Lessons-Learned from #Tech4Good — between Marketing and Substance
TL:DR — #6 Seek Out, Support, and use Open Source Technologies! “We need new paradigms, not more new tech. We need fair and equitable implementations of public policy that bolster our collective good.” — Safiya Noble, “The Loss of Public Goods to Big Tech”
As a human rights lawyer curious about how technology might be useful for positive impact, I have learned a lot in recent years about the realities of democratized technologies — admittedly, a few years behind the Syrian activists and human rights defenders who risked their lives to capture and share the most documented crime base in human history.
The most important lesson is that the true Innovators are the people doing the work, not the ones building the technology that purports to help them do it faster or better. We need to come up with a better name but today they’re simply referred to as “users.”
From 2018–2019, I worked for an image authentication tech company called Truepic that was selected #1 in the Social Good category for Fast Company’s 50 Most Innovative based on its mission to restore trust to the Internet and its “free camera app.” Shortly after receiving this recognition along with other publicity, the leadership decided to sunset the free app, burying the news in a strategy and marketing rebrand as they shifted focus to their enterprise solution.
This experience both infuriated and inspired me. I am fascinated with understanding how Venture Capitalists and investors gauge and quantify a company’s chances of success. I came across Sarah Downey’s extensive listicle on “The Real Reasons why a VC Passed on Your Start-up” and began creating my own criteria for how I, as a user, prospective tech employee, and Responsible Innovation enthusiast might also gauge a nascent technology’s chances of success in authentic, positive impact.
The current moment, however one defines it, seems to provide an opportunity (a calling!) for us to reset poor-functioning and entrenched systems. As consumers, social impact partners, tech reporters, and others excitedly observe the promising market shifts toward Sustainability, Diversity/Inclusion, and Social Enterprise, I created an informal checklist of indicators and red flags to consider when deciphering marketing and substance in the promise and challenge of #Tech4Good.
#1 Assume most people are good & well-intentioned
Oftentimes when a tech company makes decisions we disagree with, we might assume that it’s because the leadership is mal-intentioned. This oversimplifies unethical behavior and creates blindspots. The truth is that most people have good intentions and truly believe that what they are doing is right and justified. If you approach a technology or business with that deferral, it will help you more objectively evaluate their chances of authentically fulfilling their mission or social impact goals.
When I started working for Truepic, I went in fully aware of the pitfalls of tech’s current funding models and the bottom line. Before joining, I had several conversations with mentors and colleagues about how I could continually check in with myself about what’s right and what’s wrong. It was also glaringly obvious that it would behoove the technology and business development to be authentically trusted, human-centered, and exceptionally reverent of “users” who hailed from vulnerable, affected communities (like human rights activists in Syria). The reality is unsurprisingly much messier and frankly, had the leadership not made my decision to leave so easy by shutting down the free app, how they carried out the decision, and conversations that ensued, I might have been able to continue toeing the line.
Again, the point here isn’t to assume that people are well-intentioned and to cut them slack. The point is to recognize that the systems currently scaling technology are ultimately dictated by people who care first and foremost about maximizing profits. It’s not just bad people who think this way — the whole industry is deliberately designed for that output. How do we navigate this reality? I have found it helps to assume that most people are well-intentioned, hear them, but closely examine their actions.
#2 Due diligence on internal operations and HR
I always found it strange how much the tech industry lionized founders and senior leadership. What I love about tech is that, to be effective, it requires multidisciplinary, horizontal coordination. Often when you go to a tech company’s “About Us” page, they will only highlight senior leadership and maybe some notable advisors. This is counter-intuitive, since the industry as a whole is seemingly very respectful of the engineers, product designers, account managers, customer success associates, and other employees without whom there would be no business to speak of since they are the ones who take an idea and actualize it. Shout out to what some of my colleagues and I refer to as the “Plumbers Revolution”: center and elevate the people closest to the ****, doing the work; if that’s not you, pass the mic.
The reality is that, within the industry, employees largely understand that they are (currently) fundamentally dispensable. People mostly just feel lucky to have a well-paid job, especially if they feel their work is remotely interesting. And there is an accepted yet shockingly high rate of attrition and turn-over (curious that this red flag and massive resource drain rarely gets due attention among analyses for why so many start-ups fail).
As an example, after Facebook employees staged a virtual walk-out in protest to the company’s policies toward hate speech, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was defiant in defending these policies. It wasn’t until the company’s stock plunged as a result of multi-billion dollar corporations like Coca Cola and Unilever discontinuing ad-buys that Zuckerberg seemingly acquiesced to some of the requested policy changes.
To scale technology, you need multiple revenue streams and KPIs, known processes for decision-making, exceptional cross-unit communications, and optimized Internal Operations and HR to track and orchestrate an effort of such complexity.
These metrics of success are closely held; however, you can look on LinkedIn and ask the point of contact to inquire about how the company operates and makes decisions, as it pertains to your specific engagement. How does the company run HR, what is the decision-maker’s background? Who is the COO, what is their background and interest in the mission or social impact goals? Tech is such a potentially-lucrative venture because its employees are the main cost and these employees alone can, in theory, scale limitlessly in the virtual as opposed to physical space (“Software scales, not people” — Sarah Downey). Therefore, a tech company’s most valuable asset in authentically fulfilling its mission or social impact goals is its Human Resources and coordinated internal operations.
A quick search can (or at least should) indicate if a company is properly safeguarding these assets, which will give you an indication of whether it will generally safeguard its users, clients, and partners.
#3 Re-Consider how you consider the lack of diversity and inclusion
I used to think that Diversity and Inclusion was a passive by-product of a well-run business: if a company has ample time and resources, they could solve so-called “pipeline” issues. I admit that I found the simplistic framing of “companies with female managers make more money” as problematic, reinforcing false equivocations.
Anecdotally, homogeneity amongst leadership leads to serious blind-spots, poor decision-making, and problematic group-think. And as I’ve had more and more opportunities to observe well-run and poorly-run businesses and organizations, I have a more nuanced appreciation for Diversity and Inclusion.
Human-centric, democratized technologies can be expensive. A democratized technology’s viability is dependent on continually iterating, scaling users and accessibility. To do so sustainably, the tech must address the needs and pain-points of large, representative, and engaged customer/consumer segments. Rather than looking at the white, male leadership and thinking “they should really have a female” or “they should really have a black person,” instead consider what voices and experiences are not being properly represented in the effective development of the specific technology-platform.
There are many highly-qualified people specialized in this exact topic so I am reluctant to provide further input here but as we’re currently learning, every business and organization needs to have a hard look at their practices, hire knowledgeable D&I advisors, and get uncomfortable and then comfortable with implementing actionable, sweeping systems changes.
#4 Follow the Money
If technology is expensive, then how is a for-profit company offering you, users, “social impact partners,” and other collaborators something for free? Are they simply offering something as a grant donation and taking the tax deductions? Are they monetizing user data? Are they leveraging your credibility and political capital for their benefit? Are they piloting the concept in a new vertical or industry to validate market potential and expansion so as to communicate this to investors?
All of these could be valid and ethical reasons but it’s helpful to understand exactly why a for-profit is taking this loss and how it intends to make up for it otherwise. By realistically pinpointing the company’s incentives, you can mitigate against the likelihood that they will prioritize theirs over yours should there ever be a misalignment between the two.
- If they are monetizing your data >>> recognize that your use of the technology is an active choice of what kind of data you are willing to give them for free.
- If they are leveraging your credibility and political capital, AKA marketing >>> ask for long-term assurances as well as actionable accountability measures should they fail to uphold their commitments.
- If they are piloting a concept or use-case leveraging your expertise, network, and time >>> you should accrue some monetary or substantive benefit for effectively opening a lucrative market or expansion potential for them.
#5 Ask about the Company’s most recent security/ethics audit
Fortunately, we have collectively learned a lot about digital security and the challenges therein. We’ve also learned A LOT about how poorly systems self-regulate. If a company, organization, or project is truly committed to #Tech4Good, they will invest in external security and ethics audits to keep themselves in check. While they likely won’t share the full results with you, it is common practice to provide a summary of these audits. At the very least you should ask the point-of-contact the date and provider of their most recent audit(s). This will help you understand how much they value their users, clients, and partners. Actions speak louder than words, don’t take anything for granted.
#6 Seek Out, Support, and use Open Source Technologies
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, seek out, support, and use Open Source technologies! The Internet and much of tech innovation was founded on principles of transparency and democratization of scientific advancements. Along the way, the promise of Amazon and Google distorted investment criteria and forever changed the way technology permeates each aspect of our lives. Much has been written on this topic: most recently, Safiya Noble beautifully summarized this tragedy in “The Loss of Public Goods to Big Tech.”
While many private, commercial, IP-protected technologies begin as Open Source, image authentication technologies present an interesting case study. A foundational technology for image and video authentication was developed by and for human rights advocates beginning in 2013, thoughtfully stewarded by all around bad-ass and technical lead Harlo Holmes. The resulting application ProofMode (as well as its predecessor CameraV), developed by The Guardian Project and Witness, is still publicly available on GitHub. ProofMode’s library also shows how beautifully iterative open source tech can be: the library has been iterated upon and integrated into other open source apps like Save and Tella!
Recognizing resource limitations, realities of user behavior (that we actually mostly trust each other and should continue doing so except in limited situations that require a higher standard of proof), dilemmas in authenticity infrastructure (see also, this freaky Black Mirror episode), the human rights community early-on shifted to a more holistic, autonomous-not-automated verification approach. (Disclosure: as someone who sits on the Advisory Board of OpenArchive, I find that Save uniquely addresses these myriad concerns).
Around 2016, when the term “fake news” began percolating in the public sphere, founders and investors started looking for ways to privatize and capitalize off of Authenticity. And now buzzwords like #disinformation, “liars dividend,” and #deepfakes are used to argue for further centralization of who defines Truth and reaps the benefits. For any other technology, this kind of marketing, capitalization, and centralization might not be as concerning. But are we ready to relinquish this particular public good?
“We need new paradigms, not more new tech. We need fair and equitable implementations of public policy that bolster our collective good. We need to center the most vulnerable among us — the working poor and the disabled, those who live under racial and religious tyranny, the discriminated against and the oppressed. We need to house people and provide health, employment, creative arts and educational resources. We need to close the intersectional racial wealth gap.”
Safiya Noble, “The Loss of Public Goods to Big Tech”
Please feel free to comment with other indicators to add to the checklist. I’m feeling very hopeful about how we can figure this out together.
