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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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I'm April Williams, and I
am an assistant professor

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in the Department of
Communication Media.

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I'm also faculty in the
Digital Studies Institute,

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and I am an RCI fellow of
Research and Community Impact

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fellow with the NCID.

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The RCI fellowship is funding
my project on online dating.

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The project is
called Swipe Rights,

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and I am thinking
through advocating

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for people and the
way that we use

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apps and everyday technologies.

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AI has a lot of
bias, whether that's

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racial bias or gender bias.

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So my project is really
trying to bring awareness

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to that bias, especially where
dating apps are concerned.

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The dating apps are only giving
us what they think we want,

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and that's the problem.

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All the social problems
that exist in our society

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get amplified by algorithms.

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They're not necessarily
created by them.

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And we have to really
stop and think through,

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do I want to use a
race filter on Hinge?

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Do I want to put something in
my bio that is racially coded?

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Do I want to train the algorithm
to look for things that

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might be racially sensitive?

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Most of the
responsibility for bias

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that happens in dating
platforms falls on those

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who are making the platforms.

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There's a huge power imbalance
where those folks at the top

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have most of the power,
and us individual users

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have less of the power.

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I want to empower users to
know what they're looking for,

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to ask questions about where
their data is coming from,

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what happens to their data when
they upload it to the apps,

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and to really call out
app designers and platform

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designers, to get them to be
more accountable to users,

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to be more trustworthy and
to be more transparent.

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I have a forthcoming
book which is

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on online dating and the
algorithms that drive

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the online dating process.

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It's called Not My Type--

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Automating Sexual
Racism in Online Dating.

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And I think about it
both from the perspective

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of online daters and
the things that we do,

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so our individual swiping
behaviors, but then

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also the algorithms
that program and drive

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our swipe-based experiences.

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I'm working on a guide to
accompany the book so that users

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can know exactly what language
they need to use when they are

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writing to their
representatives and saying,

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hey, look, actually, big
tech needs to be regulated.

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This is something
that I care about.

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This is something
that I would vote for.

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Right?

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We vote on policy
with our dollars,

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whether that is an in-app
purchase, downloading Tinder,

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downloading Bumble, or
any of the other apps

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that you might use.

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Everything that we do is
really reinforcing demand.

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So if we want dating
apps to sort of stop

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and think about the racial bias
that's in their algorithms,

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we have to encourage
them by saying,

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no, this is unacceptable.

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And the way that we do that
is by withholding our money

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from them.

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So ultimately, the goal would
be that dating platforms, dating

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companies, would do
an internal audit

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and really take accountability
for the algorithms

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that they're currently using.

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Hopefully, if there were
enough users that said,

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I'm concerned about this,
I'm uncomfortable with this,

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that would really indicate to
these programmers to really say,

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OK, we need to
stop and reevaluate

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the way that we collect
data, the way that we

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use data, the way that we draw
inferences about our user base.

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So with this grant, I'm really
pulling together several

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of the leading
scholars in the field

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and lots of other
practitioners as well

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to think through what it
means for the individual user

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to say to a company, hey, I'm
not comfortable with the way

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that you're using my data.

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Hey, we're not going
to take this anymore.

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