Contribution to the handbook
Supporting · Assessed 2026-10-27
The distinction between hiddenness and opacity provides useful background for discussing citizens’ information and participation, but this source-position question does not specify a governance design or tested safeguard.
Does this challenge the goal?
None identified
The question asks for the author’s concerns; it does not contest the handbook’s goal or beneficiary boundary.
The supplied answers are AI interpretations of one manuscript, not independent evidence about how often these concerns occur.
Why this category?
- citizen-interest
- background
The evidence distinguishes the concerns conceptually but does not establish their prevalence or effects in particular public systems.
This is an AI assessment of contribution to the goal, separate from whether the question has an answer.
Authority, accountability and resilience →
Read the exploration goalName both concerns and distinguish what each concerns.
What we can say so far
Danaher identifies two distinct concerns: **hiddenness**, concerning the collection and use of personal information and the associated privacy or control issues; and **opacity**, concerning whether people can understand how algorithmic decisions are reached and meaningfully participate in the public procedures that produce them. His central emphasis is opacity’s implications for participation and the standing of public decision-making.
What remains open
- The supplied passages do not establish how often either concern arises or whether, or how often, they overlap in particular systems.
Conditions and limits
- This reports Danaher’s position as represented in the supplied readable author-manuscript passages, rather than an independent empirical finding.
- The article’s main focus is the moral and political standing of decision processes; it sets aside privacy and data-protection concerns as its primary focus, while discussing hiddenness as a distinct concern connected to privacy.
Objections to consider
- The evidence says privacy and data protection are set aside as the article’s primary focus, which could be misread as excluding any privacy connection to hiddenness. The direct distinctions in the supporting evidence clarify that hiddenness is privacy-related, while opacity is the central participation and public-procedure concern.
Evidence and related ideas
Supporting evidence, qualifications and context play different roles in this answer.
qualifies
Public decisions need justification The article asks whether heavy reliance on algorithms to help make laws, decide trials or apply regulations could make public decisions morally problematic. It sets aside privacy and data-protection concerns to focus on the moral and political standing of the decision process.
Clarifies that privacy is not the article’s primary focus, qualifying how hiddenness’s privacy connection should be framed.
The Threat of Algocracy: Reality, Resistance and Accommodation
Read full source: The Threat of Algocracy: Reality, Resistance and Accommodation (opens in a new tab) ↗Read source discussion: The Threat of Algocracy: Reality, Resistance and Accommodation →
supports
Understanding may be the deeper problem Danaher says difficulty understanding how an algorithm shapes a decision may be as serious as, or more serious than, the fact that its role is hidden. He uses opacity to mean that people may find a process hard to understand through human reasoning.
Supports the opacity concern by distinguishing hiddenness from difficulty understanding how a decision process works.
The Threat of Algocracy: Reality, Resistance and Accommodation
Read full source: The Threat of Algocracy: Reality, Resistance and Accommodation (opens in a new tab) ↗Read source discussion: The Threat of Algocracy: Reality, Resistance and Accommodation →
supports
A risk to participation and understanding Danaher calls it the threat of algocracy when algorithm-based systems structure and limit people’s opportunities to take part in and understand public decision-making. He presents this as a significant threat to the moral and political standing of those processes.
Connects opacity to limits on participation and understanding in public decision-making.