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Technology isn't neutral. Every product you build has impact—on users, on society, on the world. Sometimes that impact is exactly what you intended. Often it's not.
This is where we talk about the ethics and philosophy of building technology. Not preachy theoretical stuff—practical questions about how to build things that help rather than harm.
Why Ethics Matters
You're making choices constantly. What data to collect. What features to build. Who to serve. What to optimize for. These aren't just technical decisions—they're ethical ones.
Bad outcomes often come from good intentions plus insufficient thinking about consequences. Facebook wanted to connect people. YouTube wanted to show engaging content. Both created problems they didn't foresee.
Core Ethical Questions
Privacy and data: What should you collect? How should you store it? Who should have access?
Attention and addiction: Are you respecting users' time or exploiting their psychology? Infinite scroll, autoplay, notifications—these ****** human weaknesses.
Bias and fairness: Who benefits from what you build? Who gets harmed? Are you reinforcing inequalities or reducing them?
Accessibility: Can everyone use what you built? Disabilities affect 15% of global population.
Environmental impact: Every server, every computation has carbon footprint. Are you building efficiently?
Practical Frameworks
The "grandmother test": Would you be comfortable explaining exactly what your product does to your grandmother? If not, why not?
Second-order effects: Your product succeeds beyond expectations. What happens? Who gets hurt? Scale amplifies everything.
Incentive analysis: What are you incentivizing? Those incentives drive behavior—sometimes in harmful ways.
Reversibility: Can users undo what your product does? Can they leave? Can they delete their data?
Privacy Best Practices
Collect minimum necessary data. Don't gather data "just in case." Have a specific purpose for every data point.
Be transparent. Users should understand what you collect and why. Make it clear in the product itself.
Secure data properly. If you collect data, you're responsible for protecting it.
Give users control. Let people see what you have, download it, delete it. Make it easy.
GDPR principles - European privacy framework Privacy by Design - Building privacy in from start
Attention Ethics
Respect users' time. Are notifications valuable or just engagement bait?
Avoid dark patterns. Making "cancel subscription" hard to find, hiding costs, pre-checked boxes. These destroy trust long-term.
Give users agency. Let them control notifications, pause autoplay, set usage limits.
Center for Humane Technology - Ethical design resources Dark Patterns - Catalog of manipulative design
Accessibility Standards
WCAG Guidelines - International standards for accessible web
Basic requirements: Keyboard navigation works, screen readers understand your interface, color isn't the only information carrier, text has sufficient contrast, videos have captions.
Tools: axe DevTools, WAVE, Lighthouse
Making Ethical Decisions
When facing ethical questions:
Resources
Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil - How algorithms increase inequality Electronic Frontier Foundation - Digital rights advocacy Ethics in Technology Practice - Practical ethics for engineers
Ethics isn't about perfection. It's about thinking seriously about consequences, making informed tradeoffs, and prioritizing user wellbeing alongside business goals.
This is where we talk about the ethics and philosophy of building technology. Not preachy theoretical stuff—practical questions about how to build things that help rather than harm.
Why Ethics Matters
You're making choices constantly. What data to collect. What features to build. Who to serve. What to optimize for. These aren't just technical decisions—they're ethical ones.
Bad outcomes often come from good intentions plus insufficient thinking about consequences. Facebook wanted to connect people. YouTube wanted to show engaging content. Both created problems they didn't foresee.
Core Ethical Questions
Privacy and data: What should you collect? How should you store it? Who should have access?
Attention and addiction: Are you respecting users' time or exploiting their psychology? Infinite scroll, autoplay, notifications—these ****** human weaknesses.
Bias and fairness: Who benefits from what you build? Who gets harmed? Are you reinforcing inequalities or reducing them?
Accessibility: Can everyone use what you built? Disabilities affect 15% of global population.
Environmental impact: Every server, every computation has carbon footprint. Are you building efficiently?
Practical Frameworks
The "grandmother test": Would you be comfortable explaining exactly what your product does to your grandmother? If not, why not?
Second-order effects: Your product succeeds beyond expectations. What happens? Who gets hurt? Scale amplifies everything.
Incentive analysis: What are you incentivizing? Those incentives drive behavior—sometimes in harmful ways.
Reversibility: Can users undo what your product does? Can they leave? Can they delete their data?
Privacy Best Practices
Collect minimum necessary data. Don't gather data "just in case." Have a specific purpose for every data point.
Be transparent. Users should understand what you collect and why. Make it clear in the product itself.
Secure data properly. If you collect data, you're responsible for protecting it.
Give users control. Let people see what you have, download it, delete it. Make it easy.
GDPR principles - European privacy framework Privacy by Design - Building privacy in from start
Attention Ethics
Respect users' time. Are notifications valuable or just engagement bait?
Avoid dark patterns. Making "cancel subscription" hard to find, hiding costs, pre-checked boxes. These destroy trust long-term.
Give users agency. Let them control notifications, pause autoplay, set usage limits.
Center for Humane Technology - Ethical design resources Dark Patterns - Catalog of manipulative design
Accessibility Standards
WCAG Guidelines - International standards for accessible web
Basic requirements: Keyboard navigation works, screen readers understand your interface, color isn't the only information carrier, text has sufficient contrast, videos have captions.
Tools: axe DevTools, WAVE, Lighthouse
Making Ethical Decisions
When facing ethical questions:
- Identify stakeholders affected
- Consider positive and negative impacts
- Examine alternatives with less harm
- Apply principles: privacy, fairness, transparency
- Think long-term: what happens when this scales?
- Seek diverse input
Resources
Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil - How algorithms increase inequality Electronic Frontier Foundation - Digital rights advocacy Ethics in Technology Practice - Practical ethics for engineers
Ethics isn't about perfection. It's about thinking seriously about consequences, making informed tradeoffs, and prioritizing user wellbeing alongside business goals.