PRIVACY & ETHICS
As previously stated, recommender systems can be incredibly powerful predictors of people’s likes and dislikes. Their reliance on implicit and explicit user feedback helps to identify unique user preferences, but in doing so, reveals relevant information about a person’s political views, health condition, sexual orientation, and other private information. In some cases, the information collected and processed is benign, e.g., a user’s preferred Internet browser, but other times, information can be highly sensitive and provoke personal privacy concerns.
Users searching for sensitive content such as personal well-being, health, and relationship advice might not feel comfortable browsing platforms that repurpose their behavior to produce recommendations. There is a danger that these preferences could be later revealed to friends, colleagues, classmates, and family from content and ads displayed on their screens.
In 2009, a woman in America...
