In the information age, everyday seems to resemble an episode of black mirror, platforms like Instagram have become digital pacifiers, and they play a crucial role in constructing our world’s perspective. As an east African woman, my explore page on Instagram is tailored to display automated ads of east African women, there is deep-seated human psychology in that choice of display and subliminal cues that are meant to make me believe that the internet is a diverse space and that women like myself are represented. However, a series of events prompted me to critically interrogate Instagram.
Are You Sure You Would Like to Follow Khalid AlBaih?
As an Afro-Arab you start engaging in politics before you can pronounce your name, on social platforms I follow political activists and political figures and news organizations. Recently I noticed that I haven’t seen any updates about the evacuation of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah, an issue I have been following religiously, I checked the accounts that I follow, just to find out that I no longer follow them, when I attempted to re-follow one of the accounts, I received a pop-up notification stating “are sure you would like to follow Khalid Albaih.”
Khalid Albaih is a Sudanese political cartoonist that posts about Palestine on a regular basis, @Khalidalbaih (@khalidalbaih) • Instagram photos and videos when I looked further into it, I realized that I wasn’t alone; most of his followers complained about the same odd situation, even the talented political cartoonist himself complained about the lack engagement of his followers with his content.
At that moment I realized that Instagram is altering the narrative by controlling my feed and feeds of millions of others. Instagram strategically optimized specific content on my feed like skincare adverts, whilst simultaneously censoring some of the users I followed like Khalid Albaih.
The Rationale Behind Instagram’s Suggestions:
Instagram deploys the same tactics used to reinforce racism in earlier times, artificial intelligence and algorithms are the reformed tools to maintain social order in the digital world. Through seamlessly integrating ads whilst censoring users like Khalid Albaih. The esteemed scholar Safiya Noble mentioned that Artificial Intelligence enables platforms to make users complicit in the suffering of other users categorized as “racially inferior”.
The Dark Side of Algorithms: Could Instagram be Racist?
Instagram algorithms are fallible human creations embedding bias, they are powered by commercial and political interests that exacerbate the social, political, and historical significance of racist representations.
Palestinians live in digital apartheid, as algorithms replicate inequalities in the race. Safiya Noble describes in her book “Algorithms of Oppression” that algorithms drive certain results to the top, promoting racism to safeguard the platform’s own political interests.Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.
Another characteristic of platform capitalism is that the explore algorithm on Instagram is curated to promote commercial content and suppress political issues. Nowadays Instagram suppresses political content to safeguard political relations with specific countries. How Instagram became the politicians’ playground | Instagram | The Guardian
This isn’t just exclusive to Instagram but also to other big-tech companies like Apple. This is evident from the recent incident of the apple Siri being unable to recognize Palestine. Responding to TikToker: Apple’s Siri Finally Recognizes Palestine | Al Bawaba.
The Way Forward:
Human right watch activist calls on the immediate regulation of these platforms that are acting as de facto governments. There are destressing implications about Instagram’s digital inequality, as it outlaws human rights and deepens the global economic divide. Unless collective action is taken algorithm bias will continue to mask the relationship between capitalism and racism. Live Q&A: Coded Bias.