Bug in Instagram’s “Related Hashtags” Algorithm Allegedly Caused Disproportionate Treatment of Political Hashtags

August 5, 2020

An Instagram spokesperson reported a bug in the platform's algorithm, allegedly causing it to preferentially treat some politically partisan hashtags. This incident underscores the importance of safe and secure AI practices. For those interested in shaping harm prevention guardrails for AI through the HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM, join us by Govern, Mapping this incident within our AI incident database.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.674, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.670, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.669, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: instagram
Alleged developer: instagram
Alleged harmed parties: instagram-users

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/331

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

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