Incident 139: Amazon’s Search and Recommendation Algorithms Found by Auditors to Have Boosted Products That Contained Vaccine Misinformation
Description: Evidence of the "filter-bubble effect" were found by vaccine-misinformation researchers in Amazon's recommendations, where its algorithms presented users who performed actions on misinformative products with more misinfomative products.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Amazon developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Amazon Customers.
Incident Stats
Incident ID
139
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2021-01-21
Editors
Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
Abstract: There is a growing concern that e-commerce platforms are amplifying vaccine-misinformation. To investigate, we conduct two-sets of algorithmic audits for vaccine misinformation on the search and recommendation algorithms of Amazon…
New York - Amid growing concern that e-commerce platforms are amplifying vaccine-misinformation, a new study by researchers at University of Washington has found that Amazon hosts a large number of misinformative products belonging to categ…
Variants
A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.
