“Is it really?” She gestured at my hoodie and the bold text across my chest reading “Code is Political.”
“Profoundly so,” I answered. “When designers and developers build the apps and services, they decide what capabilities and agency other people get to have. Technology is political because it shapes how people act, what people know, and what futures we build.”
I designed the hoodie to spark conversations like this. When I wear it at tech conferences, people often approach me—sometimes amused or confused, sometimes annoyed—saying, “Stop trying to make everything political! Software is neutral; it has nothing to do with politics.” I respond to them as I did to my friend, adding:
“The apps and services we build shape how people find information, who they talk to, where they work, play, and relax. We measure the success of technology by how much it influences our behaviour. In just a few decades, our work has transformed society, so much so it’s now impacting the outcomes of elections!”
At this point, one of three things happen: some people realize they’re not ready for this conversation and change the subject, others walk away, and many respond like my friend did: “Wow. I never thought of it that way. That’s a lot of power—and responsibility!”
“Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do.”
Technology happens when someone sees the world, has a vision of how to make it better, and builds that future through augmenting the capabilities of other people. The more successful the technology is, the more closely the future aligns with that original vision.
If the last few days (and years, and decade) have taught us anything, it’s that technology and the online spaces it creates directly influence us—as individuals, communities, nations, and a global society. The mask of value neutrality, worn by tech workers and billionaires as a shield against critique, is now off, leaving us to face the truth:
Technology is a political project, and we need to start treating it as such.
Social media, podcasting, ad tech, health apps, facial recognition, deepfakes, AI—all of these technologies profoundly impact our lives. Yet unlike other industries that chose to self-regulate as their influence grew, the tech industry has resisted any meaningful regulation, claiming neutrality while in the same breath warning that regulation would result in competitive disadvantage (and usually pointing at China as the most imminent threat).
It’s time we do what doctors and machinists and lawyers and engineers and psychologists and every other profession that impacts the lives of people have done: Set ethical standards and practices for our work and urge our peers to join us.
If I don’t clearcut this forest, someone else will.
The stories we tell shape our shared intersubjective realities. Today, those stories are broadcast on platforms controlled by billionaire oligarchs with political ambitions, on podcasts by men with ideologies that actively promote the stripping away of rights and dignity for entire groups of people, and in chat-based echo chambers where only aligned voices are heard.
Technology reflects the values and vision of its creators, and many of the technologies we rely on today manifest futures that serve those closest in power and appearance to their creators, at the cost of everyone else.
It’s easy to feel that technology is inevitable. It’s not.
Technology is a choice.
Today, those of us who work in tech have a choice to make: Do we keep perpetuating the mask of value neutrality, or do we step into our power as the means of production and take responsibility as designers of our collective future?
I choose the latter, and I urge you to join me. Here’s how we get started:
Build and use tech that align with your values. Invest your time and work in building futures you believe in, and protect your values as you do so.
Make Privacy by Design the standard. Privacy is a fundamental right and an essential protection against personal, corporate, and government overreach.
Work under a Veil of Ignorance. Tech workers the privileged one percenters of technology. To anchor your work in the real world of your users, assume you may become the one most disadvantaged by your own work, the one whose data will be used against them by a corporate or authoritarian government. Design and build solutions that protect everyone’s rights and dignity.
Listen to people when they tell you their truth. When your work creates conflict, harm, or injustice, your users will feel it before you do. So talk to them, and inform your empathy by listening and learning and accepting their truth.
Approach your power with humility. In the words of philosopher Michael J. Sandel, meritocratic hubris is “the tendency of winners to inhale too deeply of their own success, to forget the luck and good fortune that helped them on their way.”
As you do these things, understand them as steps to making ethics part of your practice. To make this more explicit, challenge your work using these four frames:
Utility – Ask: Who benefits? Who is disadvantaged? Who profits? Who pays? Who is left out? And for every decision, follow Shoshana Zuboff’s call to question who knows, who decides, and who decides who decides?)
Responsibility – Reflect on Tony Benn’s Five Questions for Democracy: What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you?
Embracing the politics of technology starts with speaking up: naming your concerns, highlighting threats and possible harms, and proposing better solutions. We’ve seen what technology can do, and many leaders are now ready to listen when we raise issues.
But remember: Ought does not imply can no matter how much it should.
For many of us, speaking out or stepping away from harmful projects is not an option. Our social safety nets have been systematically unraveled, and speaking up can mean career setbacks, safety concerns, even job loss and loss of access to essential services like healthcare. Being able to speak up is a privilege, and the burden of action falls on those who have that privilege. So as you push ahead against the forces of unregulated utopian techno-solutionism, grant yourself the same empathy, compassion, and grace you extend to those you love. Hold yourself accountable to your own values, keep true to what you believe is right, and forgive yourself when you’ve done what you can and that wasn’t enough.
We are social creatures. We shape the world by building community and society and telling stories where everyone is included. We owe it to ourselves to use hope as a catalyst as we work toward a future where everyone is valued and every person’s dignity is upheld.
2019 was the year of the “ethical source” licenses – or ‘open source with a moral clause’ licenses. It was also the year many in the open source movement labeled any attempt at adding moral clauses to open source licenses not only made them not open source licenses, but were a dangerous attack on the core principles of open source.
The Ethical Source movement, exemplified by the Hippocratic License, the Anti 996 license etc, has created a deep rift in the open source community; between those who aim to protect the core values of open source ideology as defined by the Four Freedoms, and those who believe granting open source creators the capability to impose moral clauses on the use of their software is essential to ensure software is not used for evil.
The rift has opened because adding moral clauses to a license is effectively limiting the use of whatever the license is applied to, which stands against the core idea of open source as absolute freedom for the end-user.
The Tenuous Position of Value Neutrality
From my perspective this rift exposes what I’ve long felt is a central flaw in both open source licensing and open source ideology: The Four Freedoms concern themselves only with software freedom – as in the freedom of the software itself – but are in reality imposing value neutrality on whatever is licensed under them: The Four Freedoms protect the freedom of the software itself, and do not concern themselves with what the software does or how it is used. As an ideological platform, they are too narrowly scoped to hold the weight of our societal responsibilities as the designers and builders of modern reality.
Let me explain:
If evil people use open source software to do evil things, there is nothing the creator can do about it. Because doing something about it would be limiting the freedom of the software which goes against open source ideology. And in the view of many open source ideologues, it would be morally wrong for a creator to do anything about it because limiting the use, modification, and distribution of software is in itself morally wrong.
This ideological view stems from the original GNU Manifesto:
“‘Control over the use of one’s ideas’ really constitutes control over other people’s lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.”
“When there is a deliberate choice to restrict, the harmful consequences are deliberate destruction.”
The GNU Manifesto
These quotes capture two central ideas of the GNU Manifesto, one I think most of us agree with, another I think most of us take issue with:
The first idea is that creating something and releasing it into the world changes the lives of ourselves and of others. That is what we design and build software, and that is why being a creator means taking on a moral responsibility for how we change the world.
The second idea is that imposing any restrictions on anything is inherently harmful. This is neither true nor how the world works. Though restrictions can be harmful, they are mostly introduced to prevent harm. The restriction on how loud your headphones can be or the permitted level of toxins in food-safe plastics are in place to prevent harm, and removing the restrictions could in itself be harmful.
I think it is in the tension between these two ideas – creation as a moral act and restriction as a moral wrong – we find both the current dilemma of open source and morality and a potential path forward.
The weight of responsibility
When I publish anything under an open source license, be that GPL or MIT or any other license ratified by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), it takes on a life of its own. It can be used and modified and distributed by anyone for any reason, with or without my involvement, but I cannot restrict it. That’s the whole point of open source ideology.
The problem is this effectively abdicates me of responsibility for my own creations: By releasing software with an open source license I relinquish control over who uses my software or what it is used for. Thus I cannot be held responsible for the software or its consequences. And if I can’t be held responsible there is no incentive for me to make sure my software, when used or modified or distributed by others, doesn’t cause harm or can be used to cause harm.
This is what I mean when I say open source licenses imply value neutrality. And it is here I think the Ethical Licensing movement found its root.
From this perspective one can argue closed source (proprietary) licenses hold the moral high ground over open source licenses because closed source licenses imply responsibility: If a company knowingly releases software that can be used for harm, they can be held liable because they are the only moral actor capable of modifying and distributing the software.
Moral clauses to the rescue?
The big question then is if adding moral clauses to open source licenses can help solve this problem. As much as I hate to say it, I think the answer is no, for two reasons:
First, like the Hippocratic Oath in medicine, breaking a moral clause in an open source license does not have any consequences. Doctors swear to uphold the code of ethics defined by the Hippocratic Oath, but if they cause harm their actions are judged through the legal framework of medical malpractice. A “do no harm” clause in an open source license carries moral weight, but without enforceable consequences and mechanisms to appeal a judgement of harm being caused, it has no teeth.
Second, applying moral clauses to a license does not solve the problem of value neutrality because it is a problem of ideology, and the license is merely a manifestation of that ideology.
If we want to go down the path of the Hippocratic Oath, we need a Code of Ethics for Open Source and a framework for enforcement and adjudication of breach of those ethics. That’s a huge undertaking, and not one I see bearing fruit any time soon.
Toward a New Ethos of Open Source
If we want to take on the issue of ethics in open source on a shorter timeline, we need to take a hard look at the ethos, the core ideals, of open source ideology and ask some tough questions about where the ideology comes from and whether that picture of the world meshes with our lived reality. Open source aims to grant everyone the capability to use, modify, and distribute software. That does not mean open source ideology cannot also embrace the moral and societal responsibilities of the creator, the user, and even the creation itself. To get there we need to broaden our ideological platform, consider what “freedom” means in our current context, and work together to figure out how the Four Freedoms can become part of the larger spectrum of rights and freedoms afforded to us.
Accessible to folks with varying cognitive and physical abilities and disabilities
Secure and reliable for storing, manipulating, and transferring information
Performant on average devices and in constrained or unreliable network conditions
Inclusive to diverse audiences and produced by diverse teams to create better experiences
Responsive in adapting the user interface contextually to any screen
Ethical in how users’ preferences and data are handled
I’m interested in the last one: E for Ethical.
What constitutes “ethical” web practice?
While we have pretty well established standards and practices for the first five; Accessible, Secure, Performant, Inclusive, Responsive; we have yet to establish what “Ethical web design and development” means, what it looks like and how it is practiced.
Part of the problem is the term “ethics” is often equated with statements like “do no harm” or practices to avoid legal issues. In reality, ethics refers to the principles and practices we agree upon as a society to judge the goodness and rightness of acts. The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics describes it like this:
“ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues.”
In short, ethics is about practice, how we conduct ourselves and how we judge our actions.
Ethics cannot be summed up as “do no harm” because that leaves the door open to moral relativism: what is harm, to whom is this harm being done, who decides this is harmful, etc.
So what then is ethical practice in relation to web work? Here’s my rough draft to start a conversation about a definition:
Ethical web design and development practice: Work focused on human flourishing through ethical practice and methodology and centered on the rights, capabilities, and agency of the end-user.
What is “ethical practice?” Design and development practice rooted in ethical principles.
Bottom line, ethical practice is about the doing and being of the practitioner, whether they see their users as ends or means to an end, whether they put “ought” before “can”, and prioritize the agency of those they act upon. It’s about how we judge the goodness and rightness of our work.
I’m really excited about this conversation, and I hope we can get together as a community and figure out what ASPIRE means to us, and how we want to define Ethical web design so we can come together around shared principles and practices and carve meaningful paths into the future for other people and for ourselves.
