Christopher Wylie\u2019s keynote speech<\/a> at The Business of Fashion\u2019s November 2018 Voices event confirmed this epiphany. \u201cFashion data was used to build AI models to help build the Alt-Right,\u201d he admitted. \u201cWe used weaponized algorithms; we used weaponised cultural narratives to undermine people and undermine their perception of reality, and fashion played a big part in that.\u201d While Wylie\u2019s work creating those algorithms was used to help the Trump campaign, the use of these algorithms to influence society isn\u2019t anything new. Trend forecasters and Instagram influencers who know how to market analytics to secure pricey deals do similar things. I would know – I\u2019ve been a trend forecaster, influencer and an AI curator over the past decade.<\/p>\nWylie and I share a lot of the same traits. He\u2019s been photographed wearing brands I wear and love. We\u2019re both queer immigrants. His hair is green; mine was, too. We\u2019re both devoted to beauty and fashion, and occasionally work with the power it disguises.\u00a0The difference is, I refuse to teach the AI I work with how to categorise data in ways that can be weaponised.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t speak to his Faustian bargain, but for me, it was an easy move from being another of capitalism\u2019s objets d\u2019art to being one of its (data) curators \u2013 it requires less physical labour and the temp agency offered a steadier paycheck. Rather than relying on my own body to be a billboard for a brand by wearing clothes from fashion conglomerates for money, I became part of the larger machine that curated social media. Being in charge of data \u2013 randomised, but not necessarily anonymous data such as private moments, scandalous moments, the mundane, etc. \u2013 didn\u2019t seduce me into a power hungry stupor. It made me afraid: not of the data per se, but how easily it could be misused. The most important part of my job became refusing to do things. One such example was categorising media by race.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":[{"ID":75060,"id":75060,"title":"Screen Shot 2019-03-12 at 15.05.51","filename":"Screen-Shot-2019-03-12-at-15.05.51.png","filesize":748681,"url":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Screen-Shot-2019-03-12-at-15.05.51.png","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/fashion-beauty-data\/screen-shot-2019-03-12-at-15-05-51\/","alt":"","author":"1","description":"","caption":"","name":"screen-shot-2019-03-12-at-15-05-51","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":75045,"date":"2019-03-12 14:06:27","modified":"2019-03-12 14:06:27","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/png","type":"image","subtype":"png","icon":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":582,"height":811,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Screen-Shot-2019-03-12-at-15.05.51.png","thumbnail-width":69,"thumbnail-height":96,"medium":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Screen-Shot-2019-03-12-at-15.05.51.png","medium-width":582,"medium-height":811,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Screen-Shot-2019-03-12-at-15.05.51.png","medium_large-width":582,"medium_large-height":811,"large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Screen-Shot-2019-03-12-at-15.05.51.png","large-width":582,"large-height":811,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Screen-Shot-2019-03-12-at-15.05.51.png","1536x1536-width":582,"1536x1536-height":811,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Screen-Shot-2019-03-12-at-15.05.51.png","2048x2048-width":582,"2048x2048-height":811,"trp-custom-language-flag":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Screen-Shot-2019-03-12-at-15.05.51.png","trp-custom-language-flag-width":9,"trp-custom-language-flag-height":12,"wpvr_mobile":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Screen-Shot-2019-03-12-at-15.05.51.png","wpvr_mobile-width":582,"wpvr_mobile-height":811}}],"settings":{"fit_width":"6","caption":"Mark Zuckerberg (2006). Photo: Elena Dorfmann"}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"
People of colour are the most heavily surveilled demographic in the world, as well as the most incarcerated. To the programmers, race is just data, an \u2018aesthetic event\u2019 turned binary. Yet as the murders of Eric Garner, Sandra Bland and other black people in police custody indicate, being seen doesn\u2019t make you more powerful, and surveillance doesn\u2019t necessarily lead to justice. There\u2019s no public US government database that lists the shootings of black people, and it\u2019s not because the records don\u2019t exist \u2013 The Washington Post publishes them. Despite this, for many programmers, race is just data, an aesthetic made into binary code. So when we ask for more surveillance, we\u2019re not becoming safer. On the contrary, it only makes things worse for groups that it disproportionately targets \u2013 namely, people of colour. Indeed, if race really is just a neutral data category then why, when tested on members of the US congress, did Amazon\u2019s facial recognition technology \u2013 software used by some police departments \u2013 falsely identify 11 state representatives who happened to be persons of colour as known criminals? And why, prior to 2015, did Google\u2019s image recognition algorithm auto-tag images of black people as \u2018gorillas\u2019? Because data capitalism is just the latest form of capitalism, one with biases and skewed results. The data collected about us is mostly used to recognise us as criminals or future customers.<\/p>\n
A shoplifter at beauty store Sephora, for example, who is sloppy enough to get caught using the selfie terminals customers use to get product recommendations, would technically be seen as both. Another good example is that, strangely enough, the growing number of white Instagrammers who pretend to be black don\u2019t seem to experience the ill consequences of real-life anti-black surveillance outside of their overly tanned Instagram grids \u2013 just the fetishisation, which they hoped for. Race really does matter – and data capitalism has developed to enforce the worst parts of this truism.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"instagram","code":"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BtMODPMH4SH\/","settings":{"width":"10"}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"
It\u2019s not just about what you see or do, but what you like, of course. Amazon\u2019s digital voice-activated assistant Alexa has a database of beauty advice that shapes itself according to your purchase history. It\u2019s a trade-off of efficacy versus privacy, but that bargain shouldn\u2019t be necessary. DNA testing companies like 23andme promise to help you discover your genetic history, but they also sell user data to pharmaceutical companies (and in July last year, GlaxoSmithKline bought a $300 million stake in 23andme). In the US, these pharma companies sell body monitoring devices so they can charge more for prescriptions measured by said monitors. In turn, insurance companies can refuse to cover pharmaceuticals if you don\u2019t do enough exercise with your body monitor on. And both industries buy data from brokers to find more customers to target.<\/p>\n
That reads as a tangent but it\u2019s not. Beauty products are often marketed as being as effective as healthcare. Development for pharmaceuticals do influence beauty products, but again, in the US specifically, access to the most effective products requires access to healthcare. Take for instance Spironolactone, a drug often used to treat high blood pressure but which is also prescribed by dermatologists as a treatment for acne. Other examples of skincare treatments that require expensive medical permission include Accutane (a steroid also used to treat acne) and Botox. Over-the-counter products are assumed to be more effective if you spend more money on them, when in reality, the most effective products are only available if you can afford private healthcare.<\/p>\n
Our poorly protected data tells brands what we\u2019re most likely to purchase, and there are bots that publish artificial reviews of those products to the sites we frequently visit. The weaker our data privacy laws become, the more often our online lives are used to \u2018help\u2019 us purchase specific products from brands that bid high enough to know who we are.<\/p>\n
In many avenues of our digital existence, privacy has in fact long since disappeared \u2013 but it\u2019s not too late to demand change. It\u2019s not just for your own life, but for the protection of communities who may be far more vulnerable and far more exposed. There\u2019s still time to start more conversations that call out these interconnected industries and hold them accountable for what they\u2019re doing. There\u2019s still time to demand safety, to demand that our lives be shared on our terms, and insist that our identities are ours to use. To demand the thing that beauty has always promised us: the freedom to define our own narratives.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"
This article originally appeared in SLEEK 61, out now<\/a>.<\/p>\n"}]},"yoast_head":"\nHow our online beauty buys are being used to identify us as customers and criminals How our online beauty buys are being used to identify us as customers and criminals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/fashion-beauty-data\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How our online beauty buys are being used to identify us as customers and criminals How our online beauty buys are being used to identify us as customers and criminals\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/fashion-beauty-data\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sleek Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sleekmag\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-03-12T16:47:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-03-12T17:36:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@sleekmag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@sleekmag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Verfasst von\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"sleek\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/\",\"name\":\"Sleek Magazine\",\"description\":\"Sleek is Germany\u2019s leading independent media house\/brand for creativity and innovation located in Berlin the creative capital of the world. 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