Tech companies to remove 'master' and 'slave' coding terms

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▲ A camera flash shows a switch to change between master and slave modes.

The terms “master” and “slave,” used to describe the relationships between two computer hard drives and or between two camera flashes, have come under scrutiny because of their association with America’s history of slavery. Similarly, “whitelist” and “blacklist,” terms for allowing and denying access to a service, are being revisited because of their potentially racial overtones. 

“I refuse to use ‘whitelist’/’blacklist’ or ‘master’/’slave’ terminology for computers. Join me. Words matter,” tweeted Leah Culver, co-founder of the Breaker podcast app and a co-author of the widely used OAuth signon technology. More than 16,000 people liked her tweet.

Photographer Theresa Bear expressed a similar sentiment on the PetaPixel photo site, writing that it’s time to banish the use of “master” and “slave” to refer to how flashes are controlled. 

“Can you imagine being on set with a black human and the photographer yells to the assistant, ‘Hey, can you put it on slave mode?'" Bear asked.

Other terms proposed for sunsetting include “white hat” and “black hat,” with “ethical” and “unethical” suggested as replacements.

Github is also going to overhaul coding terminology that has long been criticized for being racially insensitive, according to the company’s chief executive.

The Microsoft-owned developer platform is planning on coming up with new language that moves away from the “master” and “slave” terms, the programming terms that refers to the dominant relationship between processes.

Google Chrome developer Una Kravets, a Google Chrome developer, tweeted her support for changing the language on Friday.

"For what it’s worth, I’m *super* happy to rename the default branch structure of 'master' to 'main' and I hope we can all do this together as a community with @Github leading the charge by implementing in their product moving forward," Kravets wrote on Twitter.

Github CEO Nat Friedman responsed on Twitter by saying: "It's a great idea and we are already working on this!"

The changing nomenclature comes as millions across the U.S. continue to protest against systemic racism and police brutality -- sparked in part by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Those protests have led to reckonings in a wider range of industries and have prompted companies such as Amazon, Facebook and Google to announce new support for racial justice initiatives.

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