ABSTRACT
In 2020, the machine learning algorithm deployed by Twitter to generate cropped image previews was accused of carrying a racial bias: users complained that Black people were systematically cropped out and, thus, made invisible by the cropping tool. Subsequently, Twitter conducted bias analyses and removed the cropping tool. Soon after, the company hosted an “algorithmic bias bounty challenge” inviting the general public to detect algorithmic harm. This chapter examines in Foucauldian terms the push-and-pull dynamics of the power relations play: Firstly, it studies the algorithmic knowledge production around the cropping tool; secondly, the bias discourse as a vehicle for resistance, and, thirdly, how Twitter as a company effectively stabilized its position—rendering the bias discourse a vehicle for counter-resistance, too.
