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The Curious Connection Between Apps for Gay Men and Sex Offenders

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/the-curious-connection-between-apps-for-gay-men-and-sex-offenders/237340/

 

This link is an article about the “curious connection between apps for gay men and sex offenders”. The article describes how a number of men who downloaded the Grindr app, only to find an app for locating sex offenders in the “related” and “relevant” applications. Grindr is an app which describes itself as a “simple, fast, fun, and free way to find and meet gay, bi and curious guys for dating, socializing, and friendship.” The question arises – what makes this app “relevant” or “related” to an app for locating sex offenders? This issue delves into the ethics of search algorithms, and how algorithms can make political statements, even though they are created to be unbiased and effective.

 

I found this article because the issue was mentioned in another class I’m taking – INFO 4240: Designing Technology for Social Impact. In the other course, we talked about the social implications of creating algorithms, and how algorithms are meant to be unbiased and mechanical, but they are created by humans, therefore they inherently have some sort of bias. This article relates to this course in the way we are studying the theories behind creating these algorithms. How did this mistake happen? Did the sex offender app get more “votes” or “references” than other apps that were actually relevant to the Grindr app? Could this be why it was displayed before those? I think this article brings up a lot of questions about how to create the “best” and “most effective” search algorithm which does not make mistakes like this, and it adds a lot of complexity to the ideas that we are learning in class.

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