Algorithms of Oppression

* Book: Safiya Umoja Noble. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.

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Description

Sean Illing:

"Noble’s new book ... challenges the idea that search engines like Google provide a level playing field for all ideas, values, and identities. She says they’re inherently discriminatory and favor the groups that designed them, as well as the companies that fund them.

This isn’t a trivial topic, especially in a world where people get more information from search engines than they do from teachers or libraries. For Noble, Google is not just telling people what they want to know but also determining what’s worth knowing in the first place." (https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2018/4/3/17168256/google-racism-algorithms-technology)

Interview

From an interview conducted by Sean Illing on April 3, 2018:

* What are you arguing in this book?

Safiya Umoja Noble: I’m arguing that large, multinational advertising platforms online are not trusted, credible public information portals. Most people think of Google and search engines in particular as a public library, or as a trusted place where they can get accurate information about the world. I provide a lot of examples to show the incredible influence of advertising dollars on the kinds of things we find, and I show how certain people and communities get misrepresented in service of making money on these platforms.

* Who gets misrepresented and how?

I started the book several years ago by doing collective searches on keywords around different community identities. I did searches on “black girls,” “Asian girls,” and “Latina girls” online and found that pornography was the primary way they were represented on the first page of search results. That doesn’t seem to be a very fair or credible representation of women of color in the United States. It reduces them to sexualized objects.

So that begs the question: What’s going on in these search engines? What are the well-funded, well-capitalized industries behind them who are purchasing keywords and using their influence to represent people and ideas in this way? The book was my attempt to answer these questions." (https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2018/4/3/17168256/google-racism-algorithms-technology)