I've recently come to the realization that more often than not people who use the phrase "virtual signal" is actually a really great signal in itself.
Essentially a good chunk of people do care so little about discrimination, that it's difficult for them to believe that others actually even care about it.
In this case, at it's face, to see a statement that Airbnb is collecting data to investigate if their platform is being used for discrimination - and then reach the conclusion that the most logical reason that Airbnb is collecting data is not because they want to know if their platform is being used to discriminate, but that instead it's just a ruse; they don't care and really just want to collect facial data in order to look like they care about discrimination to gain some side benefit.
Somehow via reasoning to think that that was the most logical conclusion is pretty amazing. It conveys so frequently as: I care so little about discrimination that I can't even imagine that Airbnb actually wants data and cares about discrimination - there must be some other reason.
And again, I can't make that conclusion about the statement above (because we've not discussed it), but from other discussions with people that's what surprisingly frequently ends up being the underlying thinking.
> Essentially a good chunk of people do care so little about discrimination, that it's difficult for them to believe that others actually even care about it.
Some of us care somewhat (i.e. I'm proud to have convinced my boss to hire that female IT technician from another country who was mopping our floors. It took some convincing but he gave in. She got paid as much as us and got a career here in the west (I know because she later married a friend of mine). I've also tried elsewhere to help others to a career in IT, not sure how far I have succeeded in other cases, but in at least on case I gave away my well paid but boring job to make sure another less privileged man got a fighting chance. I visited him last year and he had usef his opportunity well. Oh, and I helped my neighbor down the street to a better job and tried to help his girlfriend. In the end she got a good job through other channels but I tried and I tried so in a way that was appreciated, not in a creepy way.)
All that said: that doesn't mean I won't say virtue signalling when something like this happens.
Oh. And the irony of me virtue signalling so heavily to get my point through :-) At least my identity is only known to me and Dan, so I can't cash out on any stupid internet points I get.
It's important to remember that corporations don't have motivations, only the people in them do. In a corporation like this you could have one person who really cares about racism, one who doesn't but thinks this is good PR, another who doesn't but thinks it's a good excuse to collect the data so they can do other things with it and so on. In a company that size it's indeed likely that people with all of those motivations exist within the company.
And someone may rightly want to call out the people who are only doing it for the PR or the data collection, but we don't have visibility inside the company to know who they are in particular, so the blame goes to the abstraction of the corporation itself. Which it deserves if it hired those people even if it also hired some separate people with better motivations, because those people are still then going to capitalize on racism by marketing their claimed virtue to customers, or do bad things with the data.
Your comment also reflects a common type of “parrot” response — any critique of activities in this space gets the critic branded as “uncaring” or even worse like “racist.” Don’t think that AirBNB should send your photo to a third party to be racially described, and think that AirBNB couldn’t give a shit about you and is just doing this for PR points? You must not care about “white supremacy.”
Do you think it is possible to be suspicious about the motivations of faceless corporations driven by a profit motive without be accused of "caring little about discrimination" / labelled as a racist / misogynist / anti-LGTBTQ?
At no point was anyone labeled a racist, misogynist or anti-LGBTQ. I actually do have concerns about Airbnb using an opt-in policy for this. However, my point wasn't about "how do I feel about Airbnb's change in policy". Ok, so what was it about:
A guy getting a job at an animal shelter because he thinks it'll help him get laid is virtue signaling. Someone adhering to a religious practice by fasting is virtue signaling. Someone changing their facebook profile pic to have a logo for some cause is virtue signaling. A company prompted by recent events wanting to investigate if there is discrimination on their platform isn't.
> Someone adhering to a religious practice by fasting is virtue signaling.
Just to pick a nit, this is only virtue signaling if they rub it in somebody's face. There's almost a whole chapter in the gospels about it, Matthew 6:16:
> And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
So a person wanting to promote a cause through their FB profile is "virtue signalling" even if they do it regardless of recent events (let's imagine someone putting up a "stop racism" banner there 5 years ago), but a company doing that when the public eye is on it is not "virtue signalling".
Mhkay.
While I believe one can be genuine in either case, I find it more likely to be "virtue signalling" when it's a company doing something on a hot topic right now.
> So a person wanting to promote a cause through their FB profile is "virtue signalling" even if they do it regardless of recent events (let's imagine someone putting up a "stop racism" banner there 5 years ago), but a company doing that when the public eye is on it is not "virtue signalling".
From your response, and others in this thread I'm starting to believe that a lot of people that use the phrase 'virtue signaling' may not actually know what it means.
> “ In this case, at it's face, to see a statement that Airbnb is collecting data to investigate if their platform is being used for discrimination - and then reach the conclusion that the most logical reason that Airbnb is collecting data is not because they want to know if their platform is being used to discriminate, but that instead it's just a ruse; they don't care and really just want to collect facial data in order to look like they care about discrimination to gain some side benefit.”
This is a good model of most human behavior though. Creating elaborate systems of social norms then covertly coordinating on how to evade them or politically argue about how some group gets punished for violating them, while another group gets to violate the norms but reap benefits.
The economist Robin Hanson has developed a pretty comprehensive social science body of theory under the name “homo hypocritus” for this and uses it to explain a lot of behaviors (see just four examples below).
It’s totally reasonable to disagree with Hanson’s theory, but I think you are going way too far to treat it almost like paranoia or conspiracy theories or something.
In fact I think given the way corporate scandals, dark patterns, rampant privacy violations, etc. are so egregiously common and often go unpunished, it should be the norm to assume harmful intent from corporations unless proven otherwise. Classic studies like Moral Mazes would seem to confirm this.
No, the problem is that the same data can be used at least as easily to discriminate, and people who care about that don't like it.
Do you really want to build a race database?
Do you want Airbnb making determinations about the intention of your actions based on a secret race database?
The timing isn't accidental; they even state as much in the announcement. This is driven by current events. I wonder if anyone would give a pass to 23andme if they started oversharing DNA data "to battle covid."
This post is unrelated to my comment and shouldn't be a reply here. You should post it as a top level comment about your feelings towards airbnb's policy.
I think it's more likely that Airbnb is indeed virtue signaling. Pretty much every corporation is virtue signaling these days, so I don't see what conclusion you can draw from the use of that phrase itself. It's an accurate descriptor.
A user can care about discrimination and still object to policies that overtly erode user privacy at the same time as they show solidarity with a certain movement.
Ultimately it's my name and my likeness, and I don't want it to be shared without my knowledge and consent. A company can't say "but I'm fighting discrimination!" and expect me to be cool with the violation of my privacy.
Not to mention that the data will be used to classify users based on race, defining people by their appearance rather than their actions, beliefs, and character. There is no guarantee that such data will never be used against the very same users it purports to protect.
AirBnB has a long history of not caring for its users, unless they get bat PR. So yeah, if anything, thinking that they actually care about discrimination is a bit naive.
'Virtue Signalling' is not about whether someone 'cares' about racism, it's about wether their actions amount to anything material or relevant.
Almost everyone actually 'cares' about racism, at least in classical, crude forms. If someone calls a black person the 'n-word' - almost everyone 'cares' enough to know this is wrong.
But there are any number of people who Tweet this, say that, or even take some action that is utterly irrelevant to the material nature of advancing the cause, but a the same time, they are embellishing their own position or status.
'Personal Branding' is the living job of every actor, politician and political figure. That's 95% of their job. The statements they make are mostly about engendering to and audience.
A good example is the Gavin Newsom's wife, who has declared that she will be the 'First Partner' - and not the 'First Lady' of California because the term 'Lady' is 'exclusionary'.
I don't doubt there's materiality to her statement; she probably does 'care' about the issue on some level - but I doubt deeply that her actions matter and that this is mostly an opportunity for her to make a 'public statement' that the press will like, hop on, propagate, which endows here with 'progressive credibility' to possible voters. I significantly doubt she would ever do such a thing outside the context of the political lens. To boot - it's also counter productive because the term 'Wife' or 'First Lady' is in no way exclusionary. It's gendered yes, but no more so than we used gendered pronouns 'he' and 'she'. It's 'invented equality' that serves no purpose other than a nice bit of PR. That is 'virtue signalling'. [1]
A very excessive, fascist example of 'Virtue Signalling' from the Mayor of Oakland just this week. She initiated an FBI 'hate crime' investigation into some ropes hanging from a tree in the park. Those ropes were there to hold swings for kids, ironically put there by someone in the Black community. Nobody had complained or thought this 'kids equipment' was symbolic of anything, there was no public intrigue - but the Mayor took it upon herself to make a big fuss about it. To make the situation 'scary Orwellian' her public statement was that 'Intentions Don't Matter'. Read that again and consider the consequences. A swing set in a park in her view, is construed as a 'hate crime' irrespective of the fact that it's merely a swing set, not indicative of anything, placed there by a black man, in which nobody had any complaints. This is the Mayor of a major US city, who has initiated FBI investigations which could destroy people's lives, for absolutely no reason. [2]
The reason this is 'Virtue Signalling' - is because nobody outside of political theatre cares and the issue is irrelevant. Why was it only the 'mayor' who had to invent non-existent hate crimes? If there were any legitimacy at all to the situation, others would clearly be concerned. But there was no concern. The excessive, fascist reaction by the Mayor is therefore vapid, it's utterly political. It's an attempt to engender her credibility as a 'force against racism' - even at the cost of using the power of violence of the state over common sense. But like Trump supporters wouldn't condemn him 'if he shot someone' ... her supporters won't condemn her for her ridiculous display either.
A less extreme but more relevant example would be Alexandria Occasio-Cortez total rejection of Amazon's bid for a major HQ in NYC. Both the Democratic Governor, and 'far left' wing Democratic Mayor were both 'extremely' in favour of the opportunity, with Amazon to bring in thousands of very good, high paying jobs, along with so much incremental surplus. They were to receive the same support from the city/state that any other company gets. AOC rejected the offer because of Amazon's unwillingness to work with her directly by making $$$ investments in schools, and other things. Ironically, even the majority of people of colour in her district supported Amazons bid which puts her at odds with basically everyone that matters. Amazon is not some 'evil corporate devil' - they're a big, succesfull company, and the elevated taxation and incidental business from them is probably the closest thing any city could get to 'organic development' - which is to say 'things working well as they should' without having to resort to arbitrary distributions of wealth etc.. AOC knows this. In any other condition, I believe she would probably support Amazon's bid - but in a political context, she defines herself as an antagonist against 'evil corporations'. She can't 'support Amazon', that would be akin to making a deal with the Devil, at least in her popular, bombastic personal branding. From a marketing perspective, AOC is exactly on point to 'fight Amazon' even if in reality, it's possibly the best thing that could ever happen for her district (I understand it's not all roses, but overall, it would be good). So this is a toxic example of 'Virtue Signalling' wherein we don't doubt the ultimate sincerity of the individual, but where their motives are inconsistent with their actions, which are actually detrimental.
Finally - though we don't use it in this context too often, 'Virtue Signalling' could be equally applied to other things such as flag waving by fools who actually don't materially care about the nation, or those who espouse Christianity but really are the furthest thing from it. Donald Trump holding up a Bible (upside down no less) for a photo-op a few weeks ago is a repulsive form of 'Virtue Signalling' because, though surely he thinks he cares about America and probably thinks he's a 'good Christian' - the man probably hasn't been in a Church in 20 years and generally has nothing to do with it.
Every corporation is in the business of perception. AirBnB has a very expensive PR agency who will oversee their public announcements. Every politician and celebrity has power because they have carefully shaped their public image, not because they have necessarily 'done anything'. In many cases, they are 'talented' or 'are business with good intentions' or 'have accomplishments' but it doesn't matter - if they are going to be playing the 'message spinning game' we should absolutely be cynical. If they want something from you: sales, popularity for their career, votes - they are marketing to you.
Essentially a good chunk of people do care so little about discrimination, that it's difficult for them to believe that others actually even care about it.
In this case, at it's face, to see a statement that Airbnb is collecting data to investigate if their platform is being used for discrimination - and then reach the conclusion that the most logical reason that Airbnb is collecting data is not because they want to know if their platform is being used to discriminate, but that instead it's just a ruse; they don't care and really just want to collect facial data in order to look like they care about discrimination to gain some side benefit.
Somehow via reasoning to think that that was the most logical conclusion is pretty amazing. It conveys so frequently as: I care so little about discrimination that I can't even imagine that Airbnb actually wants data and cares about discrimination - there must be some other reason.
And again, I can't make that conclusion about the statement above (because we've not discussed it), but from other discussions with people that's what surprisingly frequently ends up being the underlying thinking.