Journalist Ellie House is bisexual. But before she had even realised that, it felt like big tech had already worked it out, with sites like Netflix and TikTok regularly recommending her LGBTQ content. Years later, Ellie goes on a quest to understand how the powerful recommendations systems that big tech companies use really work. She reconstructs her digital fingerprint, and hears from LGBTQ people around the world who are conflicted about the risks and rewards of being queer online.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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welcome to the documentary from the bbc world service with me any house
i am asking didn't
next no i was gay before i did how does big tech purse
isolation work and what does that mean
oh gee bt key people around the world
tell you about my coming out story coming out to myself
the year i realized i was bisexual it was
second year of university i've had one long term boyfriend before then and always concern
myself straight to be honest dating wasn
the top of my agenda my priorities
studying training with my units
team and going out with friends i also watched a lot of netflix and i love
what it recommended when
go into the website or up your met
with a sleek page with rose and rows of suggestive films or tv shows every row has a little time
to telling you what it's about
i'm still log onto my account now to show some examples ok
as a top picks for early row tv
is based on real life critically
aimed witty tv dramas romantic films award winning tv programmes
that year i remember getting lots of recommendations for new series with lesbian storylines all by characters there was one the stuck out could you me her all about up
the amorous queer relationship mom dad i'm a conceptually challenged bisexual i like boys
girls another was gypsy
i could featuring a suburban mum and has sorted affair with a young woman
i been with a woman he must have had
crashes really
that way for me always into men
everyone must be seeing these shows on their feet i thought but when i mention
two friends people who had just like me with similar
interests am streaming histories nobody knew what i was
talking about cut to six
later i myself
two to realize that i was in fact a bisexual woman and it felt like netflix had worked it out before me
it wasn't just netflix ice
its similar recommendations on loads of the big tech platforms are used regularly spy
the fire started really pushing a playlists that became one of my favorites full of slow melancholic pop like phoebe bridge
and learn adele re after months
streaming it i read the description specify had given the playlist suffolk songs
that defines your music taste as yearning
it's not even the songs i was recommended attacked suffolk a word
women who love women
this seems to be a common experience for queer people have come across tons of oscar
with headlines like tik tok thinks i'm gay how could it know before i knew or facebook knew i was guy before my family did
your surrounded by recommending systems almost everywhere
in your daily life marcel
of ski is a data scientists working in recommended systems or breakfast to those in the no so if you
search for new products or want to buy something on e commerce platforms like amazon or if you are
searching for new job on linked in all these different platforms
they all work with recommend our systems the basic concept is making predictions what do we think he might
based on what we know about you but now you
and come up with very differently personalized passions of it one method looks at the cons
of what is being recommended
just watched inaction film so here's another one but i might have
off recommending you are wrong com for a while i'm not ready
if i'd much about you my focus
understanding the movies their themes
as cost collaborative food
is that say the other great direction collaborative filtering here's where things
to get a little more complicated it exploits patterns of user behaviour how have users
so watchers or listeners or readers interacted with items so songs playlists articles movies for example
so it's like if we were going to a market and bind fruit there and i do have let's say banana
and airports in my basket and you do have bananas
and oranges or paris in your basket so we have
bananas in common because our and your and my basket so maybe what i have
in addition might be interesting for you and vice versa this method
doesn't just say you fought bananas before so i recommend you other fruits similar content it says
he fought bananas before and so has this other person that's a pattern
what else today like that you might enjoy too
most of the platforms we use every day have combined these two methods they say
they want to show people things that they will enjoy or be interested in and this is how
do it he's taught gallon former netflix vip
of product innovation talking about
recommendations in a video for the future of storytelling going back years go we decided we
figure out everything possibly would you think of that you can tag a movie or tv show with to really get underneath the storing that's the content bit sorted
now for information about the people watching so behavioral data implicit data what they watch how much they watch what devices they watch
we try to figure out what are the tags and manner understood
in this balance that's up to the sophistical
algorithms tat bridge what we know about the user and what we know about the content
i
this is why explanations usually stop but it still doesn't feel like enough these sophisticated algorithm
was predicted that i would enjoy movies and tv series tact as algae bt q why thanks to
uk data privacy laws i was
well to download all the information that the big tech companies have on me and i was amazed by how much detail was their facebook catalyst of
the websites i'd visited i've been labelled with certain interests mainly dogs and rugby and one platform even had the coordinates to my home address
but none of them said that they tact anything to do with my sexuality so actually it's hard for me
systems to learn that explicitly if they dont have access to the actual label and of course there are justifiable ethical concerns of not doing so explicitly but for example of pipe do like to see more of algae bt content then the platform makes a good job in
inferring that i associate myself as a member of the attributes community or that i am an ally or whatever and
owing to show me more of that content so to say it is not really
portent to know whether a person is gay
ass or whatever it is important to understand whether a person is
interested in gay or lesbian content this is a point that
most of the companies have made to me it doesn't matter
the them what you're saying
as he is they care about what you
just in seeing your tastes and preferences rather than your identity but does not make much of a difference in reality
earlier this year journalists at the wall street journal investigated how tik tok kept track of its users who watched content tact algae bt he's one of the journalists george orwell's speaking about
it's on the generals tech podcast for the algerian cost her former tik tok employs a
viewed as a list of the aps gay users tik tok has said that the dashboard
employees used to access this data has been deleted and that it has
the names of these closers and replace them with numbers spokeswoman said that tiktok
doesn't identify potentially sensitive information such as sexual orientation based on more
vigils watch and it doesnt info
his details either in all of these texts
who conversations about tags and algorithms sometimes the reality
people using these platforms can get lost in my country you can't really be one hundred per cent yourself you you have to hide some of where you are only specific number of people in your life what parts of yourself are you hiding best color
as a message shall it be in uganda is a love for me to hide
may this year the ugandan
government passed one of the harshest anti gables in the world anyway
convicted of homosexual acts faces life in prison and even the death penalty in some so called
aggravated cases in a statement do uganda
my commission said that no
has been discriminated upon based on their sexual orientation but
doesn't condone the delay
promotion of sexual orientation of any kind
is a ugandan politician speaking in parliament when the bill was approved we are going to enforce the law enforcement russia to make sure that homosexuals have
both in your gun for their safety we change the names of everyone we talked in uganda and they were
it's a spoken by actors this is zack on mama flakes i enjoy a lot of series most especially lgbtq series because from them i feel like i can see other people that are living their truth is this stuff that is recommended
you buy netflix all do use kind of search out yourself or is it by recommendation by friends of frankie started with me searching for one that operably saw on my tic toc there is one called pause i'd love to watch that pose is a fabulous show about the queer ball scene and eighties new york so i think what he tries is if
well she posts here's some recommendations and then all the other conditions that would come up on lgbt and yeah you kind of just find yourself digging a hole with a shovel by watching more and more and then netflix recommending more and more
a show my country my sisters and my friend a near scares me because i know for sure that if they ever looked through what i'm watching they'll probably just snakes echo what must surely is is unless the scared to me is a very big scared me
zack story got me wondering is a post
that your recommendations can out she has this actually happened i called up
is a lesbian journalist based in kampala to do some digging
this is a fascinating investigation and not some
i'd come across before but what
we started asking questions about this within the community it wasn't long before i met good
and i've known for eighteen years so what do you do for fun i like dancing like nothing i'm a party animal at the tick tock from a socialite is that your favorite social media yeah it's my favorite because it's where i express myself i feel free when a monty
you're in uganda but if you like your software in uk or america there's this guy called james brown from i think from california yeah tiktok would always bring me his content how to do make up blah blah blah
darling i'm geometrical myself to the blend black
that goes further than another one my kill he's like a drag queen he's a vibe i work that's what
well let's go ladies the regale period tick tock recommends good videos gave videos it would just bring on my for you page gay content without even typing in asking for anything gay did you ever tell tick tock that you are gay no i never told tick took i never told him because even in my bio there's nothing that says i'm gay there's no
but digital brings it up not only tick tock but even instagram it came when they were signing the anti gay bill in uganda you know tiktok used to bring videos like when the people were going into court so i would listen and my auntie i lived with my auntie
would say comments like why are you listening about energy bt
no no no i was just growling and tiktok you know tiktok brings random things and then she's like i wish all the gay people were killed i hate gay people and then what happens next after she saw these videos she had the videos but she didn't have proof
time gay so i was in the bedroom you know when you charging your phone but you want to talk like schooling videos my aunt calls me in the sitting room
send me to buy some groceries from the supermarket i forgot my phone behind unlocked i think
maybe it was set up after thirty minutes i came back i found her with my phone very furious very furious as if someone had died then she asked me why are you gay she says don't lie to me i know everything i went through your phone i see what you watch i see your tiktok gay people in your comments unlike ok i'm gay but i'm not getting any one and she said you can't live with me you will influence my kids to become gay you're a devil your was even than a devil then afterwards he called my dead so my dad just said is it true he was like don't come back here
i dare come back i'll kill you myself i'll take you to the police then that night my aunt threw me out of the house i couldn't handle it i remember was like god what i think i have nothing left on this earth
robert was taken in for a while by a friend but he remained vulnerable
as a queer ugandan it is alarming to think that we may be at risk simply for consume
el gb q content on such a media when the until
what sexuality act was passed into law many queer people went back into
show media close it for example some fled what's
groups where associated with fellow algae bt q people back
story suggests may be
there is no social media close it not in the world of big tech
i am greg's rocco garcia i'm a phd student at the university of cambridge and i specialize in computational social cycle
i told you my story and as i said it it kind of felt like netflix
the eye was gay even before i did it is is that possible
yes it's interesting is that netflix his privacy page
but it doesn't use demographic characteristics as part of its production
so in that sense no one is expert
we tying netflix that their gay and even if they did they should
be used in predictions netflix is
we express it about that as our own
social media and streaming companies they told me that won't you
watched and how you ve interacted with the ep is a better indication of
taste things like age or gender but what they can do
who is look at users that have likes quoting quote queer content netflix problem
as a bunch of algorithms that can go framed by frame and say this is what in this room
the themes that arise from the transcripts all this meditated
arms like this unique fingerprint that you can use to draw connections between different content
and maybe some of those features are not even perceivable to us because their derived without human involves there so you can just be like a hotchpotch of you know that
after the length of the series
color is in the video and ethics
he's gone in and obviously advocated this content as where content
you can have a reasonable gas that you know people likeness
i intend to be quiet now it's not going to be like a super one hundred
air airtight prediction because you can have people who are not queer
with this content really like it
does allow platforms like networks to if they want
to find that
sort of user base without explicitly asking its users in our world
sexuality is by what kind of dig deeper into that because for me i wasn't watching particularly queer content yet
still was getting a lot of those recommendations what sort of thing
what might have been giving that might have indeed
it did not when i myself didn't even realize so
the possibilities is that there are some red
other shows out thereabout like engagement with their shows correlates with engagement with the lgbtq content
there is also just this entire constellation of non content based data that can be used to make these predictions so maybe it
literally the percentage
of time instead continuously watching weather
you go through the credits
are you skip around like within these episodes all these are like really tiny very specific features that
all like don't really mean anything but like if you take them as part of this larger consulate
of data yet you can make
really specific predictions gregg told me
about some spotify research which laid bare the power of this on the surface meaningless behavioral data the study
looking at the link between personality trades and musical preferences
can see that the top predictors for these personality traits which you can
place with any other demographic characteristic honestly as its psychological trade the things that were
slightly to predict these personality traits we're not just two
with the music people streamed factors like john
or the mood of a song but
things like weather
these are how to premium account whether or not they shameful windows does windows desktop let's see openness one of the two
variables is percentage of streams with high instrumental nests values so this is saying that spotify can
predict whether someone is open minded or imaginative
based on how much they listen to songs without vocals whatever the genre and if we were to apply it to the netflix case that we ve been kind of talking about sure it might not be
what i watched it might be when i watched it and how i watched it and which device i
watching it on when
and for how long that actually indy
hated more about my interest in bisexual
lesbian storylines than yet the content
i was watching the air in a statement spot if i said it's algorithms don't
predictions about sexual orientation based on a uses listening preferences so well
does that mean for the algae bt q community worldwide
this means that a lot of play
where it's not safe to be queer queer people
are in danger because
any government depending on regulatory rules can request this information
for any reason obeyed see fit right
it's really really scary
my name is punishment touch and i'm a journalist based in turkey and also quadrant
the media law studies association the
state has been very authoritarian for some time
grazing was so kind
spin wanted to bring all the social media under control so aside
this very determined to pressure all the big tech company
to comply with its censorship request in october twins
twenty two the turkish state
ass new legislation aimed at tackling distant formation and it gave the internet regulator greater powers the most
the thing is it a criminalize us for the first time disseminating misleading information to the public it also it
introduces even stricter government control over these social media platforms for them
they are now facing huge fines if they don't
our representative office in the country or if they refused
in a comply with government requests and you talk a lot about censorship and i know that that is what this twenty twenty two disinformation law what it's really been criticized for
but there is also a clause within it that is a little bit more about surveillance could you tell me a little bit about that so it actually imposes huge fines to companies which basically
i want to share user data but he also face
gradual reduction of bandwidth which throttling so this is actually being banned because throttling is people can use it
that's very close and access ban and the end of the day the turkish
ambassador in london told me that the law is part of its campaign against disinformation and that unrestricted public access to truth
an accurate information is an essential human right
all these social media companies are expected to grow
any data almost all of it to the state in case
you know the turkish government nor accord us for such is data
thing that a social media company
if you use tracks any kind of user data including your look location data what you're into what your research and how much of your data is being tracked by an app is actually a big question and it threatens
a lot of work into it isn't different ways not that you know he's tech companies
evil or is just how the system as a single judge more data you track the bigger the risk of exposing a person but
a country like turkey were the elevator community
come under attack recently since two thousand
in the norman has not allowed pride parades in istanbul and it has
they stepped up entire ultimately rhetoric on different levels
in a homosexuality isn't illegal in turkey but what you are saying is that outside of
the law there is still a kind of crack down on that community exactly so i think there is
crazed risk associated with their would these apps tracking
storing more of our data how likely all the big tech companies like tik tok or twitter to
over people's user data in these companies upright
companies do they have to so i think the social
the companies they always are looking for me
like a line where there are still able to operate ends
people kind of use
then platforms but also
try to anger
authorities
most social media companies publish transparency reports which include information about how many governments and law enforcement requests they get in different countries and how often they comply
these companies say that they review each request on a case by case basis and only
davy user information if there are valid reasons in the second
of last year there was a significant
in the number of requests for user data from turkish authorised
he's on acts like tiktok and twitter
information law was passed in the same period
not only whether more requests for this data but tik tok was more likely
and over the information it does
it's no use data between january and june twenty twenty two but complied with
dean percent of turkey's legal requests and a third of what it calls emergency requests between july and december that gay tiktok
there are some situations where it will hand over user information without legal process when it
if necessary to prevent death or serious physical injury
it also says that there was an overall increase in request last year across the world which it thinks was due to
from grace and it can
is human rights impact in all of these requests twitter
stop publishing this information since the take over of new c o elon musk but an hour
this by the tec publication rest of world showed that since october twenty twenty two turkey has sent the most requests out of any
in tree asking twitter to either handover user data or take down posts and it complied with the majority of them i don't know
how much information they villa provide us because these
where's reports really doin that they never end
information about what user request or what kind of content take down was spent
they asked for so we don't even know what they complied with speaking to sack and robert in uganda and other queer people that i've met this documentary that conflicted on the one hand
they love what their recommended on these sites maybe they even see as liberating
but on the other hand they're worried
like an intrusion of our privacy some point it will be
good intrusion of your previous because slate
this is something you don't usual experience or you know is giving a little bit of more knowledge of what your life would be if he touches it be free and the feeling is beautiful alleys good
but i dont know from making any sense at some point
very unsafe
to really scare to beat you ve been listed
in the documentary from the bbc world service
the producer and presented was me ellie house the editor
with china collins with sound design by james bed
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Transcript generated on 2023-09-18.