no business shaping/influencing/impacting/enforcing but still do anyway, let alone even understand, and the downstream ramifications are significant.
They get away with it partially via enablers like your view which minimize the dynamic to local examples that open up framing the counterpoint as something absurd - yes, Google's gulags aren't built yet.
Edit - to put at least one impact of tech like this another way, it's not Google that puts a user in a gulag. It's the coworker of the user who notices a phrase the coworker also typed, was caught by Google, and the coworker corrected - why didn't that user also change it? All these second order effects were doubtlessly considered by that Google product team, I'm sure? Putting aside my original point that Google doesn't even belong in this space by a mile.
If I were to argue that AAVE speakers should not be forced to see red squiggly lines when their spelling doesn't conform to "standard" spelling, using the same argument you make above ("A coworker might ask why they didn't correct a supposed misspelling") would you agree that a spell-checker is racist/inappropriate?
Engaging trolls gives them only more power. But for the sake of hope in good faith, I can try.
Evangelicals could resort to extreme measures (violence, unwanted proselytization, bad faith arguments, etc.) If you ask them to shut up, they'll just not do so or leave entirely.
This is just a feature you could turn off. The rest of Docs would still be usable.
Yall are really getting inflamed over nothing. There are better ways to use your energy. You can just turn the feature off or not use the product. Comparing this to evangelicism dilutes the harm actually caused by evangelicals.
Imagine if Google was dominated by religious conservatives and their "inappropriate" language suggestions flagged "gay parents" or "pro-choice" as 'wrong' by default.
I can imagine a ridiculous Black Mirror-like scenario in which a Tesla suggests that instead of driving to a Bernie Sanders event as planned, that the driver go to a conservative one instead. After all, Tesla could decide that Sanders' politics are inappropriate and harmful (to society/its bottom line).
It's fun to begin to think about how much "soft power" companies have in ways we don't even expect. If Apple Maps decides to route traffic down a different street than normal, that could have substantial effects on business on that street.
We like to think we make informed rational decisions at every point in our life, but we don't; the inputs matter a lot and companies control more of those than we would want to admit.
Imagine if the actual government was dominated by religious conservatives and they tried to make it illegal to discuss "gay parents" in schools or for doctors to discuss abortions with their patients.
Depends on the govt at the time the judge was apppointed. And what level.
The theory on the federal level is "this judge was appointed by president X-1, so they aren't influenced by president X". So for better or worse (depending on which president that filled the vacancy), they may go against what is popular in administration X. The federal supreme court tries to be shielded away from the immediate politics of worrying about re-election and stuff.
On the state level, well... as usual it's a free for all. Just to list the "hot" states of subject:
- Texas: the people vote for them, 6 year term. no different from voting for a senator/representative.
- Florida: More complex, but in short: the governor chooses from a list of candidates handed to them, and the chosen judge serves one term (4 years) before the people decide to keep them or not.
So the people on the state level here have some sway. But then again, the people here are... well, Texas/Florida people.
Except that the same political actors who passed these laws have spent decades working to stack the Supreme Court with justices who will let the laws remain in effect…
I think you’re blowing your own areas of concern to hyperbolic proportions, but cannot or will not even see why others would find this far more concerning.
There is a war going on between Russia and Ukraine. If you go to Russia's TikTok, you will find no mention of it. Not because someone at TikTok said "let's make a feature that users can opt out of to highlight insensitive things," no, it's because you will go to jail if you upload content that Russia doesn't like.
Let's compare. You say things Google doesn't like, a purple squiggly goes under your words that you have the option to turn off. You say things Russia doesn't like, and armed men barge into your home to take you to jail.
How disconnected from reality do you have to be for me to have to make this comparison explicit???
The existence of the war in Ukraine doesn’t mean we stop caring about anything else. If you got punched in the face, I think you would still care even though there’s a war on.
If anything, the actions Putin is taking to control the information landscape make me much more upset about woke clippy. Liberal society should be about a free exchange of ideas. It’s not just another orthodoxy with soft manipulation instead of hard manipulation for thoughtcrime.
If you don’t understand why this seems manipulative and tone deaf to lots of folks, that means you’re confused. Not right.
If you truly believe worrying about the war is more important than talking about woke clippy here on HN, I’m confused. Why then are you here taking part in this conversation? You clearly don’t care about the issues I (and others) are raising in this thread. But if you actually don’t care, why take part in the discussion at all?
I do think there is a problem that merits discussion. But to ring such alarms and place it in this context doesn't do that discussion justice. There is more nuance to be had.
Most people never bother to change the default behavior of the software they use. This change will influence the behavior of billions of people around the world and meaningfully change our reality, so it's not as simple as just disabling the feature on your own computer.
I agree that defaults matter, and I agree that this is an attempt to shape culture.
I don't agree that it's authoritarian, because if you don't like it you can turn it off. It's no more authoritarian than opt-in-by-default (aka opt-out) for organ donation that some countries do; i.e. not authoritarian.
Oh, come on. It's not telling you what to change, it's giving you suggestions. Even the suggestions can be turned off. Most paying customers of Google are using it for business communications. This is a useful feature for them. Language (like everything) has become politicized, so people have a stronger reaction to this than when Word added grammar suggestions back in the day, but it's basically the same feature and Microsoft had a more dominant market position then than Google does now.
(Full disclosure, I'm a former Googler, but that has little to do with this)
> It's not telling you what to change, it's giving you suggestions.
By giving you suggestions it's telling you that it thinks you are wrong. There is no way around that. It's a judgement plain and simple and that changes people's behaviour.
> Even the suggestions can be turned off.
Let's be honest. No one changes the defaults.
> Language (like everything) has become politicized,
This is a cute comment, but don't muddy the waters. There's a big difference between correcting "their" / "there" and telling me off for using the word "landlord" because someone in a foreign country wants to police how my country uses our native tongue.
"Everything is inherently political" is no excuse for making things even more political.
You can turn it off. I suspect some people in this thread think no one should have this feature; and it should never have been shipped, so the arguments are rather indirect.
Ironically, this thread is part of the culture wars commenters are claiming to be against.
> I suspect some people in this thread think no one should have this feature
I think this feature should be opt-in rather than opt-out. If its turned on for everyone, it should only promote non-controversial suggestions, like the spelling of "their"/"there"/"they're".
You would probably balk if google docs made "suggestions" to call the war in Ukraine a military exercise. Or if it suggested removing any criticism of the CCP because some people may take offense.
Scolding me for using the word "landlord" here in Australia (where its a gender neutral term) feels to me like the same sort of unwanted intrusion into my mental life. This feature makes me really angry.
What will Google do when Russia or China ask them to add their own set of locality-specific "suggestions" to google docs?
I also experienced a Google's Photos feature I thought should have been opt-in, as it wasn't working well for me (auto-labeling in its early days) - but it didn't make me angry; I simply turned it off. I genuinely would like to know why this change is triggering to so many people, in case my assumption is off the mark (i.e. Google is entering the culture war fray on the "wrong" side)
When I'm sitting alone, thinking, I live in the privacy of my own thoughts. Sometimes I have half formed thoughts that others might not agree with. This is important - you can't have good ideas unless you also have bad ideas, after all.
Sometimes I journal. The piece of paper becomes an extension of my mind. There's a sanctity of that space. It is deeply private, and free because ... well, because thats the point of journaling. Sometimes you have to say the idea wrong to figure out how to say the idea right.
And by "piece of paper", I mean, I type into my computer.
Into this context, google wants to insert itself with woke political opinions on my writing? Or suggestions on how I'm not using an "active voice" enough? No. That comes across like an out of touch, entitled 20 year old in another country is reading over my shoulder while I'm journaling in order to make asinine, inappropriate suggestions about my writing. Or so it can judge my politics. All this, in the sanctity of my own mental palace.
Would you take political advice from a google docs AI? Would you take its advice on what the word 'landlord' really means, in the context of your own community, in another country? I wouldn't. If you want to convince me of your politics, take a stand and make your argument boldly. I need to be able to hear what you say as an argument then feel free to disagree with you. Don't dress up a political campaign as writing advice.
It makes me angry because it feels manipulative. Like you're trying to trick me into replacing my words with your words, in order to advance your political agenda. All administered via an AI that I conveniently can't debate. I'm angry because I don't want to have to be on guard against political manipulation simply in order to have my own thoughts, in the privacy of my own mind - or the extension of my mind called a computer. If I mostly agree with the political stand its almost worse - because I won't notice the manipulation as easily.
I also can't help but wonder what would happen if that stupid, entitled AI gets uppity and disagrees with any of my politics. If Google already has an AI thats reading and judging the political content of what I write, where does that end? Will there be consequences down the road for me if I say the wrong thing in my own journal? Probably not. But I'm not absolutely certain. Maybe I should self censor my own thoughts preemptively just in case? In my own journal?
No. F off. I'd much rather burn google docs out of my life than worry about any of that. Which is a pity, because its otherwise a good product.
What google is failing to understand here is that my computer needs to be an agent of my will. Not an agent of google's. Violating that principle is a betrayal.
I don’t know what you mean by “service product”. But isn’t “it’s like a piece of paper but better” basically the whole pitch for a word processor like Google docs? Since when is writing not part of Google docs’ core feature set?
Meaning, Google offers Docs to you as a service, not as a consumable. You are not entitled to full control of their product, because that would be antithetical to what a service is; the point of a service is to deal with tasks so you don't have to. Storage, up to date grammar checkers & translators, and now whatever this is; these are all things that Google needs to maintain so you don't have to. The greatest control you could have over these functions is to implement them yourself, and that would defeat the point.
Unfortunately, corporations in their ruthless efficiency, don't take to the deconstructionist argument. It would appeal to a large part of the market to have streamlined templates for legal documents, marketing pitches, etc. These are all per se "pieces of paper" at the end of the day but that's not very useful to think about when 45% of your users keep using the same templates for the same purposes. I would imagine some significant segment of the userbase are politically centric marketing drones, and would love a feature like this. I think they have no taste, and that corporate centrism is a problem, but separate from actual authoritarianism; and focusing on Google misses an opportunity to focus on the root issue.
> I think that corporate centrism is a problem, but separate from actual authoritarianism; and focusing on Google misses an opportunity to focus on the root issue.
Docs is incredibly pervasive and changing its defaults would alter how a good number of people think. But that's not even a bad thing, it becomes quite bad when you consider that these changes are being lead more by taste than by ethics. Our social elite have confounded the two - that's the problem. Nobody knows when a word is ethical or not, but the influential certainly know when they are put off by a word. By nature of their influence, many are willing to accept at face value that their "positive" and "inclusive" attitudes are a good thing.
I can see the evangelicism now, but I think it's dumber than that. I really do think they're just competing with Grammarly or trying to streamline some process. Changing Docs isn't going to solve the issue, changing the culture is. The culture of relabeling problems as quirks, toxic positivity; and more importantly the sincere confidence in the feeling of good/right that all that entails.
I work in academia. Frequently, I need to convey various levels of confidence about facts when writing emails to my colleagues.
Microsoft Outlooks suggestions are more than a mere annoyance on this front. They consistently suggest that "probably" and "perhaps" and "maybe" and "almost certainly" should be removed from my writing precisely because they convey uncertainty. That is why I wrote them in the first place! If I knew a result confidently, I would say so.
Please, let's not have another venue algorithmically pressuring everyone to uniformly remove nuance from communication. There is no one-size-fits-all threshold for "too wordy" or "too passive" or anything else with regard to language. Context is everything.
There's an example tweet where Google suggests that 'landlord' is not inclusive and 'property owner' or 'proprietor' could be used instead.
This will encourage people to avoid the word 'landlord'. They will start using 'property owner'. I'm not okay with that. A homeowner is a property owner. A landlord rents out the property they own. The terms shouldn't be conflated like that (as much as many landlords might want them to be).
I agree that sometimes a landlord might be subletting something and therefore they might not own it, but what you write is mostly ridiculous: if a landlord owns the property, they are the property owner.
I think you missed the point. In math terms: landlords are a proper subset of property owners, not equivalent. Using the latter term instead of the former is likely to change the meaning of the sentence.
For example: "landlords should pay more taxes" is very different from "property owners should pay more taxes".
Your explanation doesn’t square with the weird comment about landlords wanting to be conflated with property owners, which I read as meaning that the parent thought they weren’t subsets.
Apologies if I was unclear. I meant 'conflate' as in 'treat as equivalent'.
As for landlords perhaps wanting to be treated as equivalent to property owners, I think the previous poster gave a suitable example of why this might be the case. In many places landlords are being targeted politically (rightly or wrongly). It would be to their political advantage if all reference to them was conflated with regular owner occupiers by use of the term 'property owners'.
That poll says most prefer Hispanic, it also says most do not find Latinx offensive. It also seems like a bit of a push poll since it doesn't ask any questions about whether or not they find "Latino" offensive.
Latinx is revolting, full stop. Nobody who speaks (using the lips and tongue) Spanish as their only language will adopt it.
Spanish isn't the jumbled mess that English is. It has a lot of rhyme and reason to it. While not without exceptions, its rules are generally quite reliable.
"inx" is a not a Spanish syllable. You can't pluralize it. You can't rhyme with it. Hell, you can't barely pronounce it.
I get so tired of people popping up to defend the idea as if it's not so bad, invariably citing data collected from bilingual, second-generation US immigrants. Stop. If it's important to you, then at least have the sense to argue for "Latines", which at least kind of makes sense and doesn't sound like something invented by an English speaker who had only ever seen Spanish written, not spoken.
> Nobody who speaks (using the lips and tongue) Spanish as their only language will adopt it.
Your argument isn't cogent to me: it's an English word used in an English context. Your line of reasoning could be used to argue that "Anglo-Saxon"[1] is not a legitimate term because the Germanic tribes didn't use the term to refer to themselves.
1. The same goes for "German", "Chinese" or "Belter"
German is an English word that English speakers use to describe Germans. It doesn't have any etymological relationship with the word that Germans use to describe themselves.
Latino and Latina are Spanish words that American English speakers have adopted in the last ~80 years due to the significant intermingling of Spanish and English speakers. Their use spans a spectrum of Spanish-only speakers, bilingual speakers, and English-only speakers. Not only does the English word "Latino" (my eyes roll typing that) have an etymological relationship with the Spanish word "Latino", their etymologies haven't even diverged. English speakers who took a Spanish class in high school even pronounce Latino in the Spanish way, "lah-TEE-noh" instead of "luh-TEE-no", because they think of it as a Spanish word.
Latinx is a Spanglish word. You seem offended by the very existence of Spanglish. Personally as a gringo who was born in a majority-hispanic neighborhood in Texas Spanglish is my culture.
As someone who speaks Spanish I agree with you as a matter of taste, the word feels ridiculous when I say it out loud. Latines honestly sounds roughly as ridiculous to my ear. (Of course even though I was exposed to Spanish at a very young age living in San Antonio English is my first language.)
I have friends who self-identify as Latinx, and use the word, I have friends who say Latine, I have friends who say Latino. Language evolves and I don't think your vitriol is warranted.
Generally speaking, when a wide sweeping change is going to take effect, the onus of proof about why it should be done is on those advocating in favor of the change, not on those defending the standard. That is, "How is this change useful?" vs. "Why wouldn't this change be useful?" The latter assumes the change is good and asks for proof which cannot exist yet, while the former focuses the questioning on the underlying value of the change prior to implementation.
This particular change is a complex one. It clearly has w*stern politics crammed into its carcass, which are tedious to read, and doubly so to speak on. For that reason, I'll try and avoid such topic. Besides, I tend to assume your question is asked in good faith, so I would simply ask:
Can you give an example of where it making a "good" suggestion is helpful?
Under optimal circumstances, the ability to "help" the writer would be subjective, right? Under suboptimal conditions, the suggestion would be: unwanted, unneeded, or wrong.
> Can you give an example of where it making a "good" suggestion is helpful?
Sure:
Upon writing, "That guy is a loser," a response from the computer: "You're using using emotionally-loaded and ambiguous language. Consider revising to provide constructive criticism."
Ideally, the feedback a computer would provide would be similar in scope and wisdom that feedback from an experienced human editor would provide.
The projected cultural judgements are plain in your comment:
> "You're using using emotionally-loaded and ambiguous language
Whats wrong with emotionally loaded content? Are you afraid of feelings? That statement doesn't seem ambiguous at all to me - but even if it was ambiguous, I believe ambiguity is sometimes appropriate.
I'm partially with you - I don't often utter things like "That guy is a loser" either. But there are still plenty of contexts in which I'd happily write those words. For example:
- When writing dialogue in fiction
- When supporting a friend with an abusive partner, to let them know emotionally that I'm on their side in the conflict
- In conversation like this
But to go deeper, the language I use is an expression of me. There are very few things as intimately tied to our identity and world view as our choice of language. I can't think of many things as dehumanising to an adult as taking away their choice of how they express themselves.
Imagine if the suggestion, when writing about the war in Ukraine was "Using the word 'war' is inflammatory to some audiences. Have you considered 'military exercise' instead?". Or "Using the word 'they' is ambiguous language. Have you considered using he/she instead?". It doesn't feel as good when you don't agree politically with the suggestion.
To this day people cite doublespeak as one of the most chilling aspects of George Orwell's 1984. This whole thing spooks me for the same reason.
There are undoubtedly times when this sort of feedback is undesirable. If you're writing fiction, or poetry, or just want to flame somebody (damn the consequences), these sorts of prompts just get in the way. Similarly, if you're writing math equations, there's not much use in a spell or grammar check.
But as others have said, writing feedback -- automated or otherwise -- is a resource. Sometimes it's helpful, particularly in the professional context. Other times, it isn't. We still have the freedom to choose when to use it and when not to. And I see no harm in having the tools available to help when needed.
I hear what you're saying. I'm sure people who work at google appreciate an AI making sure they don't accidentally post some wrong-speak to an internal mailing list. Especially when doing so might get them fired.
I just think politically controversial writing suggestions should be opt-in. We don't all work at google. And not all documents are corporate memos. Its extremely important to a liberal society that people are free to think and express heretical thoughts without feeling like we're being watched and judged for doing so.
Getting political judgements ("suggestions") from an omnipresent AI looking over my shoulder while I write sounds dystopian. That sort of technology skeeves me out. I don't trust the sort of people who think this should be turned on by default with access to my private notes. And you shouldn't either.
I'd rather not outsource my morality to the arbitration of an algorithm, regardless of its provenance being of a company that claims to "not be evil." This honestly seems like a particularly flagrant application of this feature; we have enough human interaction mediated by coercive tech, the way we communicate personal beliefs about one another shouldn't be the next pillar to fall. That it's "just a suggestion", as others have argued to excuse it, belies how strongly its UI implies authoritativeness -- users reflexively view the squiggly underline as a sign that something is unambiguously wrong with what they've written.
I forgot to write in my previous reply "Thank you for your levelheaded response. I know these types of discussions can get out of hand, so thank you for approaching without that baggage that sometimes comes with the territory."
Saying both is fair. I generally assume there is a primary intended target, but both is workable too. Your assessment is that both parties benefit from the change?
Imagine working on a tax policy and having a proposed tax on “landlords” changed to a proposed tax on “property owners”. If that slipped through and was made public it could be a career limiting mistake.
Imagine working on a tax policy and having a proposed tax on "moles" changed to a proposed tax on "holes". If that slipped through and was made public it could be a career limiting mistake.
Thankfully HN wasn't around when spell-check was introduced.
Proper english grammar and left leaning political grammar are very different examples. If Microsoft introduced religious grammar suggestions it might offend a few people and provide benefits to others.
That there is such a thing as “proper english grammar” is itself inherently contentious and political. DFW's review of Authority and American Usage unpacks this a bit, if I recall. It's hard to find online because it's still under copyright, but I found this: https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWAuthorityAndAmericanU...
I don't agree that it's political but I do agree that it's contentious for English. However, if we see this as a template for other languages, it makes more sense what with Spanish, French, etc having rigid definitions and control[0] over their respective languages.
With all due respect to descriptivists, when engaging in any sort of formal communication (written or spoken), prescriptive grammar matters. There are "proper" and "improper" ways of communicating on a formal level.
"Ain't" is a perfectly normal construction in some dialects of English, but if you use it in a formal setting, people will notice and will think it's strange.
It could be useful for a product like Google Docs to tell you not to use dialectal grammar like "ain't." If you're writing a formal document, you probably want to avoid that kind of language. However, if Google Docs goes beyond that and starts telling you to replace completely normal words like "blacklist" with woke alternatives like "blocklist," that feels more like an attempt to establish some sort of religious orthodoxy. It gives the same vibes as if Google Docs were to start trying to push Evangelical religious sensibilities on its users. It's not helpful, unless you think your audience is extremely uptight and you want to avoid upsetting them.
Descriptivist language can absolutely describe things like "ain't", by saying "here's what it means, and also here's how you'll be perceived if you say it". Similarly, descriptivist language can tell you what people mean when they say "irregardless", and also tell you that it's commonly perceived as incorrect usage. (That's more useful than just saying "that's not a word".) You can look up a slur in the dictionary, and you'll find it there, along with some history and context and how the word comes across to people. Descriptivist language includes "how formal is this", "how offensive is this", "how correct is this", and so on.
It's useful, especially for people who aren't already steeped in cultural norms, to have a reference for "how might I come across if I say this". Words simultaneously communicate meaning and connotation, and it's helpful to understand both the meaning and the connotation. People aren't going to misunderstand the author of a text that says "blacklist"; they're going to understand just fine, perhaps including ways that the author would prefer not to have been perceived, or perhaps in ways the author intends to be perceived.
Tooling like this won't change the minds of people who are determined to be offensive (with or without the added assertions that they don't think it should be considered offensive). The point is to inform people how they may come across. It would be incorrect to say "this word is universally considered offensive", just as it would be incorrect to not label the word at all; it'd be more correct to say "this word's status is [disputed/transitional], with [an increased trend towards being considered non-inclusive], and consequent [doubling down by conservative language users]; consider avoiding due to any or all of offense, controversy, or politics".
"Ain't" is pretty universally viewed as informal language, and therefore out of place in formal communication.
Until just two years ago, "whitelist/blacklist" was completely normal language with no racial connotations, and I would wager that it's still viewed as completely normal by the vast majority of people. However, in just the last two years, people of a certain political persuasion in the US have decided to make these phrases into an issue.
If it is critical for you to communicate and come off well to a relatively small subsection of upper-middle-class liberal Americans, then these suggestions might be helpful. If it is critical for you to communicate with fundamentalist Evangelical christians, then a different set of suggestions might be helpful. I view the two situations in exactly the same way. However, if you're just writing for a generic audience, then these suggestions come across as unwelcome proselytizing.
http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html