Algorithmic homophily makes moving from worker to capitalist harder for nonwhite influencers

Evidence

In other words, platforms algorithmically privilege whiteness through the enforcement of homophily, through forms of automation that reproduce structures of racist social organization, and some influencers respond by manipulating their bodies through risky practices that likewise hold up whiteness as an ideal. This does not mean that platforms exclude people who are not white, but it does mean that it is radically more difficult for influencers who are not white to get attention and to get paid—and thus to move into the position we have described in which one becomes capitalist rather than a worker. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 41

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names homophily as the mechanism by which algorithmic automation reproduces racist social organization.
• XREF: Critical for the reader: it ties racial stratification directly to the worker-vs-capitalist threshold that defines the Corpocene. — connects to: Social software can promote inequality rather than counter it. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 19; Top marketing influencers skew overwhelmingly male and white — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 486