Interdisciplinary Humanities / Media Studies

Critical Algorithms
& Surveillance

Tools for examining algorithmic bias, surveillance systems, discriminatory design, and community resistance — built from SFPC Code Societies curricula on code as social and political technology.

code as social technologyalgorithms and powersurveillancebiometric technologiesdiscriminatory designracial hierarchies in algorithmsalgorithmic justicepredictive policingcarceral capitalismencoded inequityacts of refusal
Exploration tools
01
Live

Domain Annotator

Hiring, lending, facial recognition — how racial hierarchies get encoded.

Pick a domain — hiring algorithms, lending models, facial recognition, predictive policing — and trace how racial hierarchies get encoded in training data and model design. Theory meets real systems.

02
Live

Surveillance Lineage

Pick a surveillance technology. Trace its origins, stated purpose, and actual use.

Choose a surveillance technology — biometric databases, social media monitoring, predictive policing tools — and trace its institutional origin, its stated justification, and how it has actually been deployed.

03
Live

Coded Bias Audit

Look at a real interface. Name whose experience was centered — and whose wasn't.

Examine a real interface or system design and identify the assumptions encoded in it — whose experience was centered in the design, whose was excluded, and what that exclusion produces in practice.

04
Live

Carceral Capitalism Map

Prison labor, bail bonds, private prisons — the economics of incarceration.

Explore how incarceration intersects with economic structures — prison labor markets, the bail bond industry, private prison contracts, the school-to-prison pipeline. How profit and punishment interlock.

05
Live

Acts Of Refusal

Communities that resisted surveillance and algorithmic control. What worked.

Read case studies of communities that pushed back against surveillance or algorithmic control — facial recognition bans, data strikes, encryption adoption, legal challenges. What strategies succeeded and why.

Make your own on vibes.diy →