Contribution to the handbook
Supporting · Assessed 2026-10-27
Goal contribution: supporting. The distinction provides useful framing for safeguards: protecting personal information and enabling people to understand or participate in public procedures are different concerns. The question itself does not specify a mechanism.
Does this challenge the goal?
In-scope gap
Distinguishing privacy-related hiddenness from participation-related opacity can help identify different governance concerns within the existing goals. The question does not challenge those goals.
The evidence distinguishes the concerns but does not establish that they never overlap or specify how to address either one.
Why this category?
- q-danaher-threat-of-algocracy-def68bf467d2ba46
The records interpret the same source root; the distinction is useful framing, not independent evidence about the prevalence or effects of either concern.
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 goalExplain how the author characterizes hiddenness and opacity as distinct concerns.
What we can say so far
Danaher distinguishes hiddenness, a concern about privacy and control over personal information—including how data is collected or used—from opacity, a concern about whether people can understand the reasoning behind algorithmic decisions and participate meaningfully in political procedures. In his account, opacity is not itself a privacy concern, even though some theorists have discussed it in privacy terms. He treats difficulty understanding a system as a serious concern in its own right, potentially as serious as or more serious than not knowing that an algorithm is involved.
What remains open
- The supplied passages do not establish how frequently either concern occurs or how often they overlap in practice.
Conditions and limits
- This is the author's conceptual distinction as represented in the supplied readable author-manuscript material, not an independently verified claim about all uses of the terms.
- The distinction does not establish that hiddenness and opacity never overlap in particular systems.
Objections to consider
- The passage cautions that the conceptual distinction does not prove the concerns never overlap in practice. The answer preserves that limitation rather than claiming absolute separation.
- The note that some theorists use privacy terms qualifies the terminology, but the passage still explicitly states Danaher's own distinction.
Evidence and related ideas
Supporting evidence, qualifications and context play different roles in this answer.
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.
Distinguishes not knowing that an algorithm is involved from difficulty understanding how it shapes a decision, and says the latter may be as serious or more serious.
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 →
context
Some systems are hard to explain Some data-mining systems are interpretable: people can explain their reasons and factors in ordinary language. Others are non-interpretable because their workings are too complex for people to understand.
Adds the interpretability sense of opacity: some systems' workings are too complex to explain in ordinary language.
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 →
context
Human involvement may not be enough A human may be formally “in” or “on” the decision process but still be unable to challenge a system that they cannot understand.
Illustrates why opacity can impede meaningful challenge even when a human is formally involved.
The Threat of Algocracy: Reality, Resistance and Accommodation
Read full source ↗