
Debiasing Desire: Addressing Bias and Discrimination on Intimate Platforms - rohmanhakim
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3244459
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mattnewport
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.

~~~
modzu
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)?

~~~
malvosenior
I 100% disagree with the original article but upvoted it because I think it's
important that people see that there exists attempts to push platforms to
manipulate their users for ideological reasons. It's good to shine the
flashlight under the rock.

~~~
modzu
yes, no doubt many upvoted it for exactly that reason. my fear is that the
publicity works to further legitimize it

~~~
malvosenior
I don't think it needs to be legitimized with the general audience to be
implemented. The more people that see this, the less likely it is to come to
fruition. These types of programs don't get pushed through due to popular
request. They get snuck through the back door based solely on the political
motivations of employees and outside activists.

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deogeo
> 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.

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dhimes
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."

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voidhorse
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.

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malvosenior
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
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.

~~~
mindslight
> _Technologists who say "I'm neutral, I just listen to the
> data/user/profits/shareholder/specification"_

This is not being neutral - these are all justifications for changing user
behavior based on the interests of the company.

The real answer is to separate dataset (aka community) from software (aka
policy). Then every individual is better able to opt out of choices made for
them, rather than the current state of outrage groups pushing companies to
adopt their team's desired policies for everyone.

~~~
ivanbakel
>This is not being neutral

Then what is?

>The real answer is to separate dataset (aka community) from software (aka
policy).

The result of that would be software that doesn't aim to serve the user. This
is exactly what software was like before the current trend of analytics and
user experience - and the reason those have become so popular is because
believing you could make a product without feedback from how your users wanted
to use it turned out to be a much worse approach.

Instead, you're proposing to make all software so powerful that the user is in
complete control of all choices, which is really another way of suggesting
that the user become a programmer of their own software. Designing something
for end users involves pruning choice paths.

~~~
mindslight
> Then what is?

Every paradigm carries inherent biases, but if you simply present it as-is
you're at least not exacerbating them. Once you go down the road of
"optimizing", you're moving away from neutrality.

> _The result of that would be software that doesn 't aim to serve the user.
> This is exactly what software was like before the current trend of analytics
> and user experience_

Um, analytics are a large part of what is feeding this trend of opinionated
software that pushes users into behaving certain ways. Analytics optimizes for
the company's goals - the users' goals can only be subservient to that.

> _Instead, you 're proposing to make all software so powerful that the user
> is in complete control of all choices, which is really another way of
> suggesting that the user become a programmer of their own software_

You're shoehorning my argument in order to use an old ignorant put down of
Free software. Yes, Free software has been outpolished by surveillance as a
service - invasive control is inherently more lucrative, attracting capital.
Now that centralized services are moving from "acquisition" to "imposition",
their downsides are becoming a lot more apparent.

When the community is bundled with the software, Melcalfe's law restricts
competition between softwares - likely leading to two attractors, the most
popular option and the fed-up dissenters.

While not being an ubermensch programmer means that you cannot make your own
software that perfectly reflects your preferences (ie nobody can), the point
is being able to choose between a plurality of competing software options that
are better able to match them.

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hn_throwaway_99
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
What about "no fatties"?

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octagonocr
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-...](https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/50/colonized-desire-
episode-2-coming-may-23)

~~~
deogeo
I don't think colonization is a sufficient explanation. From
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire#Ottoman_Sexual_Slavery):

"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
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
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
Heads I win, tails white people are evil.

This is what you get when your school of thought holds group conflict as its
axiom of morality and justice rather than the rights of the individual. It is
a narrative of victimhood which can never be rectified because its perpetual
existence is baked into the worldview.

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Fins
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
It's left as an exercise for the reader to decide

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

~~~
jawns
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
In law, the term is "invidious discrimination" to describe unjust
discrimination.

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

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Alex3917
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.

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

