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1. Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Jan-2024 17:55:22 JST Aral Balkan

   Dear designers, your job isn’t to make unethical systems more palatable, it is to create ethical systems.

   (If you’re doing the former, call yourself a decorator, not a designer, because that’s what you are.)

   #design

   • Accept purpose. (laprice@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Jan-2024 19:10:13 JST Accept purpose.

     in reply to

     @aral
     "systematic inequality inverts justice."
     Nail meet hammer.

   • ninavizz (ninavizz@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Jan-2024 19:15:02 JST ninavizz

     in reply to

     @aral I want to agree with this, but Eugene Stoner, Mikhail Kalashnikov, and Robert Oppenheimer are possibly the most consequential designers of our time. They solved "problems" clients brought to them. They did not decorate. Their strategies, principles, and goals, all widely different and razor sharp in needs-meeting. We need to recognize that, in order to recognize deceptive, nefarious, or murderous solutioning sought by employers. Then, we must choose to comply or resist.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Jan-2024 19:15:02 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • ninavizz

     @ninavizz Oh, yes, there are the out-and-out psychopaths and the folks who actually make the most horrible things in full knowledge of what they’re doing. They’re not the ones I’m talking about here. (You’re right, they’re designers. Designers who are horrible human beings, but, yes, designers. They weren’t painting weapons in rainbow colours and creating cute mascots for them at least.) My point is more about the folks today who work to make surveillance capitalists appear cute and cuddly.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Jan-2024 23:12:28 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Khrys

     @Khrys Yeah, no trillion-dollar corporation is your friend. And Apple will take profits over doing the right thing every time if the numbers are large enough (see the billions they take from Google, removing VPN apps, etc., in China, etc.) However, they aren’t the same as Google/Facebook and a large part of their profit is based on the differences. Some of those differences are beneficial for individuals. At least for the moment. But, again, they’re not your friend.

   • Khrys (khrys@mamot.fr)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Jan-2024 23:12:29 JST Khrys

     in reply to

     @aral Hi, thanks for the talk, especially for the Part 1 and the apple (not the company, the fruit ;-) analogy, with the rotten core in Part 2.

     I don't understand the slide about Apple, though :
     Apple doesn't belong to the "good guys" that only sell products. They sell us too.

     One example among others : https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/06/apple-provides-powerful-insights-into-new-areas-of-health/

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jan-2024 01:52:03 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Khrys

     @Khrys Sure, the moment a brain surgeon (who doesn’t have time to figure out how to install a different operating system on their phone because they have brain surgery in the morning) can use a Fairphone without having to use Google’s services, I’ll recommend that instead.

     (Fairphone’s taken venture capital, so I wouldn’t hold my breath, by the way. They’re now looking for their exit – i.e., to sell the company to a larger one or to go public with an IPO.)

   • Khrys (khrys@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jan-2024 01:52:04 JST Khrys

     in reply to

     @aral Ok but I still don't understand that choice : Fairphone would have been a much better example - at least you can put free software on their phones + they are repairable.

     Wheras you can do nothing at all with an Iphone - except use it as Apple wants you to use it, with Apple-validated apps. You don't own that shit. It owns you and your data. That Apple chooses - or not - to use these data for now is not what matters. You don't even know what they really do. You have to believe them.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jan-2024 02:03:50 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Khrys
     • Mindiell

     @Mindiell @Khrys Which is what ‘no trillion-dollar corporation is your friend’ means.

     However, if someone asks me if they should get an Android phone or an iPhone today and I care about their privacy, I’m going to say get an iPhone. Heck, I have four decades of programming experience and I still use an iPhone because I don’t have the time to keep a non-Google Android phone secure on an ongoing basis (and that’s as someone whose daily driver is a Linux box).

   • Mindiell (mindiell@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jan-2024 02:03:51 JST Mindiell

     in reply to

     • Khrys

     @aral @Khrys Whoah ! Believe that Apple is different from FB/Google "at the moment" is totally wrong :/
     None of this "big-players" are your friend.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jan-2024 02:06:45 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Khrys
     • Mindiell

     @Mindiell @Khrys Fair enough; you’re a braver person than I :)

   • Mindiell (mindiell@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jan-2024 02:06:46 JST Mindiell

     in reply to

     • Khrys

     @aral @Khrys Right, and this is why I still have a nokia... And as 2G is going to disappear, maybe I'll have to stop to have a phone :/