Designing technical systems to be resistant to bias and discrimination
represents vital new terrain for researchers, policymakers, and the
anti-discrimination project more broadly. We consider bias and discrimination
in the context of popular online dating and hookup platforms in the United
States, which we call intimate platforms. Drawing on work in
social-justice-oriented and Queer HCI, we review design features of popular
intimate platforms and their potential role in exacerbating or mitigating
interpersonal bias. We argue that focusing on platform design can reveal
opportunities to reshape troubling patterns of intimate contact without
overriding users' decisional autonomy. We identify and address the difficult
ethical questions that nevertheless come along with such intervention, while
urging the social computing community to engage more deeply with issues of
bias, discrimination, and exclusion in the study and design of intimate
platforms
