Fixing the Bias in Social Media Algorithms

Published October 16, 2017 at 1:27 PM EDT

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Sara Wachter-Boettcher has written a book about the failures of soical media and how to solve them.

W.W. Norton & Company

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Sara Wachter-Boettcher has written a book about the failures of soical media and how to solve them.

W.W. Norton & Company

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The Year in Review promotion that Facebook created for Eric Meyer. In the center is his daughter Rebecca, who died of cancer that year.

Eric Meyer

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The Year in Review promotion that Facebook created for Eric Meyer. In the center is his daughter Rebecca, who died of cancer that year.

Eric Meyer

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Social media doesn't work perfectly. And sometimes it gets things really wrong.

Facebook has barred users, saying their legal names aren’t approved. Well-intended features like "remember this day" or birthday balloons on a Twitter feed can go horribly awry when traumatic events are involved. And it goes from there. Now, one tech analyst has written about the many ways digital technology is perpetuating discrimination and harming us – and about how it can be fixed.

Sara Wachter-Boettcher is author of Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and other Threats of Toxic Tech.