Redesign Dating Apps to reduce Racial Bias, Study Recommends

Cellphone dating apps that enable users to filter their queries by competition – or depend on algorithms that pair up individuals of the race that is same reinforce racial divisions and biases, relating to a fresh paper by Cornell scientists.

The authors said as more and more relationships begin online, dating and hookup apps should discourage discrimination by offering users categories other than race and ethnicity to describe themselves, posting inclusive community messages, and writing algorithms that don’t discriminate.

“Serendipity is lost when individuals have the ability to filter others away,” said Jevan Hutson ‘16, M.P.S. ’17, lead composer of “Debiasing Desire: handling Bias and Discrimination on Intimate Platforms,” co-written with Jessie G. Taft ’12, M.P.S. ’18, an investigation coordinator at Cornell Tech, and Solon Barocas and Karen Levy, associate professors of data technology.
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