Allowlist, not whitelist. Blocklist, not blacklist. Goodbye, wtf

Found on The Register on Friday, 06 September 2019
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Issue 981129 in the Chromium bug log lists a suggestion by Microsoft to “cleanup of potentially offensive terms in codebase” aims to rid the software blueprints of language such as whitelist (change to allowlist), blacklist (change to blocklist), “offensive terms using ‘wtf’ as protocol messages,” and other infelicities.

Googler Rick Byers, a Chromium engineer, gave the issue a cautious welcome, saying: "This sounds like a good strategy to me, thanks for doing this! We certainly have never intended for anything in the codebase to be potentially offensive, but I'm also not aware of anyone making an effort to find them all."

In May, Microsoft announced AI features in Word that, among other features, will emit “advice on more concise and inclusive language such as ‘police officer’ instead of ‘policeman.’"

All this is getting more and more ridiculous with every day and dangerously close to Newspeak; and that is not a world anybody could want.