[Design] Fwd: Early Facebook and Google Employees Form Coalition to Fight What They Built - The New York Times

[Jon Katz]

This is an interesting development related to a piece
<http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/the-binge-breaker/501122/>
shared by Josh almost a year ago about Google's former "design ethicist",
Tristan Harris. Tristan has been waging a war against engineering products
that vie for user attention at the expense of their users' wellbeing. He
raises interesting questions about addiction and the morals of trying to
increase time spent (even on a project like Wikipedia).


Now it seems to be getting traction. They have raised tens of millions of
$s for PSAs about tech addiction and are developing guidelines for
engineers and designers. I'm curious to see them when they're done.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/04/technology/early-faceb
ook-google-employees-fight-tech.html?referer=

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Thanks. Direct link without paywall:
http://humanetech.com/problem

Federico

[Trevor Bolliger]

Thanks for sending this along, Jon. I really find this topic fascinating
and important.

It's easy to hide behind out mission and think these ethics don't apply to
us but you're certainly correct: some people could likely be classified as
addicted to editing Wikipedia. Is this good for them? What do we owe them
in terms of wellness? How can helping our users live a balanced (yet
engaged!) life with Wikimedia, and how might it actually *improve* the
encyclopedia.

(Small aside: There are some other categories of websites/apps that manage
to do this responsibly, even though their business objectives are to make a
profit. I'm always impressed with how most dating apps manage to do this
(their service is designed to get people *off* their service.) Health apps
could also be another place to explore ethical engagement tactics. And my
personal favorite is Nintendo — it flat-out interrupts some games to tell
the player to go outside and get some air. 😆)

Jon — do you propose we try to get them on the horn to hear about their
work?

Post by Jon Katz
This is an interesting development related to a piece
<http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/the-binge-breaker/501122/>
shared by Josh almost a year ago about Google's former "design ethicist",
Tristan Harris. Tristan has been waging a war against engineering products
that vie for user attention at the expense of their users' wellbeing. He
raises interesting questions about addiction and the morals of trying to
increase time spent (even on a project like Wikipedia).
Now it seems to be getting traction. They have raised tens of millions
of $s for PSAs about tech addiction and are developing guidelines for
engineers and designers. I'm curious to see them when they're done.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/04/technology/early-facebook-google-employees-fight-tech.html?referer=
--

Trevor Bolliger
Product Manager, Anti-Harassment Tools
Wikimedia Foundation