The tech companies are starting to look inwards at their own practices in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and in tech that means taking stock of the algorithms that power the platforms.
Instagram’s CEO, Adam Mosseri, has announced that the social media company is going to look at its tech following criticisms over how its algorithms suppress Black voices.
In particular, Black users of Instagram often face harassment online and have voiced concerns about being ‘shadowbanned’ — where someone’s content is blocked from appearing in the discover section of the platform.
“This is a moment when people around the world are rightfully demanding actions over words and we owe the same to our community,” said Mosseri.
Instagram says it's going to look at four specific areas relating to harassment, account verification, distribution and algorithmic bias. The fourth is the most important one: the underlying system of the app has an impact on whose content appears in the Explore page and in hashtag searches. Mosseri said the team works to prevent subconscious bias in the platform’s products, but it will do more to keep bias out of the platform.
The platform will be working on these updates over the next few months and pledges to update the community with what it learns and addresses. Any improvements won’t just serve the Black community, but other underrepresented groups on the platform. Recently there was a case of the #Sikh being blocked on Instagram for three months, following human error.
It can be easy to blame the algorithms when something goes wrong but as in the case of the Sikh hashtag ban, humans can be at fault just as much. Recently, Zoom banned human rights campaigners from using the video calling platform to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre, with the company saying it caved in to “demands” by the Chinese government.
The company apologised for banning the campaigns and reinstated three host accounts, as well as pledging it would no longer allow such requests affecting users outside of mainland China.
It’s particularly important that Instagram starts to rectify any issues given the reach of the platform, with over one billion monthly active users around the world. It’s also growing in popularity as a news platform: according to the 2020 Reuters Institute Digital News report, the photo-sharing app is set to overtake Twitter as a news source over the next 12 months. Around 11 per cent of respondents said they used the platform for news, one point behind Twitter, and nearly a quarter of UK 18-24-year-olds have been using Instagram as a source for coronavirus news.
