Algorithms of Oppression

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Algorithms of Oppression Page 19

by Safiya Umoja Noble


  In concluding this book, I want to extend an example beyond Google to look closely at the consequences of the lack of identity control on another platform: Yelp.

  Kandis has been in business for thirty years, and her primary clients are African American. This is her story, which elucidates in a very personal way how algorithmic oppression works and is affecting her very quality of life as a small business owner who runs the only local African American hair salon within a predominantly White neighborhood, located near a prestigious college town in the United States:

  When I first came and opened up my shop here, there was a strong African American community. There were Black sororities and fraternities, and they had step shows, which no loner exist anymore! The Black Student Union organization was very strong; it was the ’80s. Everyone felt like family, and everyone knew each other. Even though I only worked in this part of town, it was almost like I went to school there too. We all knew each other, and everyone celebrated each other’s success.

  I often get invited to participate in the major events and celebrations—from marriages to their parents’ funerals. For instance, I have several clients from the ’80s who I still service to this day. Here it is twenty years later, and now I’m servicing their sons’ and daughters’ hair, who may or may not attend the same university. The relationships are intact and so strong. It’s not uncommon, even if we aren’t always in touch for the past several years, for clients who may live on the other side of the country to send a recommendation my way! I have worked in this community for thirty years. I know a lot of people. They all have to get their hair done.

  I asked Kandis how has that changed:

  Well, prior to the changes the Internet brought about, I never had to do much advertising because my name carried weight through the campus and the graduate school. So, if you were a Black prelaw or premed student, I would know who you were, pretty much as you were coming into the school, because people would tell them about me, and then they would book an appointment with me.

  But now, since there are only a small number of African Americans at the university, and those few people aren’t looking up at each other, we are losing the art of conversation and how we used to verbally pass information. So my name started dying down. It kind of reminds me of how in elementary school, there are songs that kids sing, and they continue through generations. All kids know certain nursery rhymes and songs, even the ones their parents sang when they were little. It’s like those song are trapped in time.

  We, as African Americans, are storytellers. My name is not being talked about anymore, because young people don’t talk to each other anymore. I was able to afford a modest lifestyle. Prior to these changes, from the stock market crashing and now this way of doing business through technology, life has become an uphill battle, and I felt like I was drowning. I’ve actually considered leaving, but where would I go? Where would I go?

  Look, I’m very much used to diversity, but when the campus stopped admitting so many Blacks, I became a minority in a way that I had never felt before. You think of the university as being a part of the community, and the community would benefit from the university. But I don’t think they thought about would happen to all the businesses who supported those students. Where would the students and faculty go to get their needs met, like their hair cared for? I mean, other students can go down the street to anyone, but the Black students have to have a car to travel thirty minutes across town? Why are they required have to have a car or transportation when no one else needs that to get their hair done?

  Kandis was directly impacted by the shifts away from affirmative action that decimated the admission of African Americans to colleges and universities over the past twenty years:

  Sometimes people are in a highly competitive arena, and they need to go to a nonjudgmental place where they can be themselves and where they don’t have to apologize for the way they speak or their culture or wonder if they go to a Caucasian hair stylist, if they can handle their hair.

  To be a Black woman and to need hair care can be an isolating experience.

  The quality of service I provide touches more than just the external part of someone. It’s not just about their hair. A lot of people are away from their families, and they need someone to trust who will support them. People do like to be recommended to someone they can trust.

  I asked Kandis how the Internet changed things for her and her business:

  Back then, when I had many more clients, there was no Internet. A personal computer was almost like a concept but not a reality for most people. At the beginning, you had a lot of younger people on the cutting edge of computers or who were more computer savvy and up on the current trend. My generation was a little bit slower to comprehend and participate. The Internet has also developed a new age of the infomercial and the how-to-do-it-yourself university!

  The Internet is now showing everyone how to do it themselves and how to cut out the middleman. They have created the new consumers. New consumers have less value for small businesses; they think just because they watch the new infomercial, they can do it themselves, buy it themselves, make it themselves. Also, because you can purchase everything for yourself, the new consumers now feel entitled. They feel no shame with coming in and snapping photographs. They collect your hard work, all your information in two seconds, by taking pictures of all of my products so they can go and purchase them online instead of from me.

  When things started changing so fast technologically, using the computer was an easier transition for me, because I had taken a few computer [Mac] classes on campus, and I was able to adapt to what was going on. Because of this, I was familiar, and I was comfortable with exploring the unknown.

  I quickly realized the Internet/Yelp told people that I did not exist.

  I think algorithms don’t take into consideration communities of color and their culture of trusting in the web with our personal information and that we are dealing with things that won’t even allow us to give someone a review. We don’t like to give our personal information out like that. And just because I don’t have reviews doesn’t mean that I have no value. Because the computer, or I guess the Internet/Yelp, is redefining who is valuable and where the value lies, and I believe this is false. It’s not right.

  The algorithm shouldn’t get to decide whether I exist or not. So I had to figure it out, within my financial limitations, because now it becomes another financial burden to stay relevant in eyes of what the web is telling people about who is valuable. I had to be creative and spend a lot of time on the computer trying to figure what was the least expensive way to be visible with the most impact.

  So, when I discovered Yelp and it’s alleged benefits—because I don’t think it really benefited me—I was forced to participate in Yelp.

  I asked what that participation with Yelp was like.

  They tell you that everything is free, like they are doing a community service, but later on, it’s basically pay to play. They call on a regular basis to get you to spend a few hundred dollars a month to advertise with them, and if you don’t, they are going to push you further down their pile. I can be sitting in my chair searching for myself and not find me or find me ten pages later. I can type in every keyword, like “African American,” “Black,” “relaxer,” natural,” as keywords, and White businesses, White hairdressers, or White salons would clearly come up before me—along with people who have not been in business as long as me. I think they need to put in how long someone has been in business in that algorithm, because I don’t think it’s fair that people who are brand new are popping up before those of us who may or may not be on the Internet but have more experience and are more established.

  And another thing, Black people don’t “check in” and let people know where they’re at when they sit in my chair. They already feel like they are being hunted; they aren’t going to tell The Man where they are. I have reviews from real clients that they put into a filter because it doesn’t meet the
ir requirements of how they think someone should review me.

  I asked her to tell me more about that.

  I think Yelp looks at people as their clients, not mine. If they are your clients who are loyal to your business and you, they are not interested. They want to market to my clients, and if you review me and you’ve never reviewed any other businesses, they are not going to take you as a serious voice on Yelp. What is that about? They are selling to the reviewers. Since I am the only Black person in this neighborhood doing hair, that should tip the scale in my favor, but it doesn’t. If they were honest, it would mean I would go to the top. But they are promoting and biasing the lay of the land in this area, which is causing me more harm by making it look like I don’t exist.

  I have been on Facebook and pulled up some folks who work at Yelp, and from my perspective and from what I saw, there weren’t that many Black people. It wasn’t diverse. You can see everyone on FB, and these people are not Black people. And that’s a problem, because how would they know to even consider the needs of a minority or what our language is? You are telling us we have to use certain keywords, and you don’t even know our language, because you think that “Black hair” means hair color, not texture! We don’t call each other African American; society calls us that. Do you know what I mean? We are Black.

  You know, they locked me out of Yelp. When I sent them an email asking them why I wasn’t on the first page of Yelp and why, when I’m sitting in my chair, I can’t find myself and why, when I used certain keywords, I couldn’t find myself. I told them that by doing that, they are suggesting I don’t exist. At that time, they put most of my reviews in a filter and locked me out for about four months. Every time you make a change on Yelp, there is someone checking you. If you go into your page, there is someone looking at what you are doing. I know that because if you get people inquiring about you, Yelp will call you and try to get advertising from you. And they will say that they see people trying to connect with you through Yelp, and then they will try to sell you advertising. They will try to show their value by saying they can help you get more business.

  I used to have my own page, but now you have a third of a page with people who are similar to you. And if they don’t choose you, they are showing your competition. For a fee, they will remove your competition, but otherwise they are showing your competition on your own page! You don’t have your own page anymore; you are on a page with advertising and your competition, who are similar to your style, and they will put you up against them while searching on your own business.

  They’d rather put other salons in other parts of the city to avoid driving the clients to someone who is not paying for advertisement. So I would do something like put up a picture of myself, as this was something that they suggested, and I use keywords to be found, but that doesn’t help now.

  Before, Yelp would encourage the business owner to upload a photo of themselves, and that was great for me. This is when being in the minority would help me stand out. That didn’t last long because they stopped showing your head shot, and now they put up a map instead of allowing you to use your own your image. Your own image isn’t shown. Before you get to my photos and my reviews, there are suggestions to other people who could be as far as five miles or more away. The first one is laser hair removal and extensions. I don’t do hair removal or extensions.3

  Kandis pulled out her mobile phone and walked me through her Yelp page and showed me how it works.

  They are already advertising against me. At the end of the page, there are more competitors. I have to pay to take that off. My reviews are in the middle. You can’t control the photos anymore. They have a “people who viewed this also viewed . . .” section, and it goes to other businesses. I have to pay to get that taken off. They have a few reviews now that are blocked, that they felt that I had asked my clients to do, and because these people haven’t reviewed other people, they don’t show.

  So if you get two reviews in one day and haven’t had any in six months, they think you have done something, and they block my reviews.4 The basic principle of Yelp is to supposedly lead people with unbiased decisions when choosing a good business. How? You tell me? Can they honestly do this when they’re in the business of selling the advertisement?

  They control the algorithm, which controls who can write the reviews. All this has a major influence on where you’re placed on the list. You hope and pray that your customers, who may be from a different generation or culture, will participate in their construct. It just isn’t as random as one may think.

  There is no algorithm that can replace human dignity. They created a system that simulates a value, based on their own algorithm, so Yelp can be the number-one beneficiary. When companies like Yelp shake the tree for low-hanging fruit, this affects mostly small businesses and the livelihoods of real people who will never work for corporate America. The key is to be independent of these companies, because they never stop. They have new goals, and they come back with new visions. And it’s not like a real contract where you can argue and negotiate. The scale is unbalanced; you can’t negotiate.

  I verified all of the claims that Kandis was making by visiting her page and the pages of other small business to see how they placed her competitors. Indeed, several times when I thought I was clicking on reviews of her small business or getting more information, I was instead clicking on competitors and led away from the business I was investigating. I share Kandis’s experience to demonstrate the way that both the interface and the algorithmic design is taking on new dimensions of control and influence over her representation and access to information about her business. She has so little ability to impact the algorithm, and when she tries, the company subverts her ability to be racially and gender recognized—a type of recognition that is essential to her success as a business owner. The attempts at implementing a colorblind algorithm in lieu of human decision making has tremendous consequences. In the case of Kandis, what the algorithm says and refuses to say about her identity and the identity of her customers has real social and economic impact.

  Imagining Alternatives: Toward Public Noncommercial Search

  Neoliberal impulses in the United States to support market-driven information portals such as Google Search have consequences for finding high-quality information on the Internet about people and communities, since this is the primary pathway to navigating the web. This is one of the many contradictions of the current for-profit search and cloud-computing industry. Future research efforts might address questions that can help us understand the role of the design of platforms, interfaces, software, and experiences as practices that are culturally and gender situated and often determined by economic imperatives, power, and values. Such an agenda could forward a commitment to ensuring that pornographic or exploitive websites do not stand as the default identification for women on the web. Despite a climate wherein everything driven by market interests is considered the most expedient and innovative way of generating solutions, we see the current failings. Calling attention to these practices, however unpopular it might be, is necessary to foster a climate where information can be trusted and found to be reliable. What is needed is a decoupling of advertising and commercial interests from the ability to access high-quality information on the Internet, especially given its increasing prominence as the common medium in the United States.

  When using a digital media platform, be it Google Search or Yelp or some other ranking algorithmic decision’s default settings, it is possible to believe that it is normal to see a list of only a handful of possible results on the first page of a search, but this “normal” is a direct result of the way that human beings have consciously designed both software and hardware to function this way and no other.

  Figure C.1. S. U. Noble’s interface of transparency: the imagine engine.

  Imagine instead that all of our results were delivered in a visual rainbow of color that symbolized a controlled set of categories such that everything on the screen that w
as red was pornographic, everything that was green was business or commerce related, everything orange was entertainment, and so forth. In this kind of scenario, we could see the entire indexable web and click on the colors we are interested in and go deeply into the shades we want to see. Indeed, we can and should imagine search with a variety of other possibilities. In my own imagination and in a project I am attempting to build, access to information on the web could be designed akin to the color-picker tool or some other highly transparent interface, so that users could find nuanced shades of information and easily identify the borderlands between news and entertainment, or entertainment and pornography, or journalism and academic scholarship. In this scenario, I might also be able to quickly identify the blogosphere and personal websites.

  Such imaginings are helpful in an effort to denaturalize and reconceptualize how information could be provided to the public vis-à-vis the search engine. In essence, we need greater transparency and public pressure to slow down the automation of our worst impulses. We have automated human decision making and then disavowed our responsibility for it. Without public funding and adequate information policy that protects the rights to fair representation online, an escalation in the erosion of quality information to inform the public will continue.

 

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