{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title":"If...Then Algorithmic Power and Politics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2017054909","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","uuid":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title":"If...Then Algorithmic Power and Politics","normalized_title":"ifthenalgorithmicpowerandpolitics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2017054909","isbns":["2017054909","9780190493042","9780190493059"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":211,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/If...Then%20Algorithmic%20Power%20and%20Politics","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/search"},"page":{"printed_page":51,"pdf_page":61,"physical_index":61,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"265183247eaf43096bb070c27a31f45c63c0073f1b0563889a0d9b8562e688ba"},"chapter":"IF...THEN","content":"The implications of viewing agency as distributed are far from trivial. When we hear that “algorithms discriminate” (Miller, 2015) or that “discrimination is baked into algorithms” (Kirchner, 2015), it may easily be understood as saying algorithms possess the agency to discriminate. While cases such as the Google “gorilla” incident (see chapter 2), Amazon’s exclusion of predominately black ZIP codes from their same-day deliveries, or Google’s display of ads for arrest records when distinctively black names are searched (Sweeney, 2013) leave much to be desired in terms of algorithmic fairness and performance, the question of who or what is actually discriminating in these cases is not as straightforward to answer as the media headlines seem to suggest.\n\nTake the controversy over Facebook’s trending feature. In May 2016, Facebook hit the news (again) after it became clear that their trending feature was not, in fact, “the result of a neutral, objective algorithm” but, partly, the accomplishment of human curation and oversight.18 Facebook had employed journalism graduates to keep checks on algorithmically produced trending topics, approving the topics and writing headlines to describe them. The problem was that the human editors employed to oversee the trending topics happened to lean to the political left, and this, according to the news stories, could be seen in the kinds of stories that were made to “trend.” As the Gizmodo article first reported, “In other words, Facebook’s news section operates like a traditional newsroom, reflecting the biases of its workers and the institutional imperatives of the corporation” (Nunez, 2016). Shortly after the story broke, Tom Stocky, a Facebook executive, wrote that “there are rigorous guidelines in place for the review team to ensure consistency and neutrality” (Stocky, 2016). The incident also prompted a leter from the US Senate to Mark Zuckerberg, demanding more transparency about how Facebook operates. The leter, signed by Republican Senator John Thune, asked Facebook to elaborate on questions such as: “Have Facebook news curators in fact manipulated the content of the Trending Topics section” and “what steps will Facebook take to hold the responsible individuals accountable?” As Thune later told reporters, any level of subjectivity associated with the trending topics would indeed be “to mislead the American public” (Corasaniti & Isaac, 2016).\n\nNeither Black nor Box\n\n51","previous_page":50,"next_page":52}