Giggle, a social media platform developed specifically for women, is receiving back-lash from a variety of red flags arising including a “bio-metric gender verification software” that is used to tell if the user of the app is actually a female. While it may seem like a good idea to have a platform to empower women and have many of their collective thoughts in one place, many issues with the app include the inability for the software to detect trans people and therefore doesn’t allow them to use the app. Along with this, there are many private policy issues that could possibly jeopardize the personal information of many of the users of the app (Schiffer 2020).
I believe that in general the idea to create “Giggle” was a good, but I do think that it is worrisome using AI to determine who can use the app or not. Especially since the app run through AI is also collecting private information from pictures to other documents, a couple red flags are raised once the app is analyzed a little bit. Overall, I think that Giggle should still be an app, but should be reevaluated on how users input their information and get scanned into the app.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/7/21128236/gender-app-giggle-women-ai-screen-trans-social
I think this a cool idea, but the gender thing would be a problem. An app solely for women would be so empowering, but it has to be inclusive for all women. People who identify as female or non binary should be allowed on this app, regardless of biological sex. Instead of using AI as photos, there could be something more inclusive. People could identify their own gender, although that comes with people lying online, that is better than excluding people and making them feel as if their gender is not theirs. When defining one’s gender through technology, that can be tricky and there has to be a better way to do it than through photos.
As I was reading this post, the first idea that popped into my head was what about trans people? You went not to address this as being a red flag raised with the app. I am not sure how this was not immediately taken into consideration when creating the app. We are in a generation where there are so many different types of people out there that having an exclusive app based on gender is not a good idea. Obviously, I am assuming the intentions behind the creation of the app were not ill, but again as a creator of this app, you are going to get backlash from people. Going off that, there is this constant debate about what gender is in comparison to biological sex, so there are people who identify as female who born male that have not transitioned. There is just a big gray area that I do not think the app should base off pictures on who is allowed. With that being said, there could be people who want to be in the app for other reasons. Overall, I do not think basing an app off pictures for who is and is not allowed is a bad idea.