author: Bart Swiatek
„Master” and „Slave” Will be Scrapped? Twitter Changes Terminology
Twitter engineers want to replace some IT and programming terminology with other phrases, namely words that are associated with racism or that are clearly assigned to a single gender.
IN A NUTSHELL:
- Twitter engineers are working on replacing problematic terms (including those from IT / programming) with other words;
- These are expressions related to racism or one gender;
- The list includes such words and phrases as "master", "slave", "man hours", "blacklist" or "grandfathered".
Twitter engineers are working to replace problematic words used in IT and programming terminology, such as "master" and "slave". (these are used, among other things, to determine drive hierarchy). This is part of a wider initiative, in which Microsoft's GitHub website participates.
The idea first came up back in 2014, when the so-called Drupal project proposed to replace the words "master" and "slave" with "primary" and "replica".
It is worth noting that these terms are just a few examples of words that have caught the attention of Twitter employees. The list also includes such phrases as "man hours" (to be replaced by sex-neutral "person hours"), "blacklist" (the proposed alternative is "denylist") or "grandfathered" (a term used in the context of inheritance of traits or property - the phrase is to be replaced by "legacy status").
In the published note, Twitter representatives stress that language plays a key role in creating a friendly space. In the company's opinion, the current wording is not in line with the ideology of its employees and users.