How Recommender Systems Exploit Affectability: An Essay on Liberty in the Face of Operant Behavior Manipulation
AN ESSAY ON LIBERTY IN THE FACE OF OPERANT BEHAVIOR MANIPULATION
Keywords:
Freedom, Transparency, Affectability, Human Variability, Operant BehaviorAbstract
This essay aims to investigate the relationship between human users and algorithmic recommender systems in terms of liberty, autonomy and self-determination by the assemblage of the notions of Transparency and Affectability in Denise Ferreira da Silva as well as Behavioral Variability and Operant Behavior in Burrhus Frederic Skinner. Between the optimization of the exploitation-exploration tradeoff and economic incentives underlying the use of recommender algorithms, the possibility of user’s biases and preferences being exploited for profit is discussed as a matter of self-determination. At the same time, it is proposed that the promotion of algorithmic literacy may not be sufficient for true freedom of users of such technologies, taking into account the critique of the Transparent “I” as described by Denise Ferreira da Silva. Ultimately, regulatory measures are presented as a more interesting approach.
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