Activism in Technology

One of the things that first attracted me to Quakerism was its legacy of social activism. As a disillusioned “Exvangelical,” I was frustrated with the ways in which I felt many churches actively supported the status quo instead of questioning and resisting it. Many of these churches do this not by what they say or do but what they do not say and do not do. By remaining silent, however, complicity is not merely implied but realized (consider the “Good German” phenomena). The thing is, this is not just a quirk of some conservative churches. This is something that many of us do, because it is easier to do nothing than to do something. And this, of course, extends to tech.

I know lots of people in tech who think that evil technology (and evil uses of “neutral” technology) are inevitable. “If we don’t build it, someone else will” is a sentiment I’ve heard in the classroom as well as on the Internet. This was the topic of my first post, in which I thought about what a “Quakerish ethic” in our work and in technology would look like.

In the past few weeks, I’ve seen some heartening examples of what it looks like when this kind of ethic is realized. It recently came out that, at the beginning of this year, a group of nine (nine!) Google employees protested Google’s military contract work by refusing to build a key security feature geared to help Google win such contracts. This act of rebellion was allegedly a catalyst for the larger employee movement to end Project Maven in April — which was also succesful.

More recent than that was the response of employees at huge tech companies to their employers’ contracts with ICE: Amazon and Microsoft (including recently-acquired GitHub) employees have signed open letters to their respective employers, threatening to leave if ICE contracts continued. Just today, Buzzfeed reported that Salesforce employees have signed a petition to end Salesforce’s contract with US Customs and Border Protection.

Jackie Luo, an engineer I follow on Twitter, pointed out that when this kind of activism happens, the “If we don’t build it, someone else will” argument falls apart:

"if we don't build it, someone else will" has always been a lazy argument
if google, microsoft, amazon, and now salesforce don't build it, it'll be a hell of a lot harder for it to get builthttps://t.co/QL3dOoBTnU

— Jackie Luo (@jackiehluo) June 25, 2018

This. Works. Tech employees don’t often realize how much power we have, especially in big corporations where you can feel replacable, one miniscule part in a massive machine. Alphabet, Inc., Google’s parent company, reported having 88,110 employees in 2017. It only took nine of them, situated in a key area, to block Google from winning a military contract. There were 4,000 signatures on the petition against Project Maven, which is only 5% of Google’s full-time employees.

Let’s continue to take responsibility for what we create, and think about the consequences of our actions. My hope is that this will bleed into the rest of tech, past the hot-button government contract issues. While these are so, so important, I also hope that the more insidious problems, like the unethical smartphone supply chain, will begin to be wrestled with at this level as well.

How Should We Respond to Injustice in a Culture of Outrage? Part II

After several weeks of hiatus, I am back! The middle of the semester proved to be a busy time for me, but now it is winding down. I wanted to write a brief post about what we as tech-makers can do to work against outrage culture and towards meaningful, empathetic interactions with other human beings. A lot of this post is really just a compilation of great things other people have said on this subject that I just wanted in one post. 🙂

Mike Monteiro, in his Medium post “A Designer’s Code of Ethics,” claims that designers should “value impact over form,” and that their work should be evaluated based its impact in a system, not as if it was designed in a vacuum — because, obviously, it wasn’t. Tech should be treated like a theoretical physics experiment by its designers. We are responsible for what it does and how it is used, even if it is being used against our “intention” for it.

Anil Dash has written extensively on this subject (it’s where I got the name “humane tech” from). Similar to Monteiro, he says:

We need to challenge our definitions of success and progress, and to stop considering our work in solely commercial terms. We need to radically improve our systems of compensation, to be responsible about credit and attribution, and to be generous and fair with reward and remuneration. We need to consider the impact our work has on the planet. We need to consider the impact our work has on civic and academic institutions, on artistic expression, on culture.

We also have to know when to say no to certain projects. Monteiro also points out that an object designed to harm people cannot be “well-designed” because to design it well is to design it to harm other people. This sentiment is related to my first post on this blog — if we are to be ethical designers, there are some assignments that we cannot take.

So, how does this apply to our accomodation of outrage culture? Dash’s “8 Steps for Preventing Abuse in a Web Community” is a great place to start. A lot of it really just boils down to accountability: are members of the community held seriously accountable for the way they participate in the community? Is the community built in a way that discourages abuse, whether through moderating, reporting, or even stigma and norms?

Ultimately, it is up to those who create and maintain these online spaces to bear responsibility for the culture of that community. This is a big investment on their part, but a necessary one. As community makers and maintainers, we can and should set rules for what a community is for and the expectations we have for members of that community.

How Should We Respond to Injustice in a Culture of Outrage? Part I

When searching for an appropriate definition of “outrage culture” online, I came across this one by Reddit user headless_bourgeoisie in /r/OutOfTheLoop:

Outrage Culture refers to the idea that a large number of people in “western” society seem to crave being offended and actively seek out things that will offend them and create controversy where there is none (presumably in an effort to claim the figurative “moral high ground”). This is perhaps a product of the social media age since everyone with an internet connection now has a potentially gigantic audience for their opinions. “Clickbait” sites like Buzzfeed and Jezebel perpetuate this phenomenon by jumping on any controversy, no matter how flimsy, in order to amass precious website traffic.

People across the political spectrum have been guilty of participating in and perpetuating outrage culture (my personal favorite–if you can call it that–is still Hannity fans destroying their own Keurig coffee makers in support of an alleged child molester). What I find interesting is headless_bourgeoisie’s point that this is a product of the “social media age.” I think outrage culture has in some sense been around for a much longer time, but it has flourished in the broader Internet culture of the 2000s and 2010s. Social media is a hotbed for perpetuating this culture of outrage, because “outraged” people will like, share, and comment more than their calmer counterparts. This creates the infamous comments sections that ferment beneath practically anything on the Internet, and it also serves to stifle real conversation, as many people have noted before.

Expressing your outrage at a real or perceived injustice is a natural way we try to show our Facebook friends or Twitter followers that we belong in the ideological tribe we’ve chosen. It’s also a nice form of catharsis. As Christians, we have a moral obligation to oppose injustice and speak up when we see it (check out this article for some highlights of this in Quaker history). However, I believe we also have an obligation to do so in love and in a way that will not just oppose injustice, but promote the loving, restorative justice of Godde.

When I see an article about the last thing the President did or said, I need to question my motivations for reading it and evaluate my response once I do. I generally don’t share or repost a lot on social media, but on platforms like Twitter I like a lot of tweets that often are perpetuating outrage culture, and I know my followers can see that I like them. So, I have come up with some questions to ask myself before engaging with a post on social media, including whether I assimilate that perception of the world into my own, which is often more dangerous and insidious than merely liking or sharing a post.

1. Rhetorical analysis of the headline or blurb of the content: what emotional response is it trying to get from me? What basic assumptions of mine is it playing to?
2. What is the effect of this news, etc., on real people? Is that effect unjust? If I am not sure, what more information do I need?
3. What are other (reasonable) responses to this content? Is there a place for me to contribute to the conversation to better understand others participating in it?
4. If this content is about an injustice, what can I best do to directly promote justice? Is it responding in love to others in the conversation? Is it looking for ways to donate or volunteer for a cause? What can I do that will have a real effect on victims of injustice?

Obviously, I don’t methodically go through these questions for every post I see on Facebook. Instead, I try to keep these types of questions present in my mind as I am engaging in social media, and it has helped me to try and respond more lovingly. I know that participating in outrage culture is one of my weaknesses that I am constantly succumbing to, but acknowledging that is the first step on my journey to love.

With this in mind, my next post will focus on how people in tech can work to circumvent our current propensity towards outrage culture through humane design and development.