The Right Way to Code: Navigating Ethics in Web Development

Episode Sponsors!

Magic Mind Trial - 3 free bottles!

• Get 3 free bottles of Magic Mind - only pay shipping!
  • This is a one-time deal that you can claim using the link and code provided below
  • Cancel your subscription any time to not get charged after one month
• Link & Code
  • Link: https://magicmind.com/HTMLPODTRIAL
  • Code: HTMLPODTRIAL

Wix Studio: The Web Platform for Agencies and Enterprises

Wix Studio is the new web platform tailored to designers, developers and marketers who build websites for others or for large organizations. The magic of Wix Studio is its advanced design capabilities which makes website creation efficient and intuitive.

Check out Wix Studio today.

Show Notes

Introduction to Ethics in Web Development

• Discuss the importance of ethics in technology and how it specifically applies to web development.
• Define key terms like ethical design, digital privacy, and user consent.
• There are a lot of decisions that developers have to make that could be considered under the umbrella of “being ethical” 
  • Accessibility features (in varying degrees of integration)
  • Data security (privacy, collecting user data, protecting user data)
  • Sustainability (remember, servers use electricity 24/7, sourced from ethical web hosts?)
  • Cutting Edge Tech, jumping in straight away (most recently, AI: content writing, coding snippets, art, etc.)
  • UI/UX
    • anxiety inducing timers and prompts
    • “10 people are looking at this room”
    • “Only 10 left in stock” 
  • Client intentions
    • If you’re a web agency how do you feel about what your client is doing with what you built?

Accessibility Features

• Make a decision on how accessible you want your website to be 
  • This can be a difficult decision as you’ll need more development hours based on what features you install
• Local legislation may have basic requirements for accessibility that you’ll need to adhere to
  • Many think that these laws are the bare minimum and that a full accessibility suite of features should be installed
• Take a look at WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) - series developed through the W3C process in cooperation with people and orgs across the world
  • The goal is to provide a single shared standard for web content accessibility that meets the needs of individuals, organizations, and governments internationally.

Data Security: Privacy and Data Protection

• Basic data privacy principles:
  • Collect only the necessary data from users (ie don’t ask for address if you don’t need it)
  • Use data for the reasons that were stated to the user, and not for other reasons
  • Keep user data for only as long as needed
  • Data stores need to be protected from unauthorized use and stored in a secure way (ie encrypted) in case authorized access is gained by a hacker or misconfiguration (vendors, apps, 
• Comply the best you can with required legislation such as GDPR
  

Sustainability

• Choosing hardware from sustainability-conscious vendors
  • When you upgrade hardware and why
  • Recycle or properly e-waste your hardware
  • Donate hardware that is still usable
• Servers use electricity 24/7 and you almost always purchase from a hosting company
  • How sustainable is the hosting company’s operation
  • Many list this on their site

Cutting Edge Tech

• Cutting edge tech is flashy and fun, but sometimes we can jump in too fast
• With the latest example being AI there are a lot of ethical questions
  • AI being trained on content (art, written, etc.) without express consent…is it okay?
  • Using AI art on projects
  • Using AI to write content for sites

UI/UX Tech

• Designing your UI/UX has ethical implications because you can
  • Mislead people into clicking on something that they don’t mean to with questionable prompts, putting buttons too close together, etc.
  • UX design that “forces a purchase”
    • “There are 10 people looking at this room right now”
    • “Only 3 left in stock” / “3 left in stock, more on the way”

Client Intentions

• As a web agency, you’ll frequently design and build a website that you’ll eventually hand off to a client for use
• What is the ethical responsibility if the client has questionable intentions/methods? For example they may be:
  • Plagiarizing content
  • Being predatory to drive ecommerce sales
  • Treating their staff poorly
  • Asking for questionable data collection and storage methods and continuing to demand these methods be implemented even after a dev has explained the problems with it
• How much responsibility does a web dev have here? Is it just develop, hand off, and walk away with clean hands?

Links

• The $2.3 Billion Tornado Cash Case Is a Pivotal Moment for Crypto Privacy (Source: Wired)

Shoutouts!

Michael LaRocca

• Author of the Self-Taught the X Generation blog, at selftaughttxg.com