Inclusive Content, Ethical Design, and All of Us

From fake news on Facebook to Nazis on Twitter to creepy kids’ content on YouTube, it seems like we can’t get through a day without hearing about a tech product that perpetuates bias, manipulates users, or even undermines democracy. But many conversations inside our companies haven’t changed: we hear about delighting users, disrupting industries, extracting personal data, and of course, maximizing “engagement.” It’s time all of us working in the field confront this dissonance head on, and start asking some hard questions about our companies, our roles, and our values.

In this session, we’ll get real about the ethical failures within our industry, and what we can do about them.

Transcript

1. INCLUSIVE CONTENT, ETHICAL DESIGN, & ALL OF US Sara Wachter-Boettcher // July 2018
2. Image via Elon Musk
3. ‘‘ The Silicon Valley model for doing things is a mix of can-do optimism, a faith that expertise in one domain can be transferred seamlessly to another and a preference for rapid, flashy, high-profile action. But what got the kids and their coach out of the cave was a different model: a slower, more methodical, more narrowly specialized approach to problems. —Dr. Zeynep Tufekci
4. flickr.com/photos/3059349393/8000156483/ (CC BY 2.0)
5. SMALL CHOICES
6. flickr.com/photos/hjjanisch/8606288865/ (CC BY-ND 2.0)
7. 8:00 p.m.
9. 9:03 p.m.
10. From Dan Hon
11. From Dan Hon
13. From @sallyrooney
14. ‘‘ We talked about getting rid of it but it performs kinda great :/ —Tag Savage, lead writer at Tumblr
15. BIG CONSEQUENCES
16. Screensh0t from a knockoff Peppa Pig video (James Bridle)
17. • Cartoons about torture and suicide • Sexualized characters and themes • Violence and weapons • Kids being tied up and hurt • Kids vomiting and writhing in pain
19. ‘‘ Peterson is not an alt-right figure and cannot be held responsible for the “recommended” content that his viewers come across on YouTube. But YouTube, and its parent company, Google, should be… Within just a few clicks of supposedly “related” content, a viewer watching a Peterson lecture can end up on a video entitled “How Savage Are Blacks In America & Why Is Everyone Afraid To Discuss It?” —Sam Levin in The Guardian
20. ‘‘ Twitter is failing in its responsibility to respect women’s rights online by inadequately investigating and responding to reports of violence and abuse in a transparent manner. —Amnesty International, 
 March 2018
21. ‘‘ We love instant, public, global messaging… But we didn’t fully predict or understand the real-world negative consequences. We acknowledge that now… 
 We aren’t proud of how people have taken advantage of our service, or our inability to address it fast enough. —Jack Dorsey, March 2018
23. Our systems aren’t just vulnerable to abuse. They’re optimized for it.
25. • Word2vec: Natural language processing tool trained using 3 million words from Google News articles.
26. • Word2vec: Natural language processing tool trained using 3 million words from Google News articles. • Can complete analogies: Paris is to France as Tokyo is to _______.
27. • Word2vec: Natural language processing tool trained using 3 million words from Google News articles. • Can complete analogies: Paris is to France as Tokyo is to _______. • Thinks man is to computer programmer as woman is to homemaker.
29. • COCO: More than 100,000 images from the web, labeled.
30. • COCO: More than 100,000 images from the web, labeled. • AI trained on it can identify objects in those images.
31. • COCO: More than 100,000 images from the web, labeled. • AI trained on it can identify objects in those images. • It associates kitchen implements with women.
32. If we’re not explicitly removing bias, we’re reinforcing it.
33. A WAY FORWARD
34. Practice Process Priorities
35. Practice Process Priorities
36. ASSUME
38. • The user’s weight is “extra pounds.” • The user is trying to lose weight. • The user feels bad about having gained weight. • The user wants help losing weight.
39. • Identity • Location • Emotional state • Physical state • Personal history • Lifestyle • Goals • Pain points
41. ‘‘ My hair type is what’s called ‘4C hair,’ given the level of coiliness. I learned that I needed to add that to my searches in order to find things. It shouldn’t be that way. — Candice Morgan, 
 Head of Diversity & Inclusion, Pinterest
42. Practice Process Priorities
43. If it’s important, it’s planned.
44. If it’s important, it’s resourced.
45. If it’s important, it’s evaluated.
46. ‘‘ Lean methodology and the Minimum Viable Product technique are supposed to help reduce waste and increase the timely flow of useful feedback. In practice, they are used as cover for rushing to a less thoughtful solution without considering the context or the long-term implications. —Erika Hall, “Thinking in Triplicate”
47. Make inclusive design and worst-case scenario planning an explicit part of: • Project roles and responsibilities • Roadmapping and project planning • Use cases and scenarios • Content crits and editing cycles • Project postmortems • Employee evaluations
48. Practice Process Priorities
49. Image: Pixabay (CC0)
50. Image: Pixabay (CC0)
51. Image: Pixabay (CC0)
52. ‘‘ We’re an idealistic and optimistic company. For the first decade, we really focused on all the good that connecting people brings… But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough. We didn’t focus enough on preventing abuse and thinking through how people could use these tools to do harm as well. —Mark Zuckerberg, April 2018
53. ‘‘ There’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened. I find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong. —Mark Zuckerberg, last week
54. ‘‘ The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends… All of it. —Facebook VP Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, 2016
55. ‘‘ The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends… All of it. —Facebook VP Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, 2016
56. Image: Josh Mattson (CC - BY NC)
57. Image: Josh Mattson (CC - BY NC) $40 billion
58. ‘‘ The problems the company is facing today are due to tens of thousands of small decisions made over the last decade within an incentive structure that was not predicated on our 2018 threat profile. —Alex Stamos, departing Facebook CSO
59. ‘‘ The problems the company is facing today are due to tens of thousands of small decisions made over the last decade within an incentive structure that was not predicated on our 2018 threat profile. —Alex Stamos, departing Facebook CSO
63. If we can only discuss ethics when it’s revenue-neutral, 
 we don’t have ethics.
64. IT’S TIME TO LEAD
65. Our work is entangled with people’s most intimate lives.
66. We have a responsibility to slow down, take stock, and do better.
67. What are you willing to risk to make that happen?
68. @sara_ann_marie rareunion.com sarawb.com thank you