Black artist, creators, celebrities, and influencers are fed up with social media networks targeting, censoring, and removing content that communicates, celebrates, and call attention to Black culture beyond the mainstream. From the beginning, Black With No Chaser has experienced versions of implicit discrimination on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter because of our bold and unapologetic stand for Blackness. We have also noticed the difficulty for Black creators on Tik-Tok, and the filtering of Black content on LinkedIn.
St. Louis fam T-Dubb O recently took to his Instagram page to express his feelings about social media bias, shadow banning, censorship, and removal of content for himself and other Black creators. He also discussed AI rapper FN Meka created by a white software developer whose lyrics are riddled with Ni**as and other derogatory terms for Black people. Yet, FN Meka was able to get a record deal with Capitol Music before discovering that a white person was behind it.
Black people are disproportionately targeted on social media. Black creators and celebrities, and influencers are silenced by anti-blackness discrimination. This is a problem because it means that Black people can’t express themselves freely, which harms the mental health of the Black community.
Facebook and Instagram have been criticized for their content moderation policies. Tik Tok, an app that’s been used to share videos of blackface, has also been criticized for not doing enough to stop racist content from being shared on the platform. In addition, the platform’s policies have been criticized for being racist, sexist, homophobic, and ableist. As a result, many people have been banned from these platforms for their posts or comments in the past few years.
Social media has recently been under fire for its role in anti-blackness discrimination. As a result, black creators and celebrities have been silenced by the platforms they created and made famous. This results from the platforms’ policies designed to protect their users from hate speech but end up targeting black people more often than white people. “I don’t feel like I can make jokes about black people because I know people would be angry and offended,” said one white woman. “But it seems strange to me that places such as Twitter and Instagram don’t have the same policies for white people as they do for black people. So they’ll probably have to develop new ways to get users to self-censor, and I don’t really like that.” The focus on the platform’s policies has risen due to a broader racial discourse on the companies’ responsibility to uphold racial justice. These sentiments have been amplified by a wave of protests and boycotts being led by Black communities in recent years.
A little over a year ago our brother in the struggle @TheConsciousLee took to his twitter page to point out blatant lies being told to defend the depths of anti-blackness when calling out Tik Tok methods of suppressing Black creators content.
TikTok Suppression… Fighting the oppression is one thing but having to prove it exists is another 🚫🧢 pic.twitter.com/c5VWls9GOZ
— Conscious Lee (@TheConsciousLee) February 5, 2021
TikTok is one of the latest social media apps that has come under fire for its lack of diversity in content creators and influencers. TikTok has been accused of discriminating against black people by not giving them enough opportunities to gain followers, get noticed, or monetize their content on the app. TikTok, like many other social media platforms, has a policy of paying creators in advertisements – and only those who have created a certain number of videos can expect to see their content monetized. It’s been reported that TikTok racial bias starts with the lack of black people on the platform, which makes it difficult for black artists to gain attention. If you’ve been following major social media platforms over the past few years, you have probably noticed that there are not a lot of black artists and musicians on them. Unfortunately, not many other social media platforms are doing better than TikTok. The next best platform is YouTube, which also has difficulty drawing black artists, primarily because of how it monetizes content. As a result, many black YouTube stars migrated to vlogging platforms like BlogTV and Twitch to generate revenue on their channels.
However, before we go inviting folks to the cook-out, in a recent article for Revolt, Black Gamer CoryxKenshin blasts YouTube for racism showing how YouTube’s practices of shadow banning are immersed in racial bias.
Social media platforms also use other forms of censoring Black creators like shadow banning. Shadow banning is blocking or hiding someone’s posts from an online community, such as a social media platform, without that person being aware. This is done by either targeting their posts to be visible to themselves or limiting their posts’ reach, so their followers only see them. It has been used as a way to censor content on social media and in other online communities. Shadow banning can also limit spam on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. It can be considered a form of censorship because it determines what people see and don’t see based on specific algorithms.
The artificial intelligence industry has been accused of racism. This is because the AI industry lacks diversity in its workforce, and this lack of diversity is reflected in the AI products being developed. AI algorithms have been shown to have a racial bias, meaning they prefer white people over black people. This is due to the data sets on which these algorithms are trained. The AI industry needs to improve its products’ diversity and not be biased towards certain races or genders.
Racial bias in the artificial intelligence and machine learning industry impacts product development. The race of a potential customer is the hidden factor that can affect the success of an AI-powered product. According to research by Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino, the problem with companies seeking to develop products in AI is that they are not taking into account the diverse racial background and cultures. As a result, their products are not reaching the right audience. Moreover, without multicultural inputs, AI-powered products may be less capable of replicating human interactions between people of different races. “AI is not colorblind; it’s just that it doesn’t see race the same way we do.” Article: Racial bias in artificial intelligence industry impacts product development https://www.blackenterprise.com/article/racial-bias-in-artificial-intelligence-industry-impacts-productRecent research conducted by Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino found that the race of a potential customer is the hidden factor that can affect the success of an AI-powered product. Gino’s research showed that companies in the United States, Canada, and the UK all have difficulties implementing AI systems because of racial bias. Gino claims that people are “nervous about what could happen” to them if they implement a system with a more diverse workforce. Gino claims that companies are reluctant to hire black people because employers believe “they may experience greater stress and bias.” Gino also found that many companies were hesitant to promote black individuals in the workplace. Despite these findings, Gino still believes AI will become a positive force for society in the long run.
One of the most common causes of machine learning bias is when the dataset contains too few examples for a particular race. Machine learning systems can be trained to recognize patterns in data and then classify new data. The problem is that these systems are only as good as the data they have been trained on. So, suppose there are not enough examples of a specific demographic in the training data. In that case, it will be difficult for the system to accurately identify patterns for that group. One way to combat this issue is to add more diversity to datasets to prevent bias from creeping in. Researchers at the University of Washington have studied an approach called ‘enriching,’ a machine learning technique that can help overcome challenges when data lacks diversity. In their study, they found it enriching to work in three key areas: adding new examples, adding new attribute values, and adding new training points. For instance, authors found it improved to increase the number of people in a dataset by about 235%.
With entertainment being Black America’s most profitable GDP, Black people have endured centuries of control and manipulation by industries without regard for the welfare of Black communities. Instead, they have extracted and profited from our work. Social media platforms are no different. Black people desperately need a space that is genuinely created for us and by us. Fledging Black-owned and operated social media start-up, Fanbase allows its users to monetize without the extra layers of racism, discrimination, and restrictions of mainstream platforms. However, for us to move into a future free of digital subjugation, it will take our collective imaginations and vocation to continue to create, and break through [Digital] barriers.
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