Is it time for A Less Crappy Web

Illustration by absurd.design

The web is much better but is also worse

Let me start by saying that the Web is exponentially better since its inception back during its ARPANET days. It has grown out of its primary experiments and goals and moved into this sporadic, dynamic global phenomenon that has improved many lives, and has forever changed the way we live. It is, all things considered, better. Much, much better. And amazingly, together with the infrastructure and the society behind it, it keeps on improving — still exponentially. And that’s tremendous.

Let’s focus on the “web” (many interchanges the web and the Internet) on the macro-level of website design and development in a holistic view. Websites and website design and development itself has greatly improved. Organizations and standards have been set up and are managed regularly by a society driven in improving it. Companies who develop browsers, more or less, adhere to these rules and more often than not contribute towards a common goal of improving the whole experience of interacting with the web. We’ve managed to grow out of our marquee HTML tags to “bleeding-edge” web-based financial tools in the palm of our hands. Tools, methodologies, frameworks, even mindsets, have greatly improved even in just the last decade. In this macro view, the web has improved dramatically as well.

Now that is out of the way, let me counterpoint my opening statement.

In its simplified form, the web is just a tool. It is neutral on its own and can not be good or bad. It is how we use that tool that determines the perception of that tool. The web is used by many as it is, a tool. To socialize, to transact, to compute. A great deal of many also uses it for many things that will benefit our society. Also, a great deal of many uses it for their self-interest — that’s not fundamentally bad, but like any other tool, if you use it to improve your self-interest forsaking the “welfare” of others, or if you use it primarily to harm others, then it’s bad.

Again, let’s look at it at the macro-level of websites and website design and development. The improvements of the web, in itself, is also neutral. This means that these benefits are equally beneficial to people who use it neutrally, for people who use it for good, and for people who use it for bad. In a very basic and hypothetical example — your infinite scroll experience to browse memes and cat videos is a functionality that is also experienced by people who browse a list of who they can donate to and that is also experienced by people who want to buy drugs.

So, is it better? Very much so. But is it worst now, too? In a certain view, and if you care for it, yes. Yes, it is worse.

So, now I ask — is it time for a better web? Yes, of course. There’s always room for improvement. But where I want to focus on is not improving our best, but in improving our worst. A comedian said this in an interview that is related to improvement:

“Your best show keeps getting higher and higher, that’s the first thing, how good you can do keeps increasing… but then the really important thing is how bad, your worst show starts coming up… [your] worst show needs to come up close to the best show so that even on your worst night you [are still good]”

Illustration by absurd.design

What I’m Proposing to Improve and Why

So what specifically do I want to improve or contribute to improve? If you had been following my recent posts, you would have an idea where this going — Dark Patterns and how we can try to fight it.

Recent studies have shown the prevalence of Dark Patterns within web design and development. However, what does that mean? One can say that it has become a norm in how we use the web. A mere annoyance because we’ve been accustomed to closing pop-up boxes (a percent are Dark Patterns) without even thinking about it. On the other hand, one can argue that Dark Patterns play a major role in how we transact with the web, us needing to be ultra vigilant on how we interact with our purchases, in how we make decisions based on what we are primed to believe.

Somewhere in the middle of this is the Why I’m interested to act. I guess it is for the simple annoyances that I’ve experienced over the years that have matured and have realized to be unethical grounds that I at least should take action. I feel that being in this field, and specifically in the usability and design of the web, I have at least a responsibility to myself to take action and hope that those actions can be beneficial to the community.

So, what am I exactly proposing? Specifically for the “what” I am not sure yet. However, I have some ideas:

A community that is deliberate in contributing to improving against Dark Patterns

As per my observation, the visibility and actions against Dark Patterns are still very young, sparse, and unorganized. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great start. Social media (#darkpatterns in Twitter), darkpatterns.org, HumaneByDesign and the Smashing Magazine’s concerted effort in building an ethical web are some of the examples out there where we call out the implementation of the said practices and teach how to ethical create experiences on the web. What’s missing on this great start is a great finish. Why? Because:

1. There’s no validation if the act is a valid dark pattern.
2. We don’t want to be the boy who cried wolf. The web as a whole will only get tired of us and merely label as “whiny” if we call out everything that annoys us in the web without proper justification and evidence. We must employ at least a basic principle and structure in determining which implementation is a dark pattern or not. The great news is that a group of researchers at Princeton has already done this.
3. There’s no accountability of the improvement to be implemented. This one is hard. I must state that what’s missing here is the attempt to improve an implementation since the implementation is done by the called out party. But the important part here, I think, is that someone accountable to document and follow up on the improvement.

The 3 items listed above are not the solution per se but the core ideas to an actual solution. Both items can be automated (at least parts of it) and that automation is where a good chunk of the work is needed.

A sample solution

One specific solution that scales would be integrating or growing the dark pattern recognition application the Princeton research has done. But we need to increase the scope of the crawl. How? The community can develop a browser extension that:

1. The community reviews, revises, and agree on what actually is a Dark Pattern, starting on the Princeton Dark Pattern categories.
2. A community can develop an open-source web browser extension that analyzes websites when a user visited them using a revised Princeton algorithm.
3. Browser extension grades the websites that its users visit.
4. A list of offenders is maintained and made available to the public. The browser extension displays a grade when a user visits the website.
5. Websites on the list will be notified and will be maintained as such until the website is deemed a non-offender, based on the Princeton algorithm.

In a very dreamy outcome, when the extension gets much traction, not only from users using it, but when the websites who are on the list improve their websites, then maybe it can go up the upper echelon of web standards. Think of it as an SSL certificate, but for ethics.

So, what do you think? Is it time to improve our worst? And do you believe it is one of the worst aspects of the web? Would you contribute? Do you have other ideas to help fight Dark Patterns?