Monday, September 09, 2013
"Racist" app taken down after Twitter attack
Sounds like a useful thing to me. There's no doubt that some areas are much more dangerous than others -- and locals know best
A website and app called "Ghetto Tracker", designed to help people avoid going to the "bad" part of town has been taken down after it was attacked on Twitter for being racist.
Featuring a smiling white family on the home page, Ghetto Tracker purported to be an innocent travel tool for wary tourists wanting to keep out of trouble.
It posed the questions, "Travelling to a new city? Will you be visiting a safe part of town?" and the reassurance, "Ghetto Tracker can help determine which parts of town are safe and which parts are not."
The way the app worked was to allow locals to rate the safety of different parts of a given area.
The site appeared last weekend, and within 24 hours it was causing a stir on Twitter, with tweets from Americans accusing it of playing on people's fears and, Gawker said, being "a racist, classist app for helping the rich to avoid the poor".
Apart from the racist associations of the site's name - a ghetto is traditionally a poor area inhabited by African Americans, people were angry the site appeared to allow anyone to arbitrarily decide which neighbourhoods were good or bad, rather than rely on crime statistics.
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10 comments:
"a ghetto is traditionally a poor area inhabited by African Americans..."
Really? How many blacks were in the Warsaw, or other eastern European, ghettos?
As for the app;
Racist, or simply factual?
Racist, or a public service announcement?
Racist, or simply good advise?
1:23 AM: Of course it's racist. Do you not realize there is no other country on earth? No other culture than U.S. culture? That everything is viewed though our spectacles - those of discrimination toward black people?
Sigh. Silly boy. Or girl. Whichever you are.
As for the app, it's factual, a public service announcement and darned good advice.
It is easy to figure out which is the bad part of town. Just avoid the area where Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd is. Google Maps will help there. Also another good sign is when you start to see "security bars" on the windows of houses
Anon 1:23 - you and I shared the same first thought.
For hundreds of years 'ghetto' referred to the jewish quarter and had nothing to do with black people.
Thank you 6:19. Apparently 1:37 didn't get it.
1:23: Apparently my attempt at humor was too subtle.
My comment was meant to be a slam at those who find racism in everything. Also at people in the U.S. who can't see beyond our own borders to other countries and cultures. Those so wrapped up in their own small world that the word 'ghetto' has only one meaning - an area where black people live.
Sorry to cause confusion.
Dean
"Sorry to cause confusion.
Dean"
That's what conservatards are good at.
since when don't people want to avoid the poor. there aren't laws against that or racism for that matter. Get over it.
6:05 says the libtard. lolololololol
I guess Obama is actually one of the very few in the US who is literally "African-American"!
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