Information Ethics and Online matrimony

 Indian marriage landscape is dominated by the trend of arrange marriages. For centuries, it has operated through a moderator-based mechanism where a “bicholia” or “pandit ji” will act as a connecting link between two families.  He brings trust into the system and introduces the two families to each other.  The offline-arrange marriage pattern operates within 6 C framework which is caste-class-color-creed-city-career. Generally, a doctor prefers a doctor. An upper class prefers the upper class. A high caste prefers a high caste. Fair-skinned color prefers a fair-skinned color person and likewise. 

The increasing penetration of mobile and smartphone has led to the popularity of Online matrimonial websites. The online matrimony portal poses itself as a perfect combination of technology and tradition. However, it misses the point that the tradition of Indian marriages itself is changing very fast as part of a larger change process in society [4]. Therefore, it is pertinent to ask whether online matrimony is adapting to such social changes or are they trapped in the interfaces defined by age-old traditions and biases and unknowingly becoming a carrier of these biases from one generation to the next. These are some of the questions we attempted to investigate in our project.

 

SIL861 provided us necessary theoretical concepts, tools, and techniques to perform an ethical biopsy of these platforms. During our exercise of ethical biopsy, we came across some interesting trends. We created a fake profile on portals and mentioned in the about me section that the profile is fake. We even uploaded a photo of a “Jinn” in one of the profiles. However, no one reported the profile was abused. We even told the verification agent on the phone that the profile is fake however, the profile was not removed from the system. This raises concerns whether online spaces like matrimonial websites are safe for people or not.

 

Another interesting finding was, when we left the partner choice filters as empty and checked if the automated recommendations received would be religion-agnostic or not. To our shock, religion was a factor in the algorithm. All the daily 20 recommendations were of people who had same religion as mine.

 

We conducted surveys and semi-structured interviews to understand what people have to say and think about these issues. While people have strong opinion about irrelevance of caste/religion in marriage but they did not seem to notice these subliminal filters in the portal.

 

During our ethical audit of the online matrimonial platform, we came across many such issues which have very strong social-psychological influence in lone term. This led us to question about role of technology in our social-political-economic-psychological space. Should technology remain a mere tool to reflect social realities of our times or should it have some liberating effect on the ecosystem. Should it be status-quoist or should it be reformist in nature?

 

Technology has been a driver of big social change. For example, just look at how dinner conversations have vanished and replaced by WhatsApp conversations. How shopping behavior has changed? Even in the domain of matrimony, the link of the middle man (pundit ji) is replaced by technology. Then why should technology promote the factors of caste, class, color, and religion through its space?

These are some of the questions which the information technologists should answer.