Digital Discrimination: Social Media Redlining
Redlining, the practice of refusing financial services to someone based on the fact that they lived in an area deemed to be poor or financially risky, was made illegal in 1968 due to discrimination against racial/ethnic minorities and low-income residents. Now, technology has given us a brand new platform for discrimination: digital redlining.
Today, people are heavily reliant on technology and advertising to find jobs and housing. Social media sites like Facebook have been found to use personal data to target advertisements to users based on their race, gender, etc. Research has shown that these target advertisements replicate social disparities, resulting in marginalized groups being blocked off from job, housing, and credit opportunities, further perpetuating the cycle. Despite this, some courts have held that sites like Facebook can withhold ads for jobs and housing from people based on their race and gender, even if it would be considered illegal offline.
What do you think? Is this different from offline redlining? Should Congress or the courts take more action to protect marginalized groups online?
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This article was a pleasure to read! I never heard of "digital redlining" before, but after reading about it, it makes a lot of sense. I don't think many people understand how ingrained racism is within the structure of the internet; digital redlining is merely one example. Ranging from search results on Google.com to algorithms that determine what information is shown or not shown (e.g. loans, jobs, political advertisements, fire risk, etc.), one can easily conclude that the Internet can be and is often prejudiced. This is not surprising, at least to me, given that algorithms/AIs were built by actual human beings with biases of their own. I know in the case of algorithms, it isn't uncommon for social media sites such as Twitter and YouTube to recommend and platform anti-Black/bigoted content. However, to answer your question, I do think there's much overlap between offline and online redlining. Namely, the same underlying principles that defined redlining, i.e., limiting the economic mobility of Black people, has merely adapted to a new medium: the Internet. As with all social issues, coming up with a solution is much harder than identifying the problem, but transparency and accountability, at least to me, are the first steps toward finding one. Anyways, great job on this post! I look forward to reading more from you in the future.
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