Technofeudalism heralds the consolidation of a new economic and political regime, in which large digital platforms take on the role of true Virtual Lords (Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 2023). Algorithms are far from neutral tools, as they operate as devices of domination by reproducing racism, sexism, gender stereotypes, and power asymmetries structuring society.<\/p>\n
The consolidation of algorithmic power can be observed in emblematic cases occurring in different national contexts. In the United States, the COMPAS system was widely criticized for assigning disproportionately high recidivism scores to Black individuals, influencing judicial decisions in ways that reaffirm algorithmic racism. Also in that country, the automated recruitment tool Amazon Recruiting Tool was discontinued after biases were identified that penalized female applications.<\/p>\n
In the Netherlands, the SyRI (System Risk Indication) system, intended to detect fraud in social benefits, and the scandal known as Toeslagenaffaire, involving automated risk-assessment mechanisms applied to child benefits, revealed how classification technologies can produce systemic discrimination against vulnerable and migrant populations.<\/p>\n
In the political sphere, the Cambridge Analytica\/Facebook case demonstrated the potential for massive exploitation of personal data to influence electoral processes and social behaviors. In the labor market, digital platforms such as Uber, iFood, Rappi and Deliveroo illustrate the expansion of algorithmic management, through systems that determine pay, task distribution, ratings, and even dismissals without adequate transparency. These episodes show that algorithms and digital platforms do not act as neutral instruments, but as structures of power capable of reproducing historical inequalities, influencing public and private decisions, and expanding situations of vulnerability.<\/p>\n
Safiya Noble demonstrates that automated analysis technologies perpetuate historical patterns of discrimination, such as racialized hypersexualization (Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, 2018). Ruha Benjamin (Race After Technology, 2019) reveals how supposedly neutral technologies can automate racism and exclusion, creating new forms of digital inequality.<\/p>\n
Added to this analysis is Shoshana Zuboff, whose theory of surveillance capitalism reveals how the massive extraction of data and behavioral surveillance create profound asymmetries between platforms and users, intensifying dependency and the loss of autonomy (The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, 2019). US sanctions imposed against judges of the International Criminal Court, for trying war crimes in Afghanistan and issuing arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, resulted in digital blockades by Visa and Mastercard, revealing how Big Tech companies act as punitive extensions of the State.<\/p>\n
Thus, this proposal aims to systematize research and address how algorithms, under surveillance capitalism, produce and consolidate inequalities that amplify practices of racism, ableism, transphobia, misogyny, ageism, aporophobia and other discriminatory acts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","simposio_area":[58],"class_list":["post-10613","simposio","type-simposio","status-publish","hentry","simposio_area-estudios-sociales-y-movimientos-sociales"],"yoast_head":"\n