How Dating Sites Automate Racism
news.harvard.edu
news.harvard.edu
Attraction isn't a choice or a preference. No one can control who they're attracted to. Dating sites "automating racism" = showing you people that you're likely to be attracted to. Nothing is wrong with that.
This article just seems like more race-baiting and trying to identify a problem, and a victim class, where there really isn't one.
So send your kids to a diverse school with lots of intermingling and life will uhh, find a way.
Attraction is mediated by culture, i.e. there's uptick in Asian men attractiveness after kpop phenomenon at least in under 30s. Dating sites can do a "DEI" and brute force more variety into skew percentages of click throughs through mere exposure effect. They can remove option to filter by race or height or whatever physical characteristics. But that's competitive suicide vs dating sites that don't. There's nothing legally wrong with automating racism, but that's also more or less what it is. People don't "control" who they're attracted to, but platforms that mediate / gatekeep how people percieve attractiveness can mess with the dials, if they wanted to.
Why stop at forcing people to choose different races? Let's force women to date men who are short, bald, unemployed or homeless. Let's force men to date women who are overweight, elderly and annoying. Let's take the 'market' out of the dating market.
Dating isn't fair, often it is opportunity, chance or pure luck. The attempt to correct anything here will likely not bear any fruits, on the contrary.
I also use another definition of racism. The belief or often conscious conviction a race or ethnicity is superior to others due to intrinsic biological/mental advantages. I am not racist against anyone I might not consider attractive.
If you are constantly presented with people from a narrow group to the exclusion of others you will reinforce prejudices.
One reason Asian men are deemed less attractive in the west is the way our media has traditionally portrayed them. K-pop and the Internet are starting to change that. Black women are also suffering under centuries of negative stereotyping. It’s the stereotypes that are unattractive. People are all unique.
Is it now transphobia if you go on a date and a person, it turns out, has failed to disclose a key detail about their sex, and as a result you reject them? I'm trying to figure what kind of other situation they might be referring to here.
I am all in favor of someone being called to account for seeking out someone (because they're trans) on false pretenses in order to humiliate them or something, but if people are being upfront as they should be, it is unclear to me what transphobia harms they're talking about.
I am Indian-American and not in the dating pool (I'm married). If I were dating, I would not want to waste time on dates with women who don't want to date Indian-American men.
The academy over here does tend to train weaponization of outrage and has actively attempted to replace traditional ideas of morality with oppressor-oppressed dichotomies to varying results. This article is one of those results.
It doesn't seem like you are talking about the same thing as the author, but I didn't read it that closely so may have missed something.
There is at least something potentially interesting there, if an algorithmic sorting approach is responsive to a social bias, there are obvious mechanisms by which it could end up amplifying that bias, rather than just representing it.
For instance, if one wants a lot of extended family around, being very involved with your family, Indian culture is phenomenal (I'm only adjacent to that via my in-law's spouse, and they treat us as their own too). It's rare to find White Americans -- at least on the West Coast whose families are so close-knit. Of course, some people probably don't want that and would rather visit every few weeks and be at arm's length from their families.
Obviously other examples abound, such as races that may serve as a proxy for religious belief, useful for the devout.
>I am Indian-American
What caste? That is to say, what was your ancestors' equivalent experience of racism? Persecutor or persecuted? This is relevant because you seem to have brought up your identity to lend credence to your argument as a person of color. I think it's fair to fully unpack that.
This seems strange: to label entire people as either the victims or perpetrators of racism solely based on their caste.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10764522/
>The Indian caste system is one of the oldest systematized and institutionalized forms of oppression, having been in existence for over 3,000 years (Thapa et al., 2021).
https://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/g/general/caste0801.pdf
>In much of Asia and parts of Africa, caste is the basis for the definition and exclusion of distinct population groups by reason of their descent.
Using one's status as a person of color to legitimize carrying water for racism doesn't work if someone is upper caste. They've essentially seen all the benefits of their ancestral form of racism; their arguing for it carries no moral weight. I would say the same of someone from a noble lineage in Europe if they were to make the same statements.
Some users may be more or less open minded than the predictive model on dating sites.
It seems like the best practice would be to give users a choice over how much screening the model does.
If someone has preferences that’s fine; that doesn’t prevent them from interacting with people outside their preferred races. Maybe they’ll meet someone who surprises them. Maybe they won’t. But at least people get a chance and it happens organically.
But imagine it’s the future, you’re Minority A and the social default is to just block you entirely with no chance whatsoever, and oh 99% of people not in your demographic use online dating primarily. Your pool of potential candidates is unfairly tiny and all because society just decided one part of your personality (your race) is a deal-breaker.
Offline these things just aren’t as big of problems. But it seems like if we’re not careful they could become big problems.
This Harvard researcher is surprised that dating apps store your pictures and messages? Is she for real?
It’s important to say things that confirm people’s existing biases because it makes them more likely to believe the other things you’re saying. “She’s spot on about my data being misused, so it’s possible she’s right about this racism theory.”
Here’s an example of people all to ready to believe an article that follows this narrative, from HN 10 days ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39858850
If, while gaining life experience, we learn to generalize (say, you find you never seem to romantically appreciate people who live in a particular geographic area), then that’s just that; if we are careful that this does not spill over into other areas of life then that’s your prerogative.
I imagine this sort of generalization may cause one to miss out on interesting people, but that’s individual’s own business. I shouldn’t feel entitled that you like me; if I suspect you not liking me is a result of that sort of over-optimization on your part, then that’s tragedy but such is life.