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Strategies to bolster and support future calls for algorithm abandonment

Develop concrete strategies, interventions, and infrastructures that bolster and support future calls for the abandonment of harmful algorithmic systems by organizations with jurisdiction over their design, development, or use.

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Background

The authors note uneven outcomes of past campaigns and the need for proactive support mechanisms—spanning media visibility, auditing infrastructure, regulatory tools, and transparency requirements—to strengthen abandonment as a harm mitigation pathway.

Systematic strategy development can equip stakeholders to more effectively contest harmful systems and prompt organizational decisions to discontinue them when repair is inadequate.

References

Thus, open questions remain when considering the possibility of abandoning harmful algorithms as a mechanism of harm mitigation and accountability: What types of events preceded and precipitated the decision to abandon an algorithm? How did impacted communities and other actors work together to contest harmful algorithms? What technical, political, or social characteristics of real-world algorithmic deployments posed barriers for contestation, accountability, and abandonment? How can future calls for abandonment be bolstered and supported?

— The Fall of an Algorithm: Characterizing the Dynamics Toward Abandonment (2404.13802 - Johnson et al., 21 Apr 2024) in Section 1: Introduction