No More Swipe Wrongs: Teaching About Automated Sexual Racism through Online Dating Tools

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

in the Department of
Communication Media.

I'm also faculty in the
Digital Studies Institute,

and I am an RCI fellow of
Research and Community Impact

fellow with the NCID.

The RCI fellowship is funding
my project on online dating.

The project is
called Swipe Rights,

and I am thinking
through advocating

for people and the
way that we use

apps and everyday technologies.

AI has a lot of
bias, whether that's

racial bias or gender bias.

So my project is really
trying to bring awareness

to that bias, especially where
dating apps are concerned.

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

and that's the problem.

All the social problems
that exist in our society

get amplified by algorithms.

They're not necessarily
created by them.

And we have to really
stop and think through,

do I want to use a
race filter on Hinge?

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

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

might be racially sensitive?

Most of the
responsibility for bias

that happens in dating
platforms falls on those

who are making the platforms.

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

have most of the power,
and us individual users

have less of the power.

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

to ask questions about where
their data is coming from,

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

and to really call out
app designers and platform

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

to be more trustworthy and
to be more transparent.

I have a forthcoming
book which is

on online dating and the
algorithms that drive

the online dating process.

It's called Not My Type--

Automating Sexual
Racism in Online Dating.

And I think about it
both from the perspective

of online daters and
the things that we do,

so our individual swiping
behaviors, but then

also the algorithms
that program and drive

our swipe-based experiences.

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

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

writing to their
representatives and saying,

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

This is something
that I care about.

This is something
that I would vote for.

Right?

We vote on policy
with our dollars,

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

downloading Bumble, or
any of the other apps

that you might use.

Everything that we do is
really reinforcing demand.

So if we want dating
apps to sort of stop

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

we have to encourage
them by saying,

no, this is unacceptable.

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

from them.

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

companies, would do
an internal audit

and really take accountability
for the algorithms

that they're currently using.

Hopefully, if there were
enough users that said,

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

that would really indicate to
these programmers to really say,

OK, we need to
stop and reevaluate

the way that we collect
data, the way that we

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

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

of the leading
scholars in the field

and lots of other
practitioners as well

to think through what it
means for the individual user

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

that you're using my data.

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