Rewrite #2, Week 9

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Hello, welcome back to my blog this week I will talk about what Ethics provides, Dark Patterns and Propaganda. Ethics provide a framework for understanding and interpreting right and wrong in society. Ethics are the set of moral principles that guides that person’s behaviour. These morals are shaped by social norms, cultural practices, and religious influences. Ethics reflect beliefs about what is right, what is wrong, what is just, what is unjust, what is good, and what is bad in terms of human behaviour. They are used as a compass to direct how people should behave toward each other and to understand and fulfil their obligations to society and live their lives.

Ethics Defined

I think the difference between Ethics and Morals is that Ethics leans towards an individual person’s decision of right and wrong whereas Morals emphasises the widely shared societal norms of right and wrong.

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How dark patterns trick you online

Dark patterns are features of interface design, crafted to trick users into doing things they would not usually do but which benefit the business in question. Such as when you want to delete your Amazon account it takes a lot of effort to delete because there is a lot of hassle to even get to the point, that you must chat with an amazon person first and tell them why you want to delete your account. I have experience from scam messages that look real from the bank or a tv add, that end up taking money from your account.

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Harry Brignull UX specialist coined dark patterns as a design that makes it easy for you to get into a situation but hard to get out of. For instance, colour can trick you, when the colour is repeated over and over with the buttons that you regularly click on changes, then an ad comes on with the same colour button it can trick you to press on it by accident, or when you see a spec of dirt on that looks like it's on your screen but when you try to wipe it away, it's actually pressing on the link and opening up a page you don’t want to be on. You should always be aware of dark patterns and protect yourself using VPN protection.

How one man manipulated all of America (Edward Bernays) Year 1929 Location, the city that never sleeps "New York".

Propaganda has used media since there were magazines, newspapers, radios, the internet, and videos to manipulate. Using influencers to market their goods and using users’ thoughts, emotions, and desires. Edward Bernays set up the campaign to get women to smoke. They used advertising saying “Reach for a lucky" instead of a sweet” lucky strikes cigarettes, to promote smoking. He used photographers, magazines, and newspapers to tell the world that thin people were in fashion. He also recruited medical experts to tell people that smokes were a healthy alternative for sweets. After that more women were smoking after World War 1. Usually, women would tend to smoke indoors privately, so to make women smoke in public he hired a group of women to smoke in the parade as effective propaganda that became a movement and then had tonnes of women smoking in public.

To get social control they used propaganda and psychology that gave them control. The social pressure of not fitting in would make you want to buy something you can’t afford and probably don’t need.

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I think even today the pressure of media that influences everyday people to look or dress a certain way and to buy all these products hasn’t changed since the media start advertising. I think dark patterns are hard to notice and can trick you easy, so you need to be mindful when using technology.