Facebook and Singular 'They'

December 8th, 2009
facebook, ling, they
For a while facebook used singular 'they' when it wanted to talk about someone who had not specified their gender. So I would occasionally see updates from friends that read like "John Smith is mad at their sister" or "Jane Doe is happy with themself". I'm ok with singular 'they' as I used it in the first sentence of this paragraph, and facebook's usage seemed strange even to me. As a comprimise, though, I thought it was reasonable.

Apparently facebook changed this about a year ago. They claimed that translation into other languages didn't work for ungendered people. Sadness; I liked how gramatically progressive facebook was being.

Referenced in: Singular They And Social Networking: Google Plus

Comment via: facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Exercises in benchmarking and evals, part 7: DeepSWE, Senior SWE-Bench, napkin math, and winter tires

This is part of a series of exercises on benchmarking, evals, and experimental design (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)1. We're going to look at three questions, which are presented before the answers to give you time to think about the questions before seeing the a…

via Posts on July 23, 2026

Donation recommendations for effective altruists (July 2026)

My recommendation for donors who are American citizens or permanent residents is that they donate directly to high-value political candidates.

via Thing of Things July 22, 2026

Let's Taboo the V-Word

Read this post on Substack.

via Home July 12, 2026

more     (via openring)