Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

October 28, 2019

How-To Black Box Google’s Algorithm of Oppression

Filed under: Algorithms,Bias,Feminism,Search Algorithms,Search Data,Searching,sexism — Patrick Durusau @ 6:55 pm

Safiya Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression highlights the necessity of asking members of marginalized communities about their experiences with algorithms. I can read the terms that Noble uses in her Google searches and her analysis of the results. What I can’t do, as a older white male, is authentically originate queries of a Black woman scholar or estimate her reaction to search results.

That inability to assume a role in a marginalized community extends across all marginalized communities and in between them. To understand the impact of oppressive algorithms, such as Google’s search algorithms, we must:

  1. Empower everyone who can use a web browser with the ability to black box Google’s algorithm of oppression, and
  2. Listen to their reports of queries and experiences with results of queries.

Enpowering everyone to participate in testing Google’s algorithms avoids relying on reports about the experiences of marginalized communities. We will be listening to members of those communities.

In it’s simplest form, your black boxing of Google start with a Google search box, then:

your search terms site:website OR site:website

That search string states your search terms and is then followed by an OR list of websites you want searched. The results are Google’s ranking of your search against specified websites.

Here’s an example ran while working on this post:

terrorism trump IS site:nytimes.com OR site:fox.com OR site:wsj.com

Without running the search yourself, what distribution of articles to you expect to see? (I also tested this using Tor to make sure my search history wasn’t creating an issue.)

By count of the results: nytimes.com 87, fox.com 0, wsj.com 18.

Suprised? I was. I wonder how the Washington Post stacks up against the New York Times? Same terms: nytimes 49, washingtonpost.com 52.

Do you think those differences are accidental? (I don’t.)

I’m not competent to create a list of Black websites for testing Google’s algorithm of oppression but the African American Literature Book Club has a list of the top 50 Black-Owned Websites. In addition, they offer a list of 300 Black-owned websites and host the search engine Huria Search, which only searches Black-owned websites.

To save you the extraction work, here are the top 50 Black-owned websites ready for testing against each other and other sites in the bowels of Google:

essence.com OR howard.edu OR blackenterprise.com OR thesource.com OR ebony.com OR blackplanet.com OR sohh.com OR blackamericaweb.com OR hellobeautiful.com OR allhiphop.com OR worldstarhiphop.com OR eurweb.com OR rollingout.com OR thegrio.com OR atlantablackstar.com OR bossip.com OR blackdoctor.org OR blackpast.org OR lipstickalley.com OR newsone.com OR madamenoire.com OR morehouse.edu OR diversityinc.com OR spelman.edu OR theybf.com OR hiphopwired.com OR aalbc.com OR stlamerican.com OR afro.com OR phillytrib.com OR finalcall.com OR mediatakeout.com OR lasentinel.net OR blacknews.com OR blavity.com OR cassiuslife.com OR jetmag.com OR blacklivesmatter.com OR amsterdamnews.com OR diverseeducation.com OR deltasigmatheta.org OR curlynikki.com OR atlantadailyworld.com OR apa1906.net OR theshaderoom.com OR notjustok.com OR travelnoire.com OR thecurvyfashionista.com OR dallasblack.com OR forharriet.com

Please spread the word to “young Black girls” to use Noble’s phrase, Black women in general, all marginalized communities, they need not wait for experts with programming staffs to detect marginalization at Google. Experts have agendas, discover your own and tell the rest of us about it.

August 29, 2018

How-To Read Kathy Griffin’s Thread on Sexism in the Workplace (For Men Only)

Filed under: Feminism,sexism — Patrick Durusau @ 4:29 pm

While describing sexism in the context of comedy, Kathy Griffin also points out the same could be said for any job or workplace.

Titled “(For Men Only)” because I have suggestions for how men should read Kathy Griffin’s thread. (I have no idea how women will or should read it.)

First, men should read this thread (A – Z) aloud to other men. Silently skimming it and nodding along may provide some benefit, but not much.

Second, read slowly and offer comments and discussion after every tweet. Reflecting back on women in your workplaces, are there instances that resonate with Griffin’s comments? What if anything did you do then? What if anything would you do differently now?

Third, telecommuting is no excuse for not doing #1 and #2. Find yourself a discussion partner to work through this thread.

I make these suggestions because changing ourselves (men) and hence workplace environments, requires effort. Saying we are different, getting a certificate we have been trained, assuring each other we are different, or that we aren’t as bad as Louis CK, doesn’t count.

Effort requires that we think about ourselves, our history with women, what a better future for women requires of us and steps we can take towards putting our new awareness into action.

Only we, by listening to women (#1), can work with women to create a better world for our mothers, sisters, wives, daughters,… for us all.

August 22, 2018

Politics of Code [If a question is not about power…, you didn’t understand the question.]

Filed under: Ethics,Programming,sexism — Patrick Durusau @ 9:04 pm

Politics of Code by Prof. Jacob Gaboury.

From the syllabus:

This course begins with the twin propositions that all technology is inherently political, and that digital technologies have come to define our contemporary media landscape. Software, hardware, and code shape the practices and discourses of our digital culture, such that in order to understand the present we must take seriously the politics of the digital. Beginning with an overview of cybernetics, information theory, systems theory, and distributed communications networks, the course will primarily focus on the politics and theory of the past twenty years, from the utopian discourses of the early web to the rise of immaterial labor economies and the quantification and management of subjects and populations. The course will be structured around close readings of specific technologies such as distributed networks, programming languages, and digital software platforms in an effort to ground critical theory with digital practice. Our ultimate goal will be to identify a political theory of the present age – one that takes seriously the role of computation and digitization.

If you don’t already have a reading program for the Fall of 2018, give this syllabus and its reading list serious consideration!

If time and interest permit, consider my suggestion: “If a question is not about power…, you didn’t understand the question.”

Uncovering who benefits from answers won’t get you any closer to a neutral decision making process but you can be more honest about the side you have chosen and why.

January 4, 2018

Helping Google Achieve Transparency – Wage Discrimination

Filed under: sexism,Transparency — Patrick Durusau @ 8:36 pm

Google faces new discrimination charge: paying female teachers less than men by Sam Levin.

From the post:

Google, which has been accused of systematically underpaying female engineers and other workers, is now facing allegations that it discriminated against women who taught employees’ children at the company’s childcare center.

A former employee, Heidi Lamar, is alleging in a complaint that female teachers were paid lower salaries than men with fewer qualifications doing the same job.

Lamar, who worked at Google for four years before quitting in 2017, alleged that the technology company employed roughly 147 women and three men as pre-school teachers, but that two of those men were granted higher starting salaries than nearly all of the women.

…

Google did not respond to the Guardian’s request for data on its hiring practices of teachers.
…

As Levin reports, Google is beside itself with denials and other fact free claims for which it offers no data.

If there was no wage discrimination, Google could release all of its payroll and related data and silence all of its critics at once.

Google has chosen to not silence its critics with facts known only to Google.

Google needs help seeing the value of transparency to answer charges of wage discrimination.

Will you be the one that helps Google realize the value of transparency?

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