Dating app racism creates real problems for people of color looking for love
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If you think dating apps offer a level playing field for finding your forever bae, think again.
A new paper published by Cornell University researchers revealed that filters which allow users to search by race create a startling racial gap and increase the chance of racial biases, the Daily Mail reports.
Also, researchers pointed out that ‘racist’ algorithms on dating apps should be reprogrammed and reworked.
“Serendipity is lost when people are able to filter other people out,” said Jevan Hutson of Cornell, the paper’s lead author.
“Dating platforms have the opportunity to disrupt particular social structures, but you lose those benefits when you have design features that allow you to remove people who are different than you.”
“Given that these platforms are becoming increasingly aware of the impact they have on racial discrimination, we think it’s not a big stretch for them to take a more justice-oriented approach in their own design,” Jessie G. Taft, a research coordinator at Cornell Tech who worked on the paper, said.
“We’re trying to raise awareness that this is something designers, and people in general, should be thinking more about.”
The researchers contend that these “racist” algorithms get in the way of people meeting more diverse partners.
—Barack Obama endorses Andrew Gillum in heated Florida governor’s race—
Dating Apps Take Over
The good, the bad and the ugly sides of online dating are being examined in the HBO documentary titled: “Swiped: Hooking Up in the Digital Age” reports CNN.
Online sites for dating have proliferated in recent years. Digital dating has taken the lead on how to meet a new love, with some 40 million Americans engaged online with apps in an effort to find a relationship or a quick hookup with just a swipe of their screen.
Finding love at your fingertips has been a gamechanger, according to Nancy Jo Sales, the director and writer of the documentary who also wrote the 2015 Vanity Fair article, “Tinder and the Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse.”
Swiped investigates the way courting has changed over the years and the effects of finding a real, true, long-lasting love on a digital platform.
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