
How Netflix's algorithm exposes technology's ​racial bias.​ - enzoavigo
http://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a18817/netflix-algorithms-black-movies/
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drallison
The posting is worth reading but the premise of bias is wrong. Technology
(that is, Netflix's recommendation algorithm)does not have a racial bias _per
se_ but it does discover the cohorts viewers belong to (using their behavior)
and report categories of recommendations derived from the aggregate cohorts
behavior. If race were not a distinguishing feature in the cohort's data, it
would not be a distinguishing feature.

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dogma1138
Blacks are about 20% of the US population, while Netflix has some demographic
information I can't really imagine they are tracking race of the viewer (I
could just imagine the shit storm that could erupt if they did), they do
however classify films based on various categories.

Netflix didn't invent black cinema people did and way before Netflix was even
an idea in some one's head here are for example Black Cinema film festivals:

American Black Film Festival Freaknik Hollywood Black Film Festival
International Black Women's Film Festival The Kidflix Film Fest of Bed-Stuy
North Carolina Black Film Festival Pan African Film Festival Roxbury Film
Festival San Diego Black Film Festival Women of Color Film Festival

The US also has "black only" film awards including the African-American Film
Critics Association Awards, Black Reel Awards, Black Movie Awards and so on.

So after watching multiple movies that most likely their only common
denominator was "Black Female Directors" Netflix suggested you a category that
contain additional movies that fit your recent viewing habits.

On a side note, I watched the new Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Marco
Polo special on Netflix recently and all of a sudden what would you know?
Chinese / Asian martial arts films appeared and took over my suggestion feed.

However after binge watching Cosmos and The Inexplicable Universe I wasn't
greeted with the suggestion of the category "Documentaries by Black Astro-
Physicists" but rather with "Space and Nature Documentations".

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loopdedoo
As of the last census, blacks were 12.2% of the population, not 20%.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity)

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Justin_K
Title should say the algorithm exposes an average viewers preferences. The
algorithm is making recommendations based upon user choices and isn't biased.
Not really a fair characterization.

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icebraining
Yes and no. The algorithm works upon manually-defined tags, and one of the
points being made is that those are too broad, possibly because the people
tagging don't have enough insight into particular populations.

The example given of the person who got recommendations for films with lesbian
sex scenes after watching _Blue is the Warmest Color_ is relevant. Yes, the
film has such scenes. But it's also won the Palme d'Or, yet that isn't tagged
and therefore used by the algorithm, when (I'd say) it's much more likely to
have been the reason for a particular person to watch it.

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cliveb
Recommender system algorithms typically personalize search results based on
similarities to items recently watched, purchased or simply added to a
shopping basket. More advanced recommenders suggest based on past history
(well YouTube seems to). I don't find personalization by similarity offensive.
If I watched a Netflix movie starring Sidney Poitier, I'd expect
recommendations to view movies from top Black actors of all time. I see this
as ranking on similarity not on racial bias.
[http://www.imdb.com/list/ls051979184/](http://www.imdb.com/list/ls051979184/)

~~~
kodis
Exactly right, but that wouldn't result in as controversial a headline.

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Turing_Machine
Yup. When I was reading the Horatio Hornblower books a while back, and Amazon
suddenly started recommending books by Patrick O'Brian and Dudley Pope, I
didn't arrive at the conclusion that Amazon's algorithm was "racist" with
respect to 19th Century British naval culture.

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stirner
> I could see the fact that to the new viewer, whose preferences aren't yet
> logged and tracked by Netflix's algorithm, "black" movies and shows are, for
> the most part, hidden from view.

So Netflix is biased because it doesn't feature African-American movies as a
default category? What about Filipino movies? Should Netflix turn their
default recommendations into a progressive stack?

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icebraining
The article makes a few interesting points, particularly regarding the
difficulty in choosing the categories/tags with which to classify things, and
also regarding the dangers of filter bubbles in recommendation algorithms.

Unfortunately, it seems the conversation here is completely focused on
defending Netflix from a perceived accusation of racism.

