Dmytri Kleiner on Mon, 27 Jul 2015 20:15:39 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> WhiteSave.me -- The App That Delivers Privilege |
WhiteSave.me The App That Delivers Privilege WhiteSave.me enables White men to help non-Whites to succeed in life without disrupting existing systems and long-standing traditions. http://whitesave.me http://whitesave.me/#release http://whitesave.me/#call Just released this new work. --- fwd --- We were brought together as a team through the Art-A-Hack initiative. Our project is âImbalances in Tech.â We want to push people to reflect on digital saviorism, the danger of biased algorithms and binary approaches, the ridiculousness of simple solutions to complex deep-seated problems, and the folly that techno-utopian fixes can address issues like poverty, inequality and exclusion without addressing power imbalances and the entrenched historical privilege of certain individuals, institutions, and nations. To explore those topics, we chose to focus on a complex, historical, systemic and touchy issue â white privilege â because it is highlighted by and a strong driver of all of the above. We created a real/fake tech start-up with a business model, an app, a cheesy self-centered founders story, and everything else that a real start up aimed at âdoing social goodâ typically has. We used the language bandied about by those in tech and social good â focusing our fake start up on âdoing good while making a profit.â We purposely centered our fake app on white people and their user experiences, and set it up so that non-white people would foot the bill through both cash, data mining and targeted advertising. The app enables white men to âdeliver privilegeâ to the less privileged. We chose this language because âdelivering privilegeâ is just about as impossible as âdelivering developmentâ or âdelivering democracyâ through tech applications. We created a special discount for getting advice from white women - 77% of the price of a white man to reflect the current pay gap between men and women. In order for someone to participate in the WhiteSave.me experience, they need to first prove their qualification to be a White Savior through the âwhiteness detector,â which is based on a faulty algorithm. It uses a video camera to determine whether a person is white or not white. The algorithm is both simplistic and biased. Itâs also often wrong. Once the algorithm determines if a person is white or not, the person is matched a 'White Savior' or a non-white âSaveeâ. The White Savior provides privileged answers to the Saveeâs lack-of-privilege-related questions through SMS, voice, video or in person (depending on how much the Savee is willing to pay). We created a satire because because satire can be deep and cutting, and it often makes people think while they laugh nervously (or sometimes hysterically). We want people to look at this site and feel unsure if itâs real or not. We want people to feel uncomfortable with both imbalances in tech and with white privilege. We want some people to see themselves in the caricatures and reflect on the 'solutions' they design. People of Color are normally well aware of the issues we highlight, but often white people shy away from talking about them or they talk about them in a way that puts whiteness at the center, reconfirming white privilege. Our site purposely puts white people at the center in an over the top way, as commentary on this tendency. Through the project, we highlight how technological quick fix solutions are Band Aids that do nothing to resolve deep historical and institutionalized inequalities and biases. Tech often serves to distract people from these deeper issues and potential longer-term changes that will necessarily touch issues of power and require change by and in those who hold power. Through the âwhite or notâ algorithm, we show how tech, as a binary tool, does not do a good job with nuances and complex issues. We also use the algorithm to comment on the false idea that race is binary, or that it even biologically exists. From the start of the project, weâve consulted and shared the project with a diverse group of advisors and testers (white and not white) for orientation, criticism, commentary and other feedback. We felt this was especially important given that the three of us are white. We've taken the feedback and incorporated it into the site. We wanted to avoid offending People of Color, while we did want to call out white people of all political persuasions for overt and unconscious bias. One commenter pointed out our own white privilege in creating this site, saying that a person of color would seem too angry doing a site like this. Others cautioned us about offending or shocking white people, or creating feelings of guilt and stress. One person suggested that we might be targeted and harmed by white supremacists. We hope that is not true. Through the creation of the website and the fake app, we were able to explore and comment on imbalances in tech and how they reflect the worldâs wider imbalances in blatant ways as well as through subtler microaggressions. We welcome any additional feedback, especially in areas where our own overt or unconscious biases are showing in ways that we are ignoring. We are not against technology. We are not against people helping or providing mentorship. However, we do think the use of technology in social good and social change needs to be deeply thought about with a very critical eye. The so-called âsolutionsâ need to be complex and deep, and they need to address issues of power. Tech itself needs to be more diverse and inclusive, as does "do-gooding." We hope the project will generate discussion and reflection and we welcome and comments or feedback. We also note that we conceived and created WhiteSave.me with full autonomy. We received no funding or other type of benefit except for lunch, meeting space and moral support from the Art-a-Hack team and our fellow Art-a-Hackers during the four Mondays that we worked together. We take full responsibility for the project and its content. It does not represent the views of Art-A-Hack, any of Art-A-Hack's sponsors, or any of our individual employers past, present or future. Juan, Dmytri and Linda WhiteSave.me The Imbalances in Tech Team at Art-A-Hack Contact us: help@whitesave.me # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org