Shadow Work Ellen perleberg

Shadowbanning refers to the way platforms deprioritize users or posts in feeds, search results, or other algorithmically-generated results without informing the user. This is often done to content which is labeled - by people or machines - as "adult" or "political." Shadowbanning operates across intersecting lines of identity, activism, and labor.

This project uses data collected by the sex workers' technology collective Hacking//Hustling in their 2021 report Posting Into The Void. They surveyed sex workers, activists, and sex-working activists about their experiences of shadowbanning following the 2018 FOSTA act and during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

I created a filter using Meta Spark AR that allows selfie-takers to simulate the relative weight of the "shadows" of these intersections by tapping through a series of gradient filters.

Shadow Math

In an RBG color scheme, black to white exist on a spectrum from 0 to 255. So to calculate the values for the filters I used the formula:

Value = 255 - (255 * data as a decimal)

However, I found these results all appeared too light to be impactful, so I divided all results by 2 to strengthen the effect.

Spark AR builds dynamic elements like "tap to change" functions through patches.

Why these data? What's the value of using data on sex work to study digital censorship more broadly?

Sex workers have been called the "canaries in the coal mine" for tech policy. Practices which are later used against other groups are often tested first as "anti-trafficking" policies.

A Technical Shortcut, An Ethical Problem

Meta Spark AR is a product created by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.

Meta provides a resource for easier development of AR applications, but it's also the company that does the shadowbanning itself. My request to publish the filter so that users could view it on their own devices was denied because Spark does not permit "political" text.

Hacking//Hustling, as a sex workers' technology collective, is an example of a subaltern makerspace like Costanza-Chock described in "Design Sites" because technologies designed for people experiencing censorship need to exist outside of platforms and institutions.