Is that website or app, in which you’re pouring personal information, time, money and trust, ethical? Is it good for you and society? Does it reflect values and virtues that you agree with? Does it follow the rules, like the golden rule? And does it feel right, as you might feel working with a trusted friend? These are the four prongs of ethical analysis that I’ve written and lectured about; they’re useful for evaluating the moral status of the websites and apps that you use every day.
Why You Should Care
It’s especially important these days to evaluate rigorously the websites and apps we use. They increasingly mediate our interactions with other people, businesses, governments, nature and more. The organizations behind them have become increasingly powerful economically, politically and socially. Advances in technology and behavioral science make it easier for these organizations to monitor and influence our behaviors. This can lead to enormous impacts on society including polarization, inequality, civil rights, and instability.
One e-commerce site that I want to love but sometimes hate is Jet.com. I’ve been interested in their use of behavioral economics and have been a customer for some time. Let’s use the four-pronged test to evaluation Jet.com ethically.
- Benefits vs. Costs
The first ethical test is whether the website’s benefits to stakeholders exceed the costs. Is society sustainably better off because that business exists?
Without performing a detailed social benefit/cost analysis, I have had a generally positive experience with Jet.com and am glad there’s a local alternative to Amazon. However, their ratings on environmental, social and governance sustainability could certainly be better (Walmart purchased them in 2016). Their design is user-centric, but I’m not sure that the benefits of that design are fairly allocated between the business and their users. For example, the feature that reduces prices when you add to the cart benefits the company more: customers get a few pennies savings but the company has an effective positive feedback tool to get people to buy more and more
Without performing a detailed social benefit/cost analysis, I have had a generally positive experience with Jet.com and am glad there’s a local alternative to Amazon. However, their ratings on environmental, social and governance sustainability could certainly be better (Walmart purchased them in 2016). Their design is user-centric, but I’m not sure that the benefits of that design are fairly allocated between the business and their users. For example, the feature that reduces prices when you add to the cart benefits the company more: customers get a few pennies savings but the company has an effective positive feedback tool to get people to buy more and more
- Virtues
The second ethical test is whether the website/app appears to reflect certain values or virtues that our culture deems important. In the US, these can include justice, individualism, trustworthiness, hard work, honesty, inclusiveness and progress.
Is Jet.com virtuous? Over the past couple of years, I’ve noted a number of improvements: there are more products available and the anchoring “feature” has become less prominent, suggesting they are working hard, which is virtuous. The product descriptions are honest and I can trust them to get me the right products on time or make it right if they do not. On the other hand, they do nothing to make me a better shopper. It’s not possible to sort based on price per ounce, nor can I shop based on fair trade or other “ethical” factor. On accessibility, Jet.com seems slightly better than other top e-commerce sites:
- Rules
The third prong of our ethical analysis is whether the website follows certain ethical rules, regardless of cost to the company. This can include the Golden Rule: would their designers hesitate to include any design element if they knew their grandparents would be influenced by it? What if every website did the same thing? Are you treating users as mere revenue sources or is your mission truly the wellbeing of people and society?
At Jet.com, I don’t see any egregious examples of dark patterns, a user interface that is designed to trick users into buying things they don’t need or giving up information that isn’t necessary to the transaction. And I can imagine Jet.com employees encouraging their families to shop on the site. That said, I don’t like how they use defaults that require people to be extra-vigilant to opt-out of “scheduled delivery”, which adds $5.95 to an order (even when an order qualifies for “free shipping”). This is a tax on inattention which treats me like a wallet connected to a brain-stem. There is also a pop-up, “people also bought”, which seems to exist to stimulate impulse purchases.
Finally, Jet.com appears to take advantage of users’ inattention to privacy concerns:
- Empathy and Intuition
The final ethical test is a little less analytical: does the company behind the website/app seem to empathize with me, understanding my goals, strengths, weaknesses and stresses? Does the experience leave me feeling safe, respected, comfortable and confident?
I feel that Jet.com’s designers spent a lot of time understanding the needs and goals of their users. The design is clean, helpful and generally supports me in my shopping task. The site could do a better job of preventing mistakes: I have ordered the wrong product because the price per unit wasn’t shown and failed to opt-out of scheduled delivery. And some products are priced poorly (compare Jet to Kmart). This makes me anxious to be very vigilant with every purchase.
Summing Up
This four-pronged ethical test helps identify how a website, or any business, views its relationship with the user and society as a whole. Is it about making the world a better place or more about making the founders rich? Does it manifest virtues that will help me be more virtuous myself? Does it treat me like a human or a pair of eyeballs connect to a credit card? And does it give me the feelings of safety, trust and agency that I deserve? The test illuminates a range of opportunities for online businesses like Jet.com to add to human welfare and make money at the same time.
This article originally appeared on October 16, 2018 on Forbes.com.