[Air-L] New Book | Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating

[Apryl Williams]

Dear Colleagues,

I'm happy to share that my book is available for pre-order with an official
publication date of February 6, 2024.

About:
In *Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating
<https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=33064>*, Apryl Williams presents a
socio-technical exploration of dating platforms' algorithms, their lack of
transparency, the legal and ethical discourse in these companies' community
guidelines, and accounts from individual users in order to argue that
sexual racism is a central feature of today's online dating culture. She
discusses this reality in the context of facial recognition and sorting
software as well as user experiences, drawing parallels to the long history
of eugenics and banned interracial partnerships. Ultimately, Williams calls
for, both a reconceptualization of the technology and policies that govern
dating agencies, and also a re-examination of sociocultural beliefs about
attraction, beauty, and desirability.


“We struggle to understand how we are shaping, and are shaped by, a
technological apparatus like an online dating system that is designed for
profit at all costs, even if it relies upon harmful tropes and ideologies
to succeed. Apryl Williams has gifted us research that moves between these
frames—the personal and the structural—so we can better understand the
implications of a narrowing set of possibilities through digital and
statistical matchmaking.”  -- FOREWORD BY SAFIYA UMOJA NOBLE


If you order from the publisher, Stanford University Press
<https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=33064>, you'll receive 20% off with
the code: TYPE20. Please feel free to share the code!

Cheers,
Apryl

Apryl A. Williams, PhD
Assistant Professor | University of Michigan
Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI | Mozilla Foundation
Faculty Associate | Berkman Center for Internet & Society | Harvard
University