Love, Algorithms, and Inequality: Rethinking Online Dating

Dating apps are often celebrated for making it easier to meet new people. But are dating apps actually helping people find love — or just reinforcing racial and gender biases? While online platforms promise convenience and connection, their algorithms may be quietly sorting, ranking, and excluding people in ways that both mirror and magnify real-world inequalities.

“The dating apps are only giving us what they think we want, and that's the problem,” says Apryl Williams, assistant professor of communication and media and Anti-Racism Collaborative Research and Community Impact (RCI) fellow.

Through her project Swipe Rights, supported by her RCI fellowship, Williams examines how bias operates in online dating spaces and what can be done to address it. She emphasizes the need for greater transparency and accountability from platform designers, as well as more awareness among users about how their data shapes the matches they see.

Williams’ forthcoming book, Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating, takes a deeper look at how algorithms influence intimacy and belonging — and what it would take to create more equitable digital spaces.

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