Alipay: The Most Toxic Way to Pay for Anything
In the most literal sense, a filter is something that is used in order to remove impurities from something. However, in a more digital context it is also used to remove 'impurities', but even more so, is used to 'improve' a person's features. Rettberg (2014) notes that in a social media environment, filters are often perceived to add to an image (i.e. boosting the colour or blurring parts of an image in order to enhance another aspect) (p.21).
Filters have certainly developed over the last five years alone, where originally they were used in order to change the person's face into something silly, like a lemon. Where now, especially on very public visual social media (i.e. Instagram), filters are used to meet an 'ideal' beauty standard to fit societies heteronormative beauty principles. Often filters will smooth out the person's skin, make their lips bigger, nose smaller, even when the primary function of the filter may not be for that function, for example wanting to change your eye colour, and as a 'bonus' comes with the aforementioned features as well. Furthermore, as noted by Miller (2021), these filters *usually* take on an androgynous, caucasian appearance which begs the question of the ethical implications of filters in addition to the problems of body image and body dysmorphia that are often intensified by these filters.
A prominent example of beauty filters working their way into everyday lives, more so than our daily (even hourly use of social media, is the update made by Alipay, where they incorporated beauty filters into their payment system. Alipay is very similar to PayPal in that they are third-party and peer-to-peer (respectively) payment platforms. In 2019, Alipay made an update to their platform that added beauty filters to their facial recognition system (one way users can certify a payment, they can also use a PIN). After the initial roll-out "face-scan payments increased by 100%... and they number of women users... increased by 123%" (Li 2019 as cited by Peng 2020). In their press release announcing the update they described it as "[making] you look even prettier than with a beauty camera. I bet you'll be impressed" (Liao 2019). This casual phrasing of 'clear improvements' only reinforces the stagnant and dogged ideals society has, and their persistence in order to maintain those values is maddening as there is always so much talk of reform and supposed progress, especially in a Western format, that is so blatantly wrong and frankly patronising. There are not enough words to explain the clear bias in technology development and the systemised oppression by men in order to bolster "patriarchal capitalism" (Peng 2020). This is further emphasised by the male values that infiltrate technology development (*cough* Alipay *cough*) and manipulating "gender power relations" (Peng 2020) through the world's routine consumption of technology developed by men. The article that has been quoted is a great read to further understand the Alipay update:
https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/doi/epub/10.1080/14680777.2020.1750779?needAccess=true
This YouTube video is also great for a quick overview of the effect of filters from the perspective of social media users, medical experts and social influencers:
Liao, R 2019, Chinaâs Alipay Adds Sought-After Beauty Filters to Face-Scan Payments, Tech Crunch, viewed 21 April <https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/03/alipay-beauty-filters/>
Miller, L 2021, âMDA20009 Week Seven Guest Lecture Instagram Filtersâ, MDA20009 Digital Communities, Learning Materials via Canvas, Swinburne University of Technology, 21 April, viewed 21 April 2021
Peng, A Y 2020, âAlipay Adds âBeauty Filtersâ to Face-Scan Payments: A Form of Patriarchal Control Over Womenâs Bodiesâ, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 20, no. 4
Rettberg, J W 2014, âFiltered Realityâ, in Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves, Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 20-32