Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating

by Apryl Williams, Safiya Noble (Foreword by)

Overview

In the world of online dating, race-based discrimination is not only tolerated, but encouraged as part of a pervasive belief that it is simply a neutral, personal choice about one's romantic partner. Indeed, it is so much a part of our inherited wisdom about dating and romance that it actually directs the algorithmic infrastructures of most major online dating platforms, such that they openly reproduce racist and sexist hierarchies. In Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating, Apryl Williams presents a socio-technical exploration of dating platforms' algorithms, their lack of transparency, the legal and ethical discourse in these companies' community guidelines, and accounts from individual users in order to argue that sexual racism is a central feature of today's online dating culture. She discusses this reality in the context of facial recognition and sorting software as well as user experiences, drawing parallels to the long history of eugenics and banned interracial partnerships. Ultimately, Williams calls for, both a reconceptualization of the technology and policies that govern dating agencies, and also a reexamination of sociocultural beliefs about attraction, beauty, and desirability.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781503637610
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	02/06/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	268
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Apryl Williams is a jointly appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan in the Department of Communication&Media and the Digital Studies Institute. She is also a Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI at the Mozilla Foundation and a Faculty Associate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Her research has been published in Big Data&Society, Ethnicities, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, and Social Media&Society, among others.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. A New Sexual Racism?
2. Automating Sexual Racism
3. I'm Just Not Comfortable with Them: The Myth of Neutral Personal Preference
4. I've Always Wanted to Fuck a Black or Asian Woman: Being Racially Curated in the Sexual Marketplace
5. Safety Thirst: Who Gets to Be Safe While Dating Online?
Conclusion: All You Need Is Love (and Transparency, Trust, and Safety)

Editorial Reviews

12/18/2023

Williams, a professor of communications and digital studies at the University of Michigan, debuts with a troubling investigation of structural racism in online dating platforms. Drawing on interviews with users, data and public statements provided by platforms, and studies conducted by herself and others, Williams shows how these platforms’ algorithms, through the ranking and sorting of users, replicate and strengthen the “sexual racism” that has long been rampant in American culture. Since algorithms learn from user preferences, she explains, the preference for white normative beauty standards gets baked into the algorithms, which then reflect this preference back to all users. Other data picked up and learned by the algorithms, such as users’ online social networks, similarly recreate and present back to users their real-life race-based social segregation. Turning to historical research and Black feminist theory, Williams discusses how this algorithm-enforced sexual racism echoes anti-miscegenation laws of the 20th century, while also pointing to worrying new developments, such as the rise in unique forms of digital “racial fetishization” (one white interviewee mentions how online dating makes it easier to “try out all the racial ‘flavors’ ”). Williams’s highly accessible narrative is made extra intriguing by the liberal inclusion of users’ own words sharing their intimate thoughts. Readers who loved Amia Srinivasan’s The Right to Sex will want to check this out. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"[A] troubling investigation of structural racism in online dating platforms.... Williams's highly accessible narrative is made extra intriguing by the liberal inclusion of users' own words sharing their intimate thoughts." —Publishers Weekly

"From the automation of white beauty standards to the chilling prevalence of racist abuse in private messages, Williams reveals the harms created when racism, technology, and romance interact." —Angéle Christin, author of Metrics at Work

"This book changes how we think about the sociology of the 'real world' in dating by taking seriously the online world where so many of us find love forever or just right now. Apryl Williams shows us a new, better way to do digital sociology, and her writing makes for a compelling read." —Jessie Daniels, author of Nice White Ladies

From the Publisher