In the world of online dating, race-based discrimination is not only tolerated, but encouraged as part of a pervasive belief that it is simply a neutral, personal choice about one's romantic partner. Indeed, it is so much a part of our inherited wisdom about dating and romance that it actually directs the algorithmic infrastructures of most major online dating platforms, such that they openly reproduce racist and sexist hierarchies.
Women portrayed as younger than men online, and AI amplifies the bias - Haas News | UC Berkeley Haas
In a sweeping study published today in Nature, researchers at UC Berkeley Haas, Stanford, and Oxford/Autonomy University documented extensive age and gender distortion across online media—and found that common algorithms are amplifying the bias.
A Queer and Feminist Defense of Being Anonymous Online
From the earliest days of digital communities, online abuse has been connected to anonymity. While concerns around the impact of anonymity, particularly for women, people of color and LGBTQ folks, is legitimate, this paper argues that a flat rejection of digital anonymity is problematic, foreclosing certain forms of queer and feminist praxis. To make this case, I turn to the platform politics of Craigslist. Using Craigslist as a case study, I discuss the persistent stigma attached to online anonymity, before addressing specific tactics of online anonymity associated with queer and feminist values of privacy and mutual aid. Drawing on accounts of Craigslist users who saw anonymity as a protective form of control over their personal information, I outline ways in which anonymity is not solely an enabler for misogyny and homophobia, and can instead (or rather, also) be a subversive tool for self-expression and intimacy.
A Queer and Feminist Defense of Being Anonymous Online
From the earliest days of digital communities, online abuse has been connected to anonymity. While concerns around the impact of anonymity, particularly for women, people of color and LGBTQ folks, is legitimate, this paper argues that a flat rejection of digital anonymity is problematic, foreclosing certain forms of queer and feminist praxis. To make this case, I turn to the platform politics of Craigslist. Using Craigslist as a case study, I discuss the persistent stigma attached to online anonymity, before addressing specific tactics of online anonymity associated with queer and feminist values of privacy and mutual aid. Drawing on accounts of Craigslist users who saw anonymity as a protective form of control over their personal information, I outline ways in which anonymity is not solely an enabler for misogyny and homophobia, and can instead (or rather, also) be a subversive tool for self-expression and intimacy.
Trial Data Reveals Racial Bias in Age Verification Software
New trial data reveals racial bias in age verification software used for social media restrictions. Discover how unreliable these systems really are now.
Algorithmic Monocultures in Hiring - Stanford Digital Economy Lab
Many employers screen job applicants with algorithms built by the same few algorithm vendors. We hypothesize that algorithmic monoculture leads to the same individuals and members of the same racial groups facing rejection. We acquire and analyze a novel dataset of 3 million applicants submitting 4 million applications where all the applications are screened by algorithms built by the same vendor.
Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification
Recent studies demonstrate that machine learning algorithms can discriminate based on classes like race and gender. In this work, we present an approach to evaluate bias present in automated facial analysis algorithms and datasets with respect to phenotypic subgroups. Using the dermatologist approved Fitzpatrick Skin Type classification system, we characterize the gender and skin type distribution of two facial analysis benchmarks, IJB-A and Adience. We find that these datasets are overwhelmingly composed of lighter-skinned subjects (79.6% for IJB-A and 86.2% for Adience) and introduce a new facial analysis dataset which is balanced by gender and skin type. We evaluate 3 commercial gender classification systems using our dataset and show that darker-skinned females are the most misclassified group (with error rates of up to 34.7%). The maximum error rate for lighter-skinned males is 0.8%. The substantial disparities in the accuracy of classifying darker females, lighter females, darker males, and lighter males in gender classification systems require urgent attention if commercial companies are to build genuinely fair, transparent and accountable facial analysis algorithms.
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men is a 2019 book by British feminist author Caroline Criado Perez. The book describes the adverse effects on women caused by gender bias in big data collection.
Sharing Knowledge Openly: Author Gender, Race/Ethnicity, and Feminist Science
Open science is an increasingly important movement in contemporary social science. Many funders have begun to mandate open practices, newer journals like Socius are open access, and preprint servers have increased readership of paywalled articles. Feminist scholars have written about the values and pitfalls of open research. In this paper, we put those ideas in conversation with each other and empirical data on open-access publishing to develop a feminist framework for thinking about feminist knowledge, data, publishing, and audience. Using a survey of 19,462 social scientists, linked with their entire Web of Science publication history from 2000 to 2023 and all papers posted to SocArXiv, we replicate past work showing that articles by women are less likely to be some types of open access. We extend these findings to scholars of color and feminist scholarship, while also demonstrating a few surprising null results for all three groups.
Artificial Intelligence and Its Unique Threat to Women | Capitol Technology University
With the rise of artificial intelligence, the world is undergoing a big transformation. However, technology has been seen to display biases – and for women, this presents a complex set of challenges.
‘Men seem to make life for women worse’: single US women share the woes of dating in 2025
Here’s why some women feel like there’s little hope in the current dating pool of men – if they’re still in the market for one
Google AI Giving Staggeringly Racist “Advice” About Being Alone With Certain Groups of People
Google's AI Overviews feature is showing overtly racist responses about being alone with certain groups of people.
'love island' and the mirror of red pill ideology in modern dating
red pill masculinity, the objectification of women through entertainment ecosystems—and how it helps script modern heterosexual dating culture
Is Using ChatGPT Now The Dating World’s Biggest Ick?
“If someone’s not able to even think for themselves, there’s no chance they’re going to be thoughtful when it comes to you.”
The forced global adoption of puritanistic American cultural norms vis sexuality and nudity via app store/payment processor rules is one of the least-discussed free speech issues of the last decade and this lack of attention is going to hurt online expression so much in the years to come.
♍ Bee 🐝
I think also we cannot ignore the potential social and cultural ramifications of normalizing the demonification of anything adult or sexual The whole system is stacked against any sort of movement in the other direction and it's not something the porn industry can handle alone at this point
