Twitter apologises for 'racist' image-cropping algorithm

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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/sep/21/twitter-apologises-for-racist-image-cropping-algorithm

Twitter apologises for 'racist' image-cropping algorithm

Users highlight examples of feature automatically focusing on white faces over black ones

Alex Hern
Mon 21 Sep 2020 07.45 EDT

Twitter has apologised for a “racist” image cropping algorithm, after users discovered the feature was automatically focusing on white faces over black ones.

The company says it had tested the service for bias before it started using it, but now accepts that it didn’t go far enough.

Twitter has long automatically cropped images to prevent them taking up too much space on the main feed, and to allow multiple pictures to be shown in the same tweet. The company uses several algorithmic tools to try to focus on the most important parts of the picture, trying to ensure that faces and text remain in the cropped part of an image.

But users began to spot flaws in the feature over the weekend. The first to highlight the issue was PhD student Colin Madland, who discovered the issue while highlighting a different racial bias in the video-conference software Zoom.

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[Massacure]

1. There's only one certainty in the world of software development

The one certainty is that there is no such thing as perfect software. There will be scenarios will be users who do not use the software as intended and there will be times were the software behaves unexpectedly in scenarios that were not accounted for.