In the world of online dating, race-based discrimination is not only tolerated, but encouraged as part of a pervasive belief that it is simply a neutral, personal choice about one’s romantic partner.
“We struggle to understand how we are shaping, and are shaped by, a technological apparatus like an online dating system that is designed for profit at all costs, even if it relies upon harmful tropes and ideologies to succeed. Apryl Williams has gifted us research that moves between these frames—the personal and the structural—so we can better understand the implications of a narrowing set of possibilities through digital and statistical matchmaking.”
— FOREWORD BY SAFIYA UMOJA NOBLE
Apryl Williams is an award-winning expert on the ways technology, race, and gender shape our social lives and digital intimacies.
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Advanced Praise for Not My Type
“From the automation of white beauty standards to the chilling prevalence of racist abuse in private messages, Williams reveals the harms created when racism, technology, and romance interact.”
— Angéle Christin, author of Metrics at Work
“This book changes how we think about the sociology of the ‘real world’ in dating by taking seriously the online world where so many of us find love forever or just right now. Apryl Williams shows us a new, better way to do digital sociology, and her writing makes for a compelling read.”
— Jessie Daniels, author of Nice White Ladies
“Williams shows how these platforms’ algorithms, through the ranking and sorting of users, replicate and strengthen the “sexual racism” that has long been rampant in American culture.”