10 ms·

Debiasing Desire: Addressing Bias and Discrimination on Intimate Platforms

40 points by rohmanhakim 7y ago

whenchamenia 7y ago
Intimate and personal interactions are the one place where being discriminating is a very good thing.
- jawns 7y ago
  I tend to use the phrases "unjust discrimination" or "prejudicial discrimination" when talking about the sort of discrimination that ascribes negative or stereotypical characteristics to a person based on their membership in a class. But discrimination on its own is a neutral action, and as you point out, being discriminating by judging things on _relevant_ attributes is perfectly legitimate and often a mark of wisdom. So I would reject what you say about interpersonal relationships being the only area where being discriminating is laudable. Employers are discriminating when interviewing job applicants -- but hopefully, they are practicing appropriate discrimination, and weeding out people based on their skills and capacity to do the job, rather than inappropriate discrimination, based on a prejudicial reasoning. Similarly, consumers are discriminating when they look for products or services that are of high quality, and there's nothing wrong with that.
  - joshuaheard 7y ago
    In law, the term is "invidious discrimination" to describe unjust discrimination.
- gshdg 7y ago
  "Being discriminating" is not necessarily the same thing as "discriminating".
dhimes 7y ago
This might save you a click: The problem they are addressing is that some people prefer not to date others of specific ethnic background or countries of origin. They call it "sexual racism."
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
TBH, I find the "no blacks, no Asians, no femmes" Grindr descriptions helpful, because then I know which assholes to avoid. I strongly question whether banning that type of language will actually make people more willing to hook up with each other.
- valarauko 7y ago
  What about "no fatties"?
  - no-fatties 7y ago
    That's different, because technically, it's pro-intellectual. Fat people are usually stupid. Especially among the gays.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  This hints at the problem I have with a lot of censorship efforts. Censoring a bigot doesn't make them any less of a bigot, nor does it make them disappear. Censored bigots just form their own separate communities, where they're less likely to be exposed to ideas that change their minds. Conversation is a two-way street. If we refuse to let bigots converse, we have to realize that we're also losing the ability to converse with them. A lot of people's gut reaction is, "I'm okay with not talking to bigots", but I simply can't accept that. Every progress toward reducing bigotry has been due to having a conversation about it.
octagonocr 7y ago
An interesting podcast about when the minorities themselves choose not to date among their own groups. Colonized desire: https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/50/colonized-desire-episode-2-coming-may-23 https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/50/colonized-desire-episode-2-...
- bogdanoff3857sq 7y ago
  What's the takeaway? Being attracted to white people is bad?
- deogeo 7y ago
  I don't think colonization is a sufficient explanation. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire#Ottoman_Sexual_Slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire#...: "Circassian girls were described as fair and light-skinned and were frequently enslaved by Crimean Tatars then sold to Ottoman empire to live and serve in a Harem. They were the most expensive, reaching up to 500 pounds sterling, and the most popular with the Turks." Here the Turks were doing the colonizing, so it can't be said that these preferences were somehow imposed on them by a colonizer.
  - biketr 7y ago
    I would say your example is more like how “the other” is fetishized by the society doing the colonizing. We see that today with asian women being highly sexualized by western media.
    - deogeo 7y ago
      Aren't e.g. white people just as much "the other" from the point of view of black people? We're just picking the explanation we prefer depending on the case, without any real justification. If it's a minority that prefers some other ethnicity, it's colonized desire, but if it's a majority, it's fetishizing "the other"?
      - homonculus1 7y ago
voidhorse 7y ago
I’m 100% for eliminating language that is unduly offensive, exclusionary, or racist from socio-technical platforms....that said, aren’t we eliminating the concept of desire itself once we make “unrestrictedness” part of it? The whole notion of desire is a directed wanting—that is to say, I want this, not that. Whether this wanting is shallow or not, I think, isn’t really up for us to decide. This is a technological manipulation of wants and needs (something we’ve been subject to since the 20th cen. Though usually those orchestrating it aren’t upfront about it). I think urging people to step outside their comfort zones and expand their horizons is a great thing, but I think this is throwing a technological restriction/solution at a non technical social problem—you really want people to broaden their notions of whom they might be intimate with, start by putting funding into community activities and inclusive communal structures and go from there—I think that’s a much better way to get people talking than to lump some restraints onto what are already arguably dehumanizing, distancing technical outlets. I know I’m talking past the authors of this paper somewhat (since this isn’t their point) but sometimes limiting, reducing, or restricting the application of technical solutions to certain domains is a better solution than commiting all this effort to properly technicise elements of human life that shouldn’t have been so heavily technicised in te first place.
mattnewport 7y ago
Really this doesn't go far enough. Why are we allowing people to discriminate at all when it comes to intimate relationships? What about factors like personality, physical appearance, marital status, age, gender or political opinions? Really dating apps should just randomly assign you someone to have sex with and refuse to give you more matches until you provide evidence you have done so. Given people might be unwilling to comply with these directives it probably needs to be enforced by the state, at gunpoint if necessary, for us to achieve the unbiased utopia that all right thinking people must want.
- dgellow 7y ago
  You have something like this in the novel “We”, from 1920: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel).
- kaolti 7y ago
  Flying too high my man.
- bogdanoff3857sq 7y ago
  Bake the cake, bigot
- tzs 7y ago
  Close, except there should be no need for dating apps. When it is time to increase the herd, your Provider should select a mate for you.
  - mLuby 7y ago
    Shhh, that's the improvement they roll out after a few years of the Mandatory Anti-Discrimination (MAD) dating system. The people will welcome it with open arms.
- modzu 7y ago
  it's fascinating that this [satirical] comment is the top post while the article itself has simultaneously made the front page. like the comment above alludes to, this article is absurd, yet, there seem to be many who take it seriously (presumably the researchers studying "queer hci", whatever that is)?
Fins 7y ago
Uh, is this a real article, or one of those AI-generated ones used to show that you can publish anything as long as you add enough quasi-progressive verbiage to it?
- balaksakrionon 7y ago
  It's left as an exercise for the reader to decide
deogeo 7y ago
> While it may strike us as normatively acceptable to encourage intimate platform users to be open to more diverse potential partners, we might find some categories more palatable for such intervention than others. For example, it might seem inappropriate to suggest that a Jewish user seeking other Jewish people "expand her horizons" past those preferences, which might be based on a number of religious and cultural considerations. [..] Intimate platforms can be very useful for minorities looking to meet others who share their background and values. I guess some identities are more equal than others when it comes to preservation. Everyone except the majority (within a country) is allowed to prefer their own.
Alex3917 7y ago
Why not fix this problem first?: https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats17/minorities.htm https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats17/minorities.htm Keep in mind that on apps like Tinder ethnicity is an assessment signal, whereas displays of SES are generally conventional signals.
ptah 7y ago
i'm not sure what problem they are trying to fix
malvosenior 7y ago
I don't ever want a platform attempting to change my behavior. I'm quite happy with how I make decisions and I'm super uninterested in having other people's morals and opinions covertly enforced on me through data manipulation, user interface decisions, hiding of opinions... I don't use dating apps but this statement goes for all platforms. Don't mollycoddle your users. You are not a moral authority. You do not know what your users want better than they do. This is not an opportunity for you to push your ideology on people that may like your platform for non-ideological reasons. There's way too much editorializing and desire to editorialize going on in our industry. We need to collectively take a step back and realize that not only are we as technologists not responsible for adjusting people's point of view, attempts to do so are amoral, unjust, ineffective and just bad user experience. Give people what they want and get out of the way.
- ivanbakel 7y ago
  What's your response to the article's point that a platform, any platform, already changes your behaviour? This is the focus of the discussion - do people know what they want? If, as the authors write, desire emerges from interaction with a platform, then there's no sense in talking about "what people want". There's no sense in even trying to criticize manipulating what people want. Particularly on browsing platforms, like social media or online shopping, what the user wants to be presented with is not a single, well-defined goal; even when restricted to just one user. Platforms always editorialize, even if it is unintentional. Platforms are already a moral authority, even if just by reinforcing norms. Technologists who say "I'm neutral, I just listen to the data/user/profits/shareholder/specification" fail to recognize that software acts on people, and being willfully blind to what influence you have is not absolving you of influence.
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    > What's your response to the article's point that a platform, any platform, already changes your behaviour? I strongly disagree with it. Especially when it comes to mate selection, people have a lifetime of experience on which to draw from to make a decision. > Platforms are already a moral authority, even if just by reinforcing norms. I don't agree that "reinforcing norms" (aka giving people what they want) is a moral position unless that position is: We'll let your users decide for themselves what's best for them. > Technologists who say "I'm neutral, I just listen to the data/user/profits/shareholder/specification" fail to recognize that software acts on people, and being willfully blind to what influence you have is not absolving you of influence. Everything acts on people. Every input you take in is processed and your brain decides what to do with it. By staying as neutral as possible, you let the end user make the decision on their own. I also don't think this sort of manipulation is even effective.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
oceanghost 7y ago
This problem will always reduce to what the definition of discrimination is.

40 points by rohmanhakim 7y ago

whenchamenia 7y ago

Intimate and personal interactions are the one place where being discriminating is a very good thing.

jawns 7y ago
I tend to use the phrases "unjust discrimination" or "prejudicial discrimination" when talking about the sort of discrimination that ascribes negative or stereotypical characteristics to a person based on their membership in a class. But discrimination on its own is a neutral action, and as you point out, being discriminating by judging things on _relevant_ attributes is perfectly legitimate and often a mark of wisdom. So I would reject what you say about interpersonal relationships being the only area where being discriminating is laudable. Employers are discriminating when interviewing job applicants -- but hopefully, they are practicing appropriate discrimination, and weeding out people based on their skills and capacity to do the job, rather than inappropriate discrimination, based on a prejudicial reasoning. Similarly, consumers are discriminating when they look for products or services that are of high quality, and there's nothing wrong with that.
- joshuaheard 7y ago
  In law, the term is "invidious discrimination" to describe unjust discrimination.
gshdg 7y ago
"Being discriminating" is not necessarily the same thing as "discriminating".

dhimes 7y ago

This might save you a click: The problem they are addressing is that some people prefer not to date others of specific ethnic background or countries of origin. They call it "sexual racism."

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

TBH, I find the "no blacks, no Asians, no femmes" Grindr descriptions helpful, because then I know which assholes to avoid. I strongly question whether banning that type of language will actually make people more willing to hook up with each other.

valarauko 7y ago
What about "no fatties"?
- no-fatties 7y ago
  That's different, because technically, it's pro-intellectual. Fat people are usually stupid. Especially among the gays.
kerkeslager 7y ago
This hints at the problem I have with a lot of censorship efforts. Censoring a bigot doesn't make them any less of a bigot, nor does it make them disappear. Censored bigots just form their own separate communities, where they're less likely to be exposed to ideas that change their minds. Conversation is a two-way street. If we refuse to let bigots converse, we have to realize that we're also losing the ability to converse with them. A lot of people's gut reaction is, "I'm okay with not talking to bigots", but I simply can't accept that. Every progress toward reducing bigotry has been due to having a conversation about it.

octagonocr 7y ago

An interesting podcast about when the minorities themselves choose not to date among their own groups. Colonized desire: https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/50/colonized-desire-episode-2-coming-may-23 https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/50/colonized-desire-episode-2-...

bogdanoff3857sq 7y ago
What's the takeaway? Being attracted to white people is bad?
deogeo 7y ago
I don't think colonization is a sufficient explanation. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire#Ottoman_Sexual_Slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire#...: "Circassian girls were described as fair and light-skinned and were frequently enslaved by Crimean Tatars then sold to Ottoman empire to live and serve in a Harem. They were the most expensive, reaching up to 500 pounds sterling, and the most popular with the Turks." Here the Turks were doing the colonizing, so it can't be said that these preferences were somehow imposed on them by a colonizer.
- biketr 7y ago
  I would say your example is more like how “the other” is fetishized by the society doing the colonizing. We see that today with asian women being highly sexualized by western media.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    Aren't e.g. white people just as much "the other" from the point of view of black people? We're just picking the explanation we prefer depending on the case, without any real justification. If it's a minority that prefers some other ethnicity, it's colonized desire, but if it's a majority, it's fetishizing "the other"?
    - homonculus1 7y ago

voidhorse 7y ago

I’m 100% for eliminating language that is unduly offensive, exclusionary, or racist from socio-technical platforms....that said, aren’t we eliminating the concept of desire itself once we make “unrestrictedness” part of it? The whole notion of desire is a directed wanting—that is to say, I want this, not that. Whether this wanting is shallow or not, I think, isn’t really up for us to decide. This is a technological manipulation of wants and needs (something we’ve been subject to since the 20th cen. Though usually those orchestrating it aren’t upfront about it). I think urging people to step outside their comfort zones and expand their horizons is a great thing, but I think this is throwing a technological restriction/solution at a non technical social problem—you really want people to broaden their notions of whom they might be intimate with, start by putting funding into community activities and inclusive communal structures and go from there—I think that’s a much better way to get people talking than to lump some restraints onto what are already arguably dehumanizing, distancing technical outlets. I know I’m talking past the authors of this paper somewhat (since this isn’t their point) but sometimes limiting, reducing, or restricting the application of technical solutions to certain domains is a better solution than commiting all this effort to properly technicise elements of human life that shouldn’t have been so heavily technicised in te first place.

mattnewport 7y ago

Really this doesn't go far enough. Why are we allowing people to discriminate at all when it comes to intimate relationships? What about factors like personality, physical appearance, marital status, age, gender or political opinions? Really dating apps should just randomly assign you someone to have sex with and refuse to give you more matches until you provide evidence you have done so. Given people might be unwilling to comply with these directives it probably needs to be enforced by the state, at gunpoint if necessary, for us to achieve the unbiased utopia that all right thinking people must want.

dgellow 7y ago
You have something like this in the novel “We”, from 1920: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel).
kaolti 7y ago
Flying too high my man.
bogdanoff3857sq 7y ago
Bake the cake, bigot
tzs 7y ago
Close, except there should be no need for dating apps. When it is time to increase the herd, your Provider should select a mate for you.
- mLuby 7y ago
  Shhh, that's the improvement they roll out after a few years of the Mandatory Anti-Discrimination (MAD) dating system. The people will welcome it with open arms.
modzu 7y ago
it's fascinating that this [satirical] comment is the top post while the article itself has simultaneously made the front page. like the comment above alludes to, this article is absurd, yet, there seem to be many who take it seriously (presumably the researchers studying "queer hci", whatever that is)?

Fins 7y ago

Uh, is this a real article, or one of those AI-generated ones used to show that you can publish anything as long as you add enough quasi-progressive verbiage to it?

balaksakrionon 7y ago
It's left as an exercise for the reader to decide

deogeo 7y ago

> While it may strike us as normatively acceptable to encourage intimate platform users to be open to more diverse potential partners, we might find some categories more palatable for such intervention than others. For example, it might seem inappropriate to suggest that a Jewish user seeking other Jewish people "expand her horizons" past those preferences, which might be based on a number of religious and cultural considerations. [..] Intimate platforms can be very useful for minorities looking to meet others who share their background and values. I guess some identities are more equal than others when it comes to preservation. Everyone except the majority (within a country) is allowed to prefer their own.

Alex3917 7y ago

Why not fix this problem first?: https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats17/minorities.htm https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats17/minorities.htm Keep in mind that on apps like Tinder ethnicity is an assessment signal, whereas displays of SES are generally conventional signals.

ptah 7y ago

i'm not sure what problem they are trying to fix

malvosenior 7y ago

I don't ever want a platform attempting to change my behavior. I'm quite happy with how I make decisions and I'm super uninterested in having other people's morals and opinions covertly enforced on me through data manipulation, user interface decisions, hiding of opinions... I don't use dating apps but this statement goes for all platforms. Don't mollycoddle your users. You are not a moral authority. You do not know what your users want better than they do. This is not an opportunity for you to push your ideology on people that may like your platform for non-ideological reasons. There's way too much editorializing and desire to editorialize going on in our industry. We need to collectively take a step back and realize that not only are we as technologists not responsible for adjusting people's point of view, attempts to do so are amoral, unjust, ineffective and just bad user experience. Give people what they want and get out of the way.

ivanbakel 7y ago
What's your response to the article's point that a platform, any platform, already changes your behaviour? This is the focus of the discussion - do people know what they want? If, as the authors write, desire emerges from interaction with a platform, then there's no sense in talking about "what people want". There's no sense in even trying to criticize manipulating what people want. Particularly on browsing platforms, like social media or online shopping, what the user wants to be presented with is not a single, well-defined goal; even when restricted to just one user. Platforms always editorialize, even if it is unintentional. Platforms are already a moral authority, even if just by reinforcing norms. Technologists who say "I'm neutral, I just listen to the data/user/profits/shareholder/specification" fail to recognize that software acts on people, and being willfully blind to what influence you have is not absolving you of influence.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  > What's your response to the article's point that a platform, any platform, already changes your behaviour? I strongly disagree with it. Especially when it comes to mate selection, people have a lifetime of experience on which to draw from to make a decision. > Platforms are already a moral authority, even if just by reinforcing norms. I don't agree that "reinforcing norms" (aka giving people what they want) is a moral position unless that position is: We'll let your users decide for themselves what's best for them. > Technologists who say "I'm neutral, I just listen to the data/user/profits/shareholder/specification" fail to recognize that software acts on people, and being willfully blind to what influence you have is not absolving you of influence. Everything acts on people. Every input you take in is processed and your brain decides what to do with it. By staying as neutral as possible, you let the end user make the decision on their own. I also don't think this sort of manipulation is even effective.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

oceanghost 7y ago

This problem will always reduce to what the definition of discrimination is.