00:00Technology is changing a lot our love life because it has introduced new quantification practices
00:07that we didn't have before. So before we had maybe a matrimonial agency or friends
00:14introducing us to their friends, we went to bars. Today we have learned to swipe, to give stars or
00:22ratings and quantify in a very specific way who we are and what we like so a computer program
00:30can understand it. That's because algorithms dictate which user is suggested to another.
00:37The end goal is a match and hopefully a date. To find suitable candidates the algorithms learn from
00:45user behavior. Let's assume Hannah is looking for a partner. If she gives Akash a like the algorithm
00:54scans other people he's liked and who have liked him. The assumption men who like these women might
01:00also like Hannah so they are suggested to her too. Much like the recommendations you'll find
01:06on Google or Amazon, dating app algorithms base their suggestions on the decisions previous users
01:12have made. For example let's say many people give Akash a like but only a few like Duke. If I give
01:19Akash a like the algorithm will assume that I, like most of the people before me, will reject Duke.
01:25So Duke doesn't even appear as a suggestion in my feed and doesn't get any likes.
01:33The more popular a profile the more it is suggested to others. The unpopular ones remain unseen.
01:42In a survey among users the company behind dating app OkCupid identified a clear racial bias
01:49particularly against black women and men and Asian men. These groups were often rated lower than
01:55others. The system is designed to favor the preferences of the majority. Let's say on Tinder
02:03we have a majority of people that are white skinned. They're gonna have a specific preference
02:09patterns overall in average and that's also source of discrimination because Tinder is
02:15calculating the average of preferences. If the majority of people there is white people they're
02:21gonna create discrimination patterns towards minorities. If these white people are heterosexual
02:30then LGBTQ plus community is going to be discriminated. So it reduces diversity.
02:37Racial prejudice is embedded into our feeds and it can be reinforced consciously or unconsciously
02:44just by swiping. If you want to break through a bad ranking finding a partner can become a question
02:50of money. You also have to pay sometimes for features and one typical feature of this system
02:59is the boost in Tinder for example. If you pay they say they will put you at the top of the results.
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