this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
1686 points (97.8% liked)

Technology

60048 readers
2914 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It comes from the act of voting using a black or white ball. Black was a no vote, white was yes. It goes back to ancient Greece.

[–] finestnothing@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Where did you find that that is the origin of blacklist and whitelist? The first use of the term blacklist came from a 1630's play called "The Unnatural Combat" where the people who executed the king were put on a so called "black list" to say that they were suspicious and would be punished, it later came to mean (through use in other plays and texts) people who were to be excluded or had wronged the person, which is why computing blacklisting uses it (i.e. this ip is suspicious or not to be trusted, so add it to the blacklist and don't let it access anything). Whitelist came around in the 1840's as an explicit opposite of the term blacklist

What do you think the terms were based on? You think they pulled "blacklist" out of thin air?