Jens Ludwig: Dominant technology harms women, and alternatives are scarce

There is an implicit war going on within the technology world between good and, if not quite ‘evil’, then at least ‘not good’. Good is not winning, because it is greatly outmatched.

Nowhere is this easier to see than in the exploitation and harm of women.

Big Tech is making a fortune in ways that are not clearly in the best interests of the women in our lives.

For example, algorithms like Instagram’s send women to messages with unrealistic content companies know fuel deeply unhelpful social comparisons. As a professor at New York University Jonathan Haidt and others have noted that this particularly leads to teenage girls becoming depressed, anxious and prone to eating disorders, self-harm and even suicide. One study found that disconnecting people from social media significantly improved their well-being and happiness.

Men are also affected in ways that are unlikely to help women. For example, TikTok and other algorithms direct young men to misogynistic content in the ‘manosphere’. Raise your hand if you would like to hear that 1 in 5 fraternity members say they watch pornography that involves rape.

Some may wonder why there isn’t more government regulation. Why don’t the tech companies take more responsibility for the content sent through their platforms? Why don’t we have something like an “FDA for algorithms” that evaluates the impact of new technology on society before deploying it to millions (or billions) of users? One answer stems from Big Tech’s political influence: the “Big Four” tech companies alone have spent money $64 million about lobbying in 2023.

We are largely left behind by efforts by nonprofits to build “good” technology that attempts to prevent or repair the Wild West damage of our current technology. But these efforts are starved for resources.

For example, consider Callisto. One of the reasons why so few women who experience sexual violence report it is because so many women fear that they themselves are partly to blame. Callisto allows women to anonymously disclose their abuse in an encrypted digital archive. When another survivor later reveals the same perpetrator, Callisto helps the survivors connect if they wish. Seeing that someone’s attacker has done the same thing to someone else can help women see that it’s not them, it’s him – no small thing for someone trying to cope with such a traumatic event.

Callisto also has the potential to hold more offenders accountable. In many cases it comes down to ‘he said, she said’. The presumption of innocence means that the system is actually designed to help men win and women lose. New federal Title IX rules now make it easier for colleges to use “pattern as evidence,” so connecting survivors, as Callisto does, makes it harder for offenders to fight their way to accountability.

Note that Callisto as a technological solution is a key part of what could make it effective. Only technology can guarantee the kind of anonymity that makes it easier for some deeply traumatized women to be willing to share their stories and feel confident that their reports will be kept truly confidential unless or until someone else files charges against the same perpetrator.

Recently, in the absence of $1 million per year, Callisto announced that this would probably be necessary to block. This is part of one larger pattern that has also affected other tech organizations trying to combat gender-based violence, such as Safe & the City app Garbo and She’s a Crowd. Meanwhile, just three companies – Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft – made about $230 billion in profits last year.

What is the result of this imbalance? Major social problems have many causes. But there is a plausible argument that the current dominance of useless technologies over helpful ones is contributing to America’s sexual violence epidemic: half a million rapes and sexual assaults per year and 1 in 3 college women raped or sexually assaulted upon graduation.

Jens Ludwig: Sexual violence is the most important problem in higher education that no one talks about

While we wait for government regulation to eventually catch up, in the meantime we should invest in technologies that seek to promote social good. Who’s happy with an organization like Callisto rushing to close its doors for the equivalent of half an hour of Meta’s profits?

This is not the world you would want if you are a woman or someone who cares about the well-being of women.

Jens Ludwig is the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and the Pritzker Director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and a member of the Law and Justice Committee of the National Academy of Sciences. He can be reached at [email protected].

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