The Platformatisation of Love: Sexual Racism and Dating in the Digital Sphere

One of the most defining features of personal life that has come about during late modernity is the use of digital media to establish and maintain personal relationships. The expansion of the Internet alongside the proliferation of smartphones into everyday life has meant that communication is increasingly carried out in online spaces and mediated by digital technologies. One such example is online dating, which has fundamentally altered the process of finding romance in the modern world. This essay will argue that online dating sites and platforms not only facilitate but reinforce sexual racism, and that such racism is increasingly being hidden by complex algorithms so as to undermine its existence. I will begin with an exploration of sexual racism, followed by an introduction to online dating and discussion of its intersection with sexual racism. OKCupid and Tinder will be used as case study to highlight the shift from overt to covert forms of racism and the essay will conclude with a discussion of the implications of such a shift. 

Sexual racism refers to the prioritisation of romantic partners in a way that reinforces racial hierarchy or stereotypes (Bedi, 2015). It is racial discrimination that takes place in the intimate sphere and it manifests in two forms; racial exclusion – being discounted as a potential partner on the basis of race – and racial fetishization – being sexualised in ways that reinforce racial stereotypes (Hutson et al., 2018). Bedi (2015) was the first to propose the idea of sexual racism, arguing that “the personal is the political” and that this form of racism is not just a private or moral wrong, but an issue of social justice (p. 998). It must be noted that racialized sexual preferences are not formed in a cultural or political vacuum; they are influenced by the same historical racial hierarchies that underpin the plethora of racist beliefs. Bedi (2015) explains that “this is not about some individual or idiosyncratic sexual preference but about larger, structural issues or privileged and disadvantage” (p. 999). 

Negative racial caricatures include Asian men as effeminate and asexual, and black women as aggressive, while Asian women are fetishized for being submissive and black men for being ‘physically well-endowed’ (Silvestrini, 2020; Bedi, 2015, p. 1002). This illustrates that sexual racism transcends the physical attributes related to one’s race; it is not just about how people from certain backgrounds look, but about attributes that have deeper social and political salience. Such racial favouritism is also internalised by people of colour; research shows that there is a preference for whiteness in a partner amongst all racial groups except black men and women (Kim, 2019). This is reflective of the historical social and normative structures that treat racial minorities as inferior to their white counterparts. Ultimately, the opportunity to engage in a reciprocal romantic relationship is limited on the same racial terms that have historically restricted marginalised populations in other contexts. 

Meeting prospective partners online has become a norm in the modern dating world. There are over 8,000 online dating sites and platforms worldwide, and in 2021, 323.9 million people were using these services to make new intimate connections (Hadji-Vasilev, 2022). The Internet has now become the second most common way to meet a partner, only behind meeting through friends (James, 2015, p. 5). Online dating mainly differs from conventional forms of offline dating through its use of computer-mediated communication (CMC), which provides users the opportunity to interact with potential partners through cyberspace before potentially meeting face-to-face (James, 2015). These dating websites and platforms therefore have become powerful intermediaries in the search for companionship, love, and sex (Hobbs et al, 2017, p. 281). 

The introduction of the personal computer and rise of widespread Internet access in the late 1980s granted people access to a range of dating websites, and connection to such services has only been made easier through the proliferation of smartphones (James, 2015). As Heino et al. (2010) describe it; individuals now carry a ‘marketplace’ of prospective partners in their pocket. The first generation of dating websites was characterised by online personal advertisements, with sites like Match.com allowing singles to post a dating profile and browse those of others (James, 2015). Next came algorithm-based matching sites, like e-Harmony which in 2000 introduced the concept of “science-based” online matching. This involves social and behavioural scientists processing personal data including interests, personality, values, and desired characteristics, and they determine matches based on a mathematical algorithm (James, 2015). Most recently - with the launch of the Apple App Store in 2008 - has come a wave of smartphone-based dating applications. Including popular apps like Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, and Grindr, this category is unique in its use of GPS-based location software and photo-driven design; users essentially swipe through a ‘deck’ of potential matches swiping left (no) or right (yes) based on appearance. This dating culture has come to be described as ‘gamified’ (Hobbs et al., 2017, p. 271).  

These intimate platforms provide unparalleled access to prospective partners and present opportunities beyond one’s usual realm of connection. As. Hobbs et al. (2017) explain, the Internet is a “powerful social intermediary” that has displaced the role of traditional ‘matchmakers’ - including family and friends - and traditional sites of connection such as pubs, clubs, universities, and workplaces (p. 272). Online dating “allows [people] to meet and form relationships with perfect strangers, that is, people with whom they had no previous social tie” (Rosenfeld & Thomas, 2012, p. 524). It therefore has the power to encourage interaction between people from different social groups and the potential to disrupt existing patterns of ‘assortative mating’ (Hutson et al., 2018). Then why is it that evidence shows people on these sites are being matched with those most similar to themselves? This essay endeavours to provide an answer to this question.

Digital platforms are not neutral (Chander & Krishnamurthy, 2018). While they emphasize their passivity and may contend that they are simply an intermediary that facilitates interaction between users, this negates the role that platform design decisions play in shaping the user experience and structuring mediated communications. Amplification of inequality through platforms and algorithmic media is well documented (Narr, 2021). Crime prediction algorithms have been found to unfairly target Black and Latino people for crimes they did not commit; facial recognition systems have a hard time accurately identifying people of colour (Verma, 2022); an algorithm widely used in US hospitals is less likely to refer black people than white people who were equally sick to programmes that improve patient care (Ledford, 2019); and the winners of the first beauty contest judged by AI were almost all white (Levin, 2016). This is evidence of pre-existing systemic biases being mapped into new media architecture. It must also be noted that most Western digital platforms tend to be created by small groups of (usually) young, white, American men and, as a result - whether consciously or unconsciously - their Whiteness is imprinted onto the design (Li & Chen, 2021, p. 2). 

Matamoros-Fernandez’s (2017) describes this as “platformed racism”. She contends that platform’s affordances, business models, and user cultures are responsible for amplifying, manufacturing, and reproducing racism (Matamoros-Fernandez, 2017). Thus, when looking at online dating services, it is necessary to critically assess their architecture and algorithms to understand how they allow sexual racism – both overtly and covertly – to flourish. A significant body of empirical evidence highlights the extent to which racialized dating preferences are made obvious on these platforms. Unsurprisingly, they all point towards a favouring of whiteness: white people are least likely to date outside of their race (Robnett & Feliciano, 2011); Asian men and black women are least likely to receive messages or responses on dating apps (Rudder, 2014); females prefer white people over those from non-white backgrounds (Tsunokai et al., 2013); white men and women are more likely to seek out potential dates with white people rather than black people (Herman & Campbell, 2012); and black people were ten times more likely to contact white people than for whites to contact blacks (Mendelsohn et al., 2014). The fact that so much evidence about sexual racism and racial preferences is gathered from data on dating platforms, highlights that these are key sites in which such desires are expressed and, importantly, where they are considered ‘acceptable’ to express. The intimate realm is one of the only remaining domains where individuals may feel an entitlement to express explicit racial preferences (Hutson et al, 2018, p. 3). Through case studies of OKCupid and Tinder, the following paragraphs will reveal how the affordances of the respective platforms facilitate intimate interactions along racialized lines, and how user cultures have changed overtime.

Historically, sexual racism has manifested on dating sites in covert ways. One of the most notable forms of this is the embedding of search and filter tools that permits screening on the basis of protected characteristics, including race (Hutson et al., 2018). Popular algorithm-based dating site OKCupid is a prominent example. When creating an account, OKCupid users are required to categorise themselves according to a number of characteristics, from height, to education, to race. Users can then search for, sort by, or filter out potential partners based on these platform-defined categories. These functions allow users to specify the traits they view as more or less desirable, and this shapes who the algorithm recommends as potential partners. With this functionality, users can carefully select which races they do and don’t want to be matched with, essentially making users from ‘undesirable’ racial backgrounds invisible and hiding them from the dating pool before they are even recognised as potential partners (Hutson et al., 2018, p. 7). But users can also sort based on other characteristics like height and weight - what makes race so different? Returning to Bedi’s (2015) discussion of sexual racism, the other physical characteristics that users can filter by don’t have the same historical and political salience as race. They are not bound up in the same structures of oppression. Furthermore, the embedding of race as a filterable category legitimises it as a reasonable basis for including or excluding potential partners. Not only does it allow for people to consider race as a factor when choosing potential partners, but it actively encourages users to consider partners in terms of racial hierarchies. Hutson et al. (2018) summarises; “These design choices reify – and tacitly validate – extant stereotypes related to race, ethnicity, and other categories. They map onto historical notions of psychological and physical group difference, and promote these categories as both natural characterizations of other users as well as appropriate axes for determining romantic or sexual (dis)interest” (p. 7). 

While racial filtering tools are still commonly available on a number of dating platforms, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, a number of sites removed their ethnicity filtering options (Beccia, 2022). Although a Cornell University paper (Hutson et al., 2018) had suggested this action two years earlier, it was public pressure during Black Lives Matter that pushed many sites to make such a change. The timing of this change highlights that it was not done in the interest of confronting the platforms’ racial biases, but instead to appease the community and better their reputations, and thereby had the overall goal to uphold their capitalistic pursuit of profits. Moreover, not only did the Black Lives Matter movement push corporations to be less explicit in their racism, it pushed individuals to do the same. The movement certainly did not eliminate racial bias, but instead changed the way it was expressed.

The swipe-based algorithms used to match users on platforms such as Tinder introduce a more subtle form of racial bias into the world of online dating. Unlike OKCupid where people have to make deliberate searches to find potential partners, Tinder is characterised by visceral swiping om profiles that are comprised of images (Narr, 2021). It has essentially ‘gamified’ online dating, with its interface priming users for absent-minded engagement and compelling users to privilege looks above other qualities. This environment has allowed implicit racism to flourish, with race making its way into swiping decisions, often on an unconscious level. As Narr (2021) explains, “there is a sense that filtering for race by clicking a button is more racist than simply swiping according to one’s racial preferences”. Essentially, swipe apps allow users to express their race-based sexual preferences without troubling their perceptions of themselves as non-racist. Moreover, the racially biased actions of a user on a site like Tinder do much more than just influence that specific user’s matches; it embeds them into the network and amplifies them through the algorithm. Tinder’s algorithm is underpinned by an ‘attractiveness scale’. That is, instead of using different variables to match users on an individual basis as is done on OKCupid, Tinder employs a hierarchical raking system based on how often profiles are liked or rejected. This marginalises those who are not attractive to a majority of users which, as outlined, are those who are not white. Therefore, this ‘attractiveness’ hierarchy that structures Tinder’s algorithm is in fact a racial hierarchy. 

Though some may claim we are entering a post-racial era, the transposing of historical racial hierarchies into the digital domain highlights that this is the exact opposite. Technology is finding new ways to enforce and uphold beliefs that have subjugated and segregated groups throughout history. The difference is that such racism is becoming more hidden, buried amongst complex code and opaque algorithms. We are in fact living in an era of “modern racism” (Kandola, n.d.). People outwardly endorse egalitarian values but nonetheless hold unconscious biases, particularly in the intimate sphere. They have been able to sever actions like mindlessly swiping on a dating app from the historical traumas they are perpetuating. This not only makes racism harder to detect, but makes it even more difficult to address. While on the level of the individual there is little that can be done to rewire one’s racialized sexual preferences that have been engrained into their psyche from a young age (Narr, 2021), we can reconsider the role platform design plays in reinforcing or challenging such ideas. Research suggests that there is a level of fluidity to people’s intimate preferences and that they are shaped by the options that are presented to them (Gerlach et al., 2017). Thus, online dating platforms have the power to encourage exploration outside of users implicit preferences and can work to actively counteract bias.

To conclude, through an exploration of sexual racism and online dating platforms this essay has shown that racial hierarchies have been transposed into the digital domain. Online dating platforms have offered places where it is not only acceptable to express racialized sexual preferences, but encouraged. Thus, I have argued that online dating services not only facilitate but reinforce sexual racism, and that both algorithmic technologies and people’s self-perceptions has led to such discrimination becoming more covert. This essay provides interesting assessments of more general societal trends, including the shift from overt to covert forms of racism and platform’s roles in mediating and shaping social interaction. This opens up the realm for further investigation into the intersection between racism, sex, and technology.