College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

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Online dating platforms seek to improve the offline dating experience by curating profiles for users based on information provided by individual profiles. However, the processes by which digital dating platforms’ algorithms decide who is shown to whom is based on several social indicators including gender, race, hobbies and interests. Many of these indicators are enshrouded in bias on the programming end and explicit racism disguised as personal preference on the user end.

In this virtual presentation, Dr. Apryl Williams of the University of Michigan will present her study, “Automated Profile Curation and Sexual Racism in Online Dating Platforms.” Using data from a resume audit style experiment on a popular dating platform and semi-structured interviews, Dr. Williams interrogates the illusion of choice provided by the automated swiping design used by mobile dating applications.

Through her study, she found that women of color suffer from this algorithmically curated process and are particularly vulnerable to racialized interactions on digital dating platforms, reporting a higher frequency of fetishized interactions with other users while using mobile dating applications. Dr. Williams frames this fetishization as a direct result of a lack of protections for non-normative and non-white daters, and she raises questions about the degree to which platforms are responsible for violent outcomes.