Paper Info
Title
An Agent-based Model to Evaluate Interventions on Online Dating Platforms to Decrease Racial Homogamy.
Abstract
Perhaps the most controversial questions in the study of online platforms today surround the extent to which platforms can intervene to reduce the societal ills perpetrated on them. Up for debate is whether there exist any effective and lasting interventions a platform can adopt to address, e.g., online bullying, or if other, more far-reaching change is necessary to address such problems. Empirical work is critical to addressing such questions. But it is also challenging, because it is time-consuming, expensive, and sometimes limited to the questions companies are willing to ask. To help focus and inform this empirical work, we here propose an agent-based modeling (ABM) approach. As an application, we analyze the impact of a set of interventions on a simulated online dating platform on the lack of long-term interracial relationships in an artificial society. In the real world, a lack of interracial relationships are a critical vehicle through which inequality is maintained. Our work shows that many previously hypothesized interventions online dating platforms could take to increase the number of interracial relationships from their website have limited effects, and that the effectiveness of any intervention is subject to assumptions about sociocultural structure. Further, interventions that are effective in increasing diversity in long-term relationships are at odds with platforms' profit-oriented goals. At a general level, the present work shows the value of using an ABM approach to help understand the potential effects and side effects of different interventions that a platform could take.
Year
DOI
Venue
2021
10.1145/3442188.3445904
FAccT
DocType
Citations 
PageRank 
Conference
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Stefania Ionescu100.34
Aniko Hannak21158.15
Kenneth Joseph395.91