Ethically-designed products are not enough; we need ethically-ran companies
In the last few weeks I’ve read several articles written by people working at some of the largest technology companies in Silicon Valley (think FAGA).
These articles talk about the importance of embracing “ethical design” and how to design and build products that are helpful and useful to their users.
There were some nuggets here and there, but I ended up walking away with a nagging feeling… a feeling of hypocrisy and half-truths.
I find it highly ironic and hypocritical for them to be writing about “ethical design” when the work is being done for/by companies who have lost their values, principles and have betrayed their ethics for the sake of growth.
You just can’t pay a bunch of designers money and tell people to build an “ethical” product, while you are ripping off your customers.
Building ethical products goes beyond a pretty UI, intuitive UX and a freemium model. Plain and simple — ethical design and building ethical products means to put the value and well-being of your users above and beyond the company’s bottom line. That said…
Customer value and business value don’t need to be a zero-sum game.
Companies that talk about “ethical design” don’t like to talk about how they sell our privacy to the highest bidder so they can improve their bottom line. Or the million of dollars spent buying politicians in an effort to keep their very own service providers classified as independent contractors so they can increase their margins.
And here, I think, lies one of the biggest problems that, for all its technology, Silicon Valley can’t and won’t solve. The problem? The drive for year over year growth at ALL costs. But, oh the irony, is that the cost is never bear by these companies but by the very people that makes them successful: its users!
The other irony? There’s no such thing as perpetual year over year growth. Sooner or later, in a planet and economy driven by finite resources, all growth slows down, at some point and in some cases growth just turns South (just look at Apple’s iPhone sales or Facebook user growth numbers).
It’s time that we start putting our actions where before we just put words and making changes to how we operate so that we can build a better future, for us, our children and future generations. Technology holds a great promise to make life in this planet better for just about all of us. From access to water and electricity, to education, entertainment and you name it. But in order to make that future a great one, we need the companies with the means to be transformative to put the good of society in a more even and balance plane with their need for growth. After all, just saying “don’t be evil” while ripping off your users is an oxymoron.
So, what does it truly mean to design and build ethical companies and products? Here’re a few points to get us started:
1. It means having Terms of Use and Privacy Policies that don’t require a Yale Law degree to read and understand. It also means that if you say that you will not share user private data with others outside your organization — that you won’t.
2. It means that if you analyze a customer’s usage and behavioral data, that you are doing so to improve the service and value that you deliver to them, not just to find ways to keep them on your site longer so that you can sell a few more adds.
3. It means that you treat your employees with respect and that you care about their well-being and not seeing them simply as interchangeable cogs (it also means that ethical companies don’t fire large percentages of their staff so that they can turn “profitable”)
4. And finally, it means that your product is not the only “ethical” part of your organization. It means that your entire organization, from your hiring process, to your business model — your apps to your policies, communications and every aspect that your company either touches or is touched by — is ethical.
Until companies start to understand and practice being an “ethical company” rather than just a company with an “ethically designed” product, the promise that technology can contribute to a better planet and more just society will continue to be some cheap PR spiel that companies use to fill their pockets without care or a conscience while abusing our values and destroying our morals.
Note: if you are interested in the subject of Ethics and technology, here are two good reads to get you going
