In the wake of the death of George Floyd, Twitter has decided to get rid of the terms “master,” “slave” and “blacklist” from its code.
CNN reported the move came after two engineers lobbied for the use of more inclusive programming language.
“Words matter,” tweeted Michael Montano, who heads Twitter’s engineering team. “We want [Twitter Engineering] to reflect our values & support our journey to become more inclusive.”
According to CNN, "master" and "slave" refer to one process in the code that controls another. “Blacklist" describes a list of items that are automatically blocked.
“Master" and "slave" will now be changed to "leader" and "follower" or "primary" and "replica," while "blacklist" will become "denylist” at Twitter.
Newsweek reported Twitter will phase out the terms and replace them with the more acceptable language.
And Newsweek noted the move mirrors those taken by engineering teams at JPMorgan, GitHub, Android and Google’s Chromium.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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