New Faces of Bias in Online Platforms | CIVICA Data Science Seminar

New Faces of Bias in Online Platforms
Dr Aniko Hannak

The internet is fundamentally changing how we socialise, work, or gather information. The recent emergence of content serving services creates a new online ecosystem in which companies constantly compete for users’ attention and use sophisticated user tracking and personalisation methods to maximise their profit.

This seminar session presents Dr Aniko Hannak’s research that investigates the potential downsides of the algorithms commonly used by online platforms. Since these algorithms learn from human data, they are bound to recreate biases that are present in the real world. In this talk, Dr Hannak will first present a measurement methodology developed to monitor personalisation algorithms in the context of platforms such as Google Search or online stores. Second, she will talk about recommendation and rating systems in the context of employment related platforms such as job search sites, freelancing marketplaces and online professional communities, and their danger to reinforce gender inequalities.

This event took place on 8 February 2023. Find more information on these seminars at socialdatascience.network