Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenor:
-
Jaime Cuellar
(Pontificia Universidad Javeriana)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
-
Óscar Moreno-Martínez
(Pontificia Universidad Javeriana)
- Format:
- Traditional Open Panel
Short Abstract:
How opaque can the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) be? Do they camouflage human biases or blind spots? How do their instability, contingency and differentiated access influence the communication process they facilitate? This panel aims to understand APIs as political technologies.
Long Abstract:
How opaque can the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) be? Do they camouflage human biases or blind spots? How do their instability, contingency and differentiated access influence the communication process they facilitate? Do their artificial limits set social limits? APIs are usually defined as intermediary languages, or common codes between systems/applications that work, for example, to extract data from social networks, connect with Chat GPT-style artificial intelligence models or link companies with on-demand workers. Usually, APIs allow researchers or programmers to communicate with companies or designers such as Meta, X, Tik Tok, Reddit, Wikipedia, Google Play, or Open AI, among others. This process of communication, like any other, is not neutral. Following Winner (1987), Verbeek (2011), O’Neil (2016), Weltevrede (2016), and Eubanks (2018), this panel aims to understand APIs as political technologies. Moreover, APIs can be conceived as governance methods much more than simple information intermediaries.
The kind of formats that are welcomed in the panel: papers, dialogue sessions, and workshops.
References:
Winner, L. (1980). Do Artifacts Have Politics? Daedalus, Vol. 109, No. 1, Modern Technology: Problem or Opportunity? (Winter, 1980), pp. 121-136. The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20024652
Verbeek, P. (2011). Moralizing technology: Understanding and designing the morality of things. University of Chicago Press.
O’Neil, Cathy. (2016). Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. New York: Crown Publishers.
Weltevrede, E. J. T. (2016). Repurposing digital methods: The research affordances of platforms and engines. University of Amsterdam. https://dare.uva.nl/search?identifier=aaaa9bb3-8647-41df-954c-2bb1e9f15d77
Eubanks, V. (2018). Automating Inequality. How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. New York: ST. Martin´s Press.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Roser Pujadas (UCL) Erika valderrama
Short abstract:
We theorise web APIs as political technologies implicated in the configuration of an algorithmic rationality, which is world-making as it sorts the world in specific ways, and tend to reinforce the position of power of a few corporations.
Long abstract:
Technologies can be conceptualised as world-making, that is, as political actors participating in configuring the world (Latour, 2005; Suchman, 2007; Winner, 1980). Following this perspective, we theorise web APIs as political technologies implicated in the configuration of an algorithmic rationality (Aradau & Blanke, 2022), which participates in the circulation of power (Foucault, 1980).
Our everyday practices are increasingly mediated by AI systems and digital platforms that deploy algorithms, e.g. to personalise, recommend or rank. The programmability of platforms involves making data platform ready (Helmond, 2015; Plantin et al., 2018) so that algorithms can process it (Bucher, 2018). This involves categorising, tagging, etc. according to specific rationalities. When a platform offers a web API to offer a service or exchange data, this web API structures and sorts data in specific ways. This rationality embedded in web APIs follows a business logic.
This is particularly problematic given that these technologies are increasingly controlled by just a few corporations. Various factors explain this concentration of power—network effects (Rochet & Tirole, 2003), protectionist regulations (Rikap & Lundvall, 2021), and the level of investment, data access, and capabilities needed. Web APIs play an important role as well. On the one hand, they are important governance mechanisms, which in turn force third party users to adapt to its rules and rationality; on the other, web APIs enable the access not only to data, but also to real-time insights that reinforce the capacity of platforms to improve their analytic capabilities (Pujadas et al., 2024).
Alain Sandoz (University of Neuchâtel) Léa Stiefel (IRIN.CH)
Short abstract:
The user of an API only knows what it gives, what it controls, and what it gets back. What it does not control makes up the opaque side of the API. The contribution identifies the limits of transparency and probes the depths of opacity that come with the use of APIs in information infrastructures.
Long abstract:
An Application Programming Interface is a technical mechanism that enables a calling program to trigger the execution of a called program, the former possibly supplying data to, and receiving data from, the called system.
The question of transparency (or of opacity) for the actor that controls the calling program is twofold: (1) who executes the called program? and (2) what does that program do?
The only way for that actor to be able to answer these two questions is to directly or indirectly fully control the execution of the called program.
In other words, users of an API only know what they give, what they control, and what they get back. What remains, i.e., what they do not control, makes up the opaque side of the API.
This « lack of control » spreads spatially and temporally out of the caller’s reach through the information infrastructure.
Based on extensive fieldwork on digitisation projects in Swiss agriculture between 2017 and 2019 and on subsequent research on the politics of digital architectures, the authors (a computer scientist and a social scientist working in an interdisciplinary dialogue) discuss the socio-technical concepts underlying the assertions above.
The notions of data owner vs. data user, digital service provider vs. digital service user, or control vs. dependency, are defined and contextualised.
In doing so, the authors identify the limits of transparency and probe the depths of opacity that come with the use of APIs in information infrastructures.
Victor Manuel Hernandez Lopez (Fundación Universitaria del Área Andina)
Short abstract:
APIs empower the innovation of ignorance. Platforms like YouTube hold immense power through biased algorithms, opaque data practices, and monopoly control. How is it used as a means of power in ignorance?
Long abstract:
The YouTube API offers a compelling example of the power dynamics at play in API ecosystems. It grants developers access to a vast number of user data, enabling them to create innovative applications and services. However, it also illustrates potential concerns:
1. Algorithmic Bias and Censorship: YouTube's recommendation algorithm, which influences what videos users see, has been criticized for promoting misinformation, polarizing content, and silencing marginalized voices. Developers relying on the API to integrate YouTube videos into their apps may perpetuate these biases without understanding their underlying mechanisms.
2. Data Collection and Privacy: The API collects user data, including viewing history and personal information, which can be used for targeted advertising or other purposes. Developers and users may not fully grasp the extent of data collection or have control over its use, raising privacy concerns.
3. Monopoly Power and Gatekeeping: YouTube wields significant power over who can access and use its API. It can restrict access to certain features, impose usage limits, or even ban developers for violating its terms of service.
Jaime Cuellar (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana) Óscar Moreno-Martínez (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana)
Short abstract:
What happens when CHATGPT API access becomes more closed through charging or blocking certain functions? How much do the results of a same function change when the prompts varied?
Long abstract:
CHATGPT uses neural networks to train and feed models that are then introduced into the market, but we do not know how they work inside. These neural networks obscure the way OPENAI (CHATGPT's company) designs its models, as well as its protocols for other applications to connect. The price changes depending on the chosen version, which also causes the model to vary in capacity or access. To communicate with the CHATGPT programming interface, it is necessary to resort to its API. Following Jünger, the Social Sciences, Economics, and Engineering have been using this type of APIs not so much to analyze as to collect data. What happens when access for this collection becomes more closed through charging or blocking certain functions? How much do the results of the same function change when the prompts are varied? This study proposes an explanatory mixed methodology. It begins with an experimental quantitative approach using a multi-section code to analyze feelings that can modify variables such as the model, temperature, and prompt. By varying the way of requesting processing, the results change. It is assumed that it should not do so in that way. This is where a qualitative analysis from linguistics and Science and Technology Studies comes in, responding to the experimental variations of the request and the results.
Isabella Jaimes Rodríguez (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana)
Short abstract:
This paper analyzes APIs as tech tools and governance methods through data feminism, examining power dynamics via case studies of YouTube and Google Play APIs. It also explores API usage in challenging power structures.
Long abstract:
This paper explores the dual role of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) as both technological tools and governance methods, analyzing their limitations and advantages through the lens of data feminism (D'ignazio & Klein, 2023). Throughout case studies using YouTube and Play Store APIs, it will explore, via the principle of "examining power," the restrictions and variations in their access and the communication processes they enable. In that regard, it will examine two principles from this point of view: "considering the context" and "rethinking binaries and hierarchies", approaching how the context can be considered through the use of these APIs in the data extraction process. Furthermore, it will look into how API-mediated data extraction practices can either reinforce or challenge existing hierarchies and binary classifications. In the second place, drawing upon the principle of "challenging power", this paper will analyze documented cases where the utilization and development of APIs by open-source and Global South communities defy predefined constraints of these infrastructures, taking as an example how Google Maps APIs have been used as a political tool to empower marginalized communities to assert their presence and address their needs (Luque-Ayala & Neves Maia, 2019).
References.
D'ignazio, C., & Klein, L. F. (2023). Data feminism. MIT press.
Luque-Ayala, A., & Neves Maia, F. (2019). Digital territories: Google maps as a political technique in the re-making of urban informality. Environment and Planning D: Society and space, 37(3), 449-467.