Rude Awakenings from Behaviourist Dreams. Methodological Integrity and the GDPR
by Mireille Hildebrandt (Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium)
Recommendations are meant to increase sales or ad revenue, since this is the first priority of those who pay for them. As recommender systems match their recommendations with inferred preferences, we should not be surprised if the algorithm optimises for lucrative preferences and thus co-produces the preferences they mine. In this talk I will explain how the GDPR will help to break through this vicious circle, by constraining how people may be targeted.
About the Speaker
Mireille Hildebrandt is a Research Professor on ‘Interfacing Law and Technology’ at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB), appointed by the VUB Research Council. She works with the research group on Law Science Technology and Society studies (LSTS) at the Faculty of Law and Criminology. She also holds the part-time Chair of Smart Environments, Data Protection and the Rule of Law at the Science Faculty, at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS) at Radboud University Nijmegen. Her research interests concern the implications of automated decisions, machine learning and mindless artificial agency for law and the rule of law in constitutional democracies. Mireille has published 4 scientific monographs, 22 edited volumes or special issues, and over 100 chapters and articles in scientific journals and volumes. In 2018 she received an ERC Advanced Grant for her project on ‘Counting as a Human Being in the era of Computational Law’ (2019-2024).
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Whose Data Traces, Whose Voices? Inequality in Online Participation and Why it Matters for Recommendation Systems Research
by Eszter Hargittai (University of Zurich, Switzerland)
As research relies on data traces about people’s online behavior, it is important to take a step back and ask: who uses the systems where these traces appear? This talk will discuss online participation from a digital-inequality perspective showing how differences in online behavior vary by socio-demographic characteristics as well as people’s Internet skills. The presentation breaks down the various steps necessary for engagement—the pipeline of online participation—and shows that different factors explain different parts of the pipeline with skills mattering at all stages. Drawing on several data sets, the talk explores whose traces are most likely to show up on various systems and what this means for potential biases in what researchers draw from analyzing digital trace data.
About the Speaker
Eszter Hargittai is Professor and Chair of Internet Use and Society at the Institute of Communication and Media Research of the University of Zurich. Eszter’s research looks at how people may benefit from their digital media uses with a particular focus on how differences in people’s Web-use skills influence what they do online. Her work has received awards from several professional associations and for her teaching, she received the Galbut Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award of the School of Communication at Northwestern University. She has published over 90 journal articles and book chapters. She has given invited talks in 15 countries on four continents.
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Responsible Recommendation
moderated by Michael Ekstrand (Boise State University, USA)
What does it mean to build, deploy, and study recommender systems in a socially responsible manner? Finding answers to this question is crucial to ensuring the systems we develop promote human welfare. It encompasses many topics, including fairness, accountability, transparency, privacy, and social impact. This panel brings a variety of perspectives from industry, academia, and the public sector to discuss this question and advance the discussion of social impact and responsibility in the RecSys community.
Panelists
