The tragic case of Molly Russell has highlighted their malign influenceMy eye was caught by a headline in Wired magazine: “When algorithms judge you want to die”. Below it was an article by two academic researchers,Ysabel Gerrard and Tarleton Gillespie, approximately the “recommendation engines” that are a central feature of social media and e-commerce sites.
Everyone who uses the web is familiar with these engines. A recommendation algorithm is what prompts Amazon to tell me that since I’ve bought Custodians of the Internet, or Gillespie’s excellent book on the moderation of online content,I might also be interested in Safiya Umoja Nobles Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism and a host of other books approximately algorithmic power and bias. In that particular case, the algorithm’s guess is accurate and helpful: it informs me approximately stuff that I should enjoy known approximately but hadn’t.
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Source: theguardian.com