5 Ways Technology Can Unintentionally Become Racist

This PokeRedlining was a result of Niantic, the game’s developer, recycling the maps from their previous game Ingress, which boasted mostly white male players. A similar snafu struck retail monolith Amazon, when a Bloomberg report found that the company’s same-day delivery service redlined African-American neighborhoods in cities from Atlanta to Chicago to Boston. In determining service availability, Amazon relied on factors like an area’s proximity to fulfillment centers, and its number of Prime members — factors that, wouldn’t you know it, favored mostly white neighborhoods.

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Hand Sensors Don’t Care About Black People

So far the consequences of all these technological hiccups amount to “some people couldn’t use some app/feature properly.” But what about more pressing real world concerns, like, for example, not ingesting fecal matter?

We know it seems glamorous now, but seriously guys, it’s not worth it.

That’s a video of Dragon Con attendee T.J. Fitzpatrick, who discovered that the soap dispensers in an Atlanta Marriott hotel worked just fine for his white friend, while altogether ignoring his own black hands. The technology depends largely on the skin’s ability to reflect infrared light — and, you guessed it, black skin reflects back significantly less. It doesn’t end there: Wellness tracking devices such as the Fitbit rely on a similar tracking method — shining light onto skin and measuring what gets reflected back. Laser skin treatments for cosmetic and tattoo removal purposes are also affected, albeit in a more horrific fashion: until very recently, such treatments were off limits to those with darker complexions, lest they risk “permanently charred skin.”

As a consequence of sloppy, improperly tested technology like this, people of color couldn’t play Pokemon in their neighborhoods, couldn’t remove that regrettable Sexy SpongeBob tattoo, and couldn’t even wash their hands at a nerd convention. That last one might be some kind of twisted war crime.

Saikat Bhowmik is a kid who has grown beard to look like a grown-up. He has a Serious account at Twitter and an Amuzic (that’s not a spelling mistake) YouTube channel.

Know what technology isn’t racist? This dancing robot toy. Just don’t look into his Reddit comment history.

Also check out 6 Jobs That Are Super Racist, And Nobody Seems To Care and The Racist Pencil Test: 5 WTF Quack ‘Tests’ Humanity Devised.

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