Social media is the perfect petri dish for bias. The solution is for tech companies to slow us down. | Recode

Separating fact with friction

"“Bias can kind of migrate to different spaces,” Eberhardt said on the latest episode of Recode Decode with Kara Swisher. “All the problems that we have out in the world and in society make their way online. ... You’re kind of encouraged to respond to that without thinking and to respond quickly and all of that. That’s another condition under which bias is most likely to be triggered, is when you’re forced to make decisions fast.”

In her most recent book Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, Eberhardt recounts how the local social network Nextdoor successfully reduced racial profiling among its users by 75 percent: It introduced some friction.
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Requiring those users to complete a three-item checklist — which included an educational definition of racial profiling — shifted the “cultural norm,” Eberhardt explained, away from “see something, say something” and toward “if you see something suspicious, say something specific.”"

Social media is the perfect petri dish for bias. The solution is for tech companies to slow us down. | Recode