Pinterest is a popular social media app, where users like myself find inspiration for fashion, makeup, nail art, hairstyles and more through scrolling and selecting images that are compatible with the boards that the user has created. It’s a fun and aesthetically pleasant social media app where Pinterest users can be creative and even use it as a form of manifestation – the art of digitally speaking things into existence! Although, Pinterest is one of my most used social media platforms, I used to find it exhausting to use as I realised, I was experiencing more difficulty as a Black woman using this app compared to my white counterparts. 

Before 2018, whenever I looked for inspiration for hairstyles, makeup and nail art, the endless scrolling to find someone who even resembled the same hue as me became a chore. It was almost as if Black women vanished off the face of the earth and simply didn’t exist! It became hard to relate to an app that failed to register Black women as people, this sparked an online conversation on social media questioning Pinterest’s intentions as their algorithms didn’t reflect society, and quite frankly it was racist as Afrocentric beauty ideals weren’t recognised or if it was it reeked of colourism or oversexualisation, whereas European beauty ideals remained at the forefront. 

Fast forward to present day, Pinterest actively listened to their criticisms and changed the accessibility and racial algorithmic content their users view on their social media feed, by allowing users to expand their research by filtering skin tones to get more accurate results. This engenders users to interact with content that they actually want to see and making their experience on Pinterest an enjoyable experience. Personally, my experience with Pinterest has changed for the better, I’ve created boards of nail art inspiration, Black girl hairstyles inspiration, Black art and Black joy, and now I have no difficulty with finding representation and my homepage reflects who I am as person – a creative Black woman who is proud of her culture. 

Racial algorithmic bias creates online discrimination and harmful behaviour towards People of Colour (PoC) and marginalised communities because it perpetuates racial stereotypes that are damaging and can even be life threatening as not all algorithmic bias leads to a fair ultimatum or provide an accurate representation. This has sparked online debates discussing whether algorithms can be racist or not and has it really changed society for the better? 

Content that habitually lives on our social media feeds have changed due to algorithms making social media posts suitable to the respective user. However, “collaborative filtering” and algorithmic content simultaneously go hand in hand together, it’s often the content that is portrayed of marginalised communities and PoC which can be damaging.

Noble further explores the importance of understanding representations of race and gender in the new media and how it coincides with the racial hierarchy and white supremacy in society. Through the exploration of her theory, Noble discovers the consequences of inaccurate representation of Black women due to algorithms and artificial intelligence and how it can bleed into society. 

Now I have no difficulty with finding representation and my homepage reflects who I am as person – a creative Black woman who is proud of her culture.

However, it can be said that algorithmic content cannot be solely blamed as artificial intelligence aren’t directly composing the programming the prejudicial and discriminatory content which target Black people and marginalised communities themselves. Artificial intelligence and social media algorithms are merely reflecting the content that the social media user interacts with or the discriminatory beliefs that the programmer already has.

Thankfully, Pinterest took these criticisms on board as now the app is far more enjoyable. Personally, I like the filter bubble that I’ve created on Pinterest as I’m able to see representation positively.