The Price of Negligence

Having seen multiple socio-informational trends appear and disappear since 2000, there have been incredible changes in data transmission and media. Particularly, the frequency of data distribution and reception on social media has skyrocketed. According to Dr. Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, an economist at the University of Oxford, the total number of Facebook users has risen from 100 million in 2008, to 2.26 billion in 2018 (Ortiz-Ospina, 2019). The same can be said for other platforms, such as YouTube. Due to this change, citizens across the world have the power to voice their opinions and express themselves. Although this expansion of free speech connects people and nations, the covert impact of social media algorithms grows everyday. But, what are algorithms? And, what are they responsible for? Algorithms are “the building blocks for programming, and they allow things like computers, smartphones, and websites to function and make decisions” (GCF Global, 2022). Algorithms are responsible for Google search results, You-Tube suggestions, and Tik-Tok For-You pages. They manage the data most-people consume daily, which is why algorithmic awareness and equity is gradually becoming a greater issue. Safiya Umoja Noble, a scholar of critical internet inquiry and the author of Algorithms of Oppression, supports this claim. According to Safiya, “on the Internet and in our everyday uses of technology, discrimination is…embedded in computer code and, increasingly, in artificial intelligence technologies that we are reliant on” (Noble, 2018). Now, more than ever, it is important to question algorithmic bias.