@strypey@trib@laura@danhon Unfortunately the “industry” (if we’re talking about Silicon Valley/surveillance capitalism) isn’t actually interested in carrying out ethical design because it would involve scrapping their hugely profitable and fundamentally unethical business model (design starts at the funding and business model of the organisation). When Big Tech says they want ethical design, they mean they want better PR.
@danhon that's a goddamn legit question and one of the reasons why design as an industry needs to come up with an ethical standard to be accountable to. Naturally, this leads to all those accreditation and professional standards wars - who accredits, how, why, what counts as accreditable, who enforces the standards, etc. I used to disagree with accreditation, but increasingly, I'm for it (though I don't have an answer to all the questions by any means).
@strypey@trib@laura@aral@danhon And by ethical standards you mean binding regulation, splitting up, and expropriation, right? Right? (I take it we're talking about surveillance and "AI" outfits.)
@mastodonmigration@strypey@trib@laura@danhon Because they are, and have always been, colonialists. This is the colonialist mindset. They are the white man bringing the fire. And the fire always comes with terms and conditions attached. The white man brings the fire not to share the warmth and illumination but to light his way by burning the other.
Exactly. How did things get so F'ed up that every single tech product is now designed with two customer groups in mind. Those who will use the product and the F'ing data brokers who will pay for the personal information of those who use the product. In most cases this second group of bloodsuckers is the more important and lucrative customer.
How does "ethical" fit into any part of this design paradigm?
* Rented, really. You’re too valuable to sell. If I’m Big Tech and I own you – the profile of you; the proxy, the algorithmic approximation you – I’m not going to sell that, I’m going to hold onto it forever and lease access to it to others.
Another analogy that you might consider is creative vs. extractive enterprise. In creative enterprise, a product is constructed from materials that cost less than people will pay for it. In extractive enterprise, something of value taken, with the cost being the mining operation. In surveillance capitalism it is the customer base's personal data that is being mined, in an extractive enterprise business model.
@cmw@danhon@strypey@trib@laura Make it the whole damn system. If you’re founding a VC-funded startup (aka a startup), or the CEO of one pre/post exit, there’s nothing you can do to make it ethical. Venture capital is an unethical, colonial, extractive funding model that creates unethical, colonial, extractive corporations. Ethics, in the corporate model, is the purview of the public relations department.
@cmw@danhon@strypey@trib@laura (In other words, you can practice #decoration, not #design, to make something look or sound ethical. Many times when folks say “design”, what they’re really talking about is decoration. Decoration is when you take something fundamentally unethical and sugarcoat it to try and mask the malodorous scent of the rot at its core and make it more palatable.)