Algorithmic criticism is about as varied and hard to define as algorithms themselves. There are multiple lenses one can look through when critiquing algorithms: the conformist lens, the scrutinising lens, the feminist lens, the black lens, the black feminist lens, the scholarly lens, and so on. There are as many lenses for examining algorithms as there are algorithms, I feel. One thing all those perspectives can agree on is that one should always examine the established order. This goal of defiance appears to me as a lofty goal, especially when all the institutions of the web are like the monolithic ad-buildings of Blade Runner, almost primeval in their permanence.
All this is terribly reminiscent of the aims of the Popular Front movement. Just how the socialist coalition strove to battle the status quo of capitalism, modern activists strive to battle the status quo of ad agencies and complacency with those ad agencies. With the potency of folk singers and labour activists, the Popular Front encouraged alternative thinking about our institutions, tacitly urging that Americans must interact with them and mustn’t turn a blind eye to their presence. Had ‘the communist-oriented International Legal Defense (ILD)’ chosen not to come ‘to the aid of the “Scottsboro Boys”’, yet another injustice would have been carried out and America would have been further proved as a nation that does not care to challenge its status quo. Instead, the plight of the Scottsboro Boys and efforts of the Popular Front’s law firm ‘became a national symbol of continuing racial prejudice in America and a rallying point for civil rights–minded Americans.’ (Cochran et al.) 1
The Popular Front’s stance against capitalism and racism lent a stark model for activism and interrogation of what we know (as provided by institutions). The institutions of today are perhaps more furtive, but no less insidious. Advert agencies, in service of the status quo, now implement algorithms that serve to uphold complacency to such a point that ‘the clicks of users… mean that representations of women are ranked on a search engine page in ways that underscore women’s historical and contemporary lack of status in society’. (Noble) 2
Safiya Noble, in the defiant and questioning tradition of the Popular Front activists, offers some ideas as to how to subvert and interrogate our institutions. She advocates for literacy at a basic level of Internet citizenship, maintaining ‘that one need not know the mechanism of radio transmission or television spectrum or how to build a cathode ray tube in order to critique racist or sexist depictions in song lyrics played on the radio or shown in a film or television show.’ (Noble) In other words, we should place faith in our intuition and judgment over the intuition and judgment of erroneous, as Cathy O’Neil terms it, ‘opinions embedded in math’. (O’Neil) 3 4
- Dana Cochran et al., “The Great Depression,” Matthew Downs, ed., in The American Yawp, eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).
- Noble, Safiya. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. 1st ed. New York University Press, 2018.
- Noble, Safiya. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. 1st ed. New York University Press, 2018.
- O’Neil, Cathy, and Nice Shit Studio. “The Truth About Algorithms | Cathy O’Neil on Vimeo.” Videos. vimeo.com, October 17, 2018. https://vimeo.com/295525907.
