Anti-Social Media Roundup: Redlining, cyberstyle

Can a social network curb racial profiling?

How this social network for neighborhoods is trying to fix its racism problem

Excerpt:
"All too often, 'suspicious behavior' descriptors racially profile neighbors lawfully going about their business," Oakland City Council Member Annie Campbell Washington wrote in a Facebook post about Nextdoor in January. "This creates harm for our communities and does not provide information that can be followed up on by neighbors or police in any meaningful way. In other words, it's all harm and no benefit."

Nextdoor, which operates formal partnerships with many local police departments, took the complaints to heart.

"As Nextdoor has become one of the places where neighbors talk about how to make their local communities better, it is natural for the issue of race to be discussed and debated," co-founder and chief executive Nirav Tolia wrote in a Wednesday blog post. "But it’s not acceptable when mentions of race take the form of racial profiling."

Racial Discrimination in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Abstract

Online marketplaces increasingly choose to reduce the anonymity of buyers and sellers in order to facilitate trust. We demonstrate that this common market design choice results in an important unintended consequence: racial discrimination. In a field experiment on Airbnb, we find that requests from guests with distinctively African-American names are roughly 16% less likely to be accepted than identical guests with distinctively White names. The difference persists whether the host is African-American or White, male or female. The difference also persists whether the host shares the property with the guest or not, and whether the property is cheap or expensive. We validate our findings through observational data on hosts’ recent experiences with African-American guests, finding host behavior consistent with some, though not all, hosts discriminating. Finally, we find that discrimination is costly for hosts who indulge in it: hosts who reject African- American guests are able to find a replacement guest only 35% of the time. On the whole, our analysis suggests a need for caution: while information can facilitate transactions, it also facilitates discrimination.

Moral of the story: Black folk should always change their names when using services like AirBNB, Nextdoor, etc. Go with something less ethicky and more soothing and nondescript that won't ignite white fears, like Aloysius Marshmallow McGillicuddy.

 

I only eat Juergen Snyders, not Juergen Hanovers lol

 

See, no one is going to get that joke but two guys from Woody Hayes land...
Snyders = chips
Hannovers= pretzels

 

Yeah social media can create ridiculous reaction. While I've been in DC, it turns out my neighborhood back in ChIcago went viral because some young white couple from Arizona had an experience atypical for the neighborhood (supposedly she was punched on a train). Now people around the country think my neighborhood, which is largely white, gay, metrosexual, yuppie and millennial, is "the hood." I loved the local neighborhood blogs though, so I never used Nextdoor, etc. Good neighbors know shit quicker than the CIA and keep you informed, lol! When President Obama decided to hold his 50th birthday party in my area, the blogs knew it days before the MSM did lol (it was at the theatre you see in "Batman V Superman" where Bruce Wayne's parents get shot).