Digital Ethics

While the US debates to what extent Russia influenced its presidential election, a small country in northern Europe is already gearing up to fend off foreign interference in its next election.

Former Facebook president Sean Parker hits the company for its effect on society: "God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains" pic.twitter.com/8GI0DykJGB— Axios (@axios) November 9, 2017

Twitter neglected to roll out the new 280 character limit for vision-impaired people who use a screen reader.

In this report, the author draws on interviews with journalists and critics, as well as a broad reading of published work, to assess the current state of technology coverage and criticism in the popular discourse, and to offer some thoughts on how to move the critical enterprise forward. Tow Fellow Sara Watson finds that what it means to cover technology is a moving target. Today, the technology beat focuses less on the technology itself and more on how technology intersects with and transforms everything readers care about—from politics to personal relationships. But as technology coverage...

The Superintendent of Well-Being at Google discusses his morning routine and the book that changed his life.

I’m not on Facebook. In fact, I deactivated my Facebook account in 2008. Since then, I’ve enjoyed four, Facebook-free years. Has my life become less sociable as a result? No. Do I miss Facebook? No…

In The Matrix, machines harvest energy from humans by subduing their minds with an advanced computer simulation. In our world, Facebook…

The algorithms Facebook and other tech companies use to boost engagement – and increase profits – have led to spectacular failures of sensitivity and worse…

There is a saying in computer science: garbage in, garbage out. When we feed machines data that reflects our prejudices, they mimic them. Does a horrifying future await people forced to live at the mercy of algorithms?

A growing number of CEOs agree: shareholder value theory is stupid

AI holds the promise to solve problems beyond the scope of human imagination. But if an AI can create, who owns its work?

In real life, in the natural course of conversation, it is not uncommon to talk about a person you may know. You meet someone and say, “I’m from Sarasota,” and they say, “Oh, I have a grandparent in Sarasota,” and they tell you where they live and their name, and you may or may not recognize them.

Is it possible that overfishing, super germs, and global warming are all caused by the same thing? In 1968, a man named Garrett Hardin sat down to write an essay about overpopulation. Within it, he discovered a pattern of human behavior that explains some of history’s biggest problems. Nicholas Amendolare describes the tragedy of the commons.

You probably shouldn't be surprised.

Researchers built a custom platform to root out trackers in mobile apps. They discovered 44 different varieties in 300 apps downloaded by billions of people.

Machine learning is vulnerable to trickery–and scientists are racing to understand why. “If we can do this, so can the bad guys,” says one researcher.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said intelligence is “the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your head at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” It’s so hard to do. But there are all kinds of examples of when it’s necessary in investing. Getting rich requires the willingness to take big risks. Staying rich requires the paranoia to avoid big risks. Trusting your gut means there are true things that you can’t articulate. Being skeptical of your biases means knowing that you confidently articulate things that aren’t true. Being contrarian requires taking a stance most people don’t agr...

Silicon Valley is slow to come to terms with the fact that it's become the new Wall Street.

I was asked to give the keynote talk at “Science, Journalism, and Democracy: Grappling With A New Reality” at Rockefeller University on…

Last year I was bestowed the title of Champions of the Earth from the United Nations Environment Programme, and in honor of the champions…

‘No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth.’

A new Facebook tool deploys facial-recognition to identify users in photos, even when they're not tagged.

The Hawthorne effect (also referred to as the observer effect[1][2]) is a type of reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed.[3][4] The original research at the Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois, on lighting changes and work structure changes such as working hours and break times was originally interpreted by Elton Mayo and others to mean that paying attention to overall worker needs would improve productivity. Later interpretations such as that done by Landsberger suggested that the n...

From the tools we'll use, to our process, to the behaviors that will change the way we design — here's a list of what to expect for User Experience (UX) Design in the next year.

Good Things Foundation is the UK's leading digital inclusion charity. We support people to grow their essential digital skills to overcome social challenges.

Dieter Rams’s design principles get a 21st-century update.

Livestream and automated copyright blocking algorithms don't play very well together; and from the looks of things, the problem is only going to get worse.

The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems is launching the second version of Ethically Aligned Design, Version 2.

Basecamp designer Jonas Downey ruminates on the heavy weight of software design in the 21st century.

A study into the ethics of Graphic Design

A practical solution for the ethical designer.

Leaked policies guiding moderators on what content to allow are likely to fuel debate about social media giant’s ethics

Chatbot fever has infected Silicon Valley. The leaders of virtually every tech giant — including Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple — proclaim chatbots as the new websites, and messaging platforms as the new browsers. "You should message a business just the way you would message a friend," declared Mark Zuckerberg when he launched the Facebook Messenger Platform for bots. He and the rest of the tech world are convinced that **conversation is the future of business**.

Ethics and accountability.

Ninety-nine percent of us live on the wrong side of a one-way mirror

artificial and natural intelligence, including politics, art, and higher education

And not for the reason you think.

By age 2, 92% of American children have an online footprint. What does that do to their psyches?

In these politically uncertain times, developers can help to **defend their users’ personal privacy** by adopting the _Privacy by Design (PbD)_ framework. These common-sense steps will become a requirement under the EU's imminent data protection overhaul, but the benefits of the framework go far beyond legal compliance. Let’s give credit where credit is due. The global political upheaval of the past 12 months has done more to get developers thinking about privacy, surveillance and **defensive user protection** than ever before. The risks and threats to ourselves, and to our users, are no lo...

Want to make change within your organization? Use your design skills internally to create a better workplace.

UXers must be aware of their own cognitive biases in order to make reasonable, evidence based judgments.

Designers love to minimizing the steps it takes to complete a process. But Nextdoor didn't remove steps from its incident reporting process. It added them.

When a performed action happens faster than expected, users may not appreciate the effort put into it or believe that the action happened at all.

Some buttons, such as the door-close button on an elevator, are mere artifices — placebos that promote an illusion of control but in reality do not work.

Office culture is only part of the problem.