Before you can do bad things to people with a clear conscience, you must dehumanise them. In Big Tech designers and developers can build systems that track, profile, and exploit people then go home to hug their kids because they’re not people to them, they’re “users” and “data.”
@bob @aral in IT in general we need more humanising language use.
In reaction to an article pleading for HX (Human Experience) instead of #UX I added the non-manipulative term Behaviour Encouragement Design which must be entirely transparent to people using the software.
And I coined Real Life Experience design. Shouldn't software support us IRL first and foremost? As unobtrusive as possible?
https://community.humanetech.com/t/5165
Biggest sins are #DeceptionPatterns and #surveillancecapitalism of course.
@aral
#Heise really writes like this : "In future, the #information scientist will need three things if he wants to make a career: a Dr. title, a hunger for power and ruthlessness, says Dr. Reinhard Scharff". (sic!)
Such #people urgently need psychological help and not an #editor and.#pizzaflat!
@aral I am coming to realise they are not necessarily “bad” humans doing evil things. There are circumstances that blinds people into acting this way. We must focus on circumstances rather than people themselves.
> Before you can do bad things to people with a clear conscience
I can do bad things to people with all kinds of conscience. It's important to treat everyone equally. ☝️
@aral Software developers/designers at Big Tech: "I don't let my kids use their phones after 7pm."
@celia Oh, the hypocrisy, it hurts :)
@aral related, I was just going through some corporate anti-harassment training, where HR claiming to care about people's well-being still calls them "employees" and sets them being "productive" as the sole point of the exercise.
@aral I've been thinking about this a bit, it's a nice soundbite to say "only tech and drug dealers use the word users"... but then what do we call the people that use ethical services, like for example Mastodon?
@Matter People.
@aral "there are now 2 million mastodon people"
I'm sorry, users are people who use something, it's a descriptive term and while I don't like the passive nature of the word we should have another descriptive word if we are to avoid using that one...
@Matter “there are now 2 million people who use Mastodon.” They’re not Mastodon people any more than they’re Mastodon users. Their use of Mastodon doesn’t define them. They’re human beings who use Mastodon.
@aral Or "impressions" and "clicks".