I find this whole debate fascinating. I really dont see where ethics
come into the picture, though I see where questions arise around
integrity, influence, design, and truth.
To supplement examples of design issues in social media, for example,
take Dave's: increase contributions. From my perspective this has
little to do with what's on the screen (not including content --
selection of content and what is shown/not is key). It has more to do
with the social dynamics, culture, community, and other matters of
social practice.
Why are contributors contributing? Perhaps because they have a sense
of the common good, and as motivates many wikipedians, they want to
maintain accuracy and breadth of open-sourced knowledge. Or perhaps
they're "contributing" to twitter because they've got an enormous ego
and no sense of self restraint.
Clearly the term "contribute" loses its meaning very quickly when we
get into social media, as nearly everything said or submitted is a
contribution: social bookmarking, retweeting, blogging, commenting...
How does one "design" the social -- that's what interests me, and in
particular, what kinds of social interactions, individual,
interpersonal, social, and public, can be codified? What concepts do
we need if we're to go from explaining a single user interaction on
social media to the social dynamics of two or more users? Clearly the
interactions are users with users, not users with software -- but we
cant just use real world social interactions as our models. Mediation
strips away face, body, and affect; it removes synchrony of time. etc
etc.. there's plenty more...
So the question of influence is a very good one. It's probably not an
ethical one, because "we" don't control the user, his/her perceptions,
interests, choices, motives, or his/her experience. Personally I think
"framing" may be a viable way to approach the issue of designing the
social, as it shifts emphasis from "design" to "perspective", and in
social interaction design it's mostly about shaping these nuanced
social meanings and negotiations, not functions (as with so much
product design or interface design -- and that's not to denigrate
style, etc).
The matter does seem v interesting if the question is explored not in
terms of our responsibilities as designers but in terms of the user
experience: what kinds of users choose to retweet an influencer? what
kinds of social incentives work with non-competitive users? are there
ways to reduce the bias or distortion that leaderboards often produce?
would there be a way to grow a service like twitter without it turning
into a popularity contest for so many users? what social incentives do
experts respond to, and could a system be designed to appeal to
experts without attracting promoters?
as the motivation is often the other person, the matter of influencing
the user does get interesting... are there ethics involved if a dating
site is designed to keep users hopeful, voyeuristically engaged,
addicted to checking for new flirts and message, and highly unlikely
to get a real date? dunno, that's the business of dating sites, none
of which would survive if they did what the claim to do.
we need to bear in mind that most social media, and perhaps a great
deal of software in general, operate in failure mode much of the time.
twitter is not conversational. followers are not friends. facebook is
not social. many modern social systems are but a disaster waiting to
happen. so how do we talk about influence and incentives if in fact
much user activity fails to communicate, is ambiguous in its intent,
is redundant with contributions elsewhere, goes unresponded to, is out
of context... if so much of social media interaction is actually
handling of failure, responding to breakdown, bridging
misunderstanding, and otherwise social "error handling," then perhaps
we ought to learn more about what "functional social media" means
before worrying that we have too much influence... and I'll say right
now that these errors and failures may in fact be the motor of
participation on social media: we're into breakdowns, ambiguities,
ambivalence, conflict, and drama.
--adrian
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