It’s been a busy few weeks at Paper Frogs.
In October, we presented and facilitated at an event with Open Data Manchester to attempt to demystify the behemoth that is the UK Government’s Data: A new direction consultation, which launched in September. We encouraged organisations to publish their thinking and exploration as they developed their responses. Here’s a great example from The Legal Education Foundation on the equality implications of the Government’s proposals. By sharing ideas everyone gains a better understanding, and has an opportunity to collaborate but also to gather their own evidence base for personal responses.
In November we took part in one of the community sessions arranged by Open Data Manchester and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. At this, we contributed to the community generated response. It benefited greatly from insight from officials, businesses, community groups, practitioners and activists across the city.
Today, we submitted our own response from Paper Frogs, which drew on what we heard at the community events, but also on themes highlighted at yesterday’s launch event of the World Wide Web Foundation’s Tech Policy Design Lab project on dark patterns on the web. These manipulative design practices negatively impact consumers and society by removing choice or tricking people into doing things they wouldn’t normally intend to do. Sobering stuff. And a lot of it is driven by the kind of data and mechanisms being talked about in the Government’s data consultation.
It’s always refreshing to find out that brilliant minds are coming together to tackle practices that cause harm and to develop more empowering, ethical approaches. People like Nnenna from the Web Foundation, Kat at Spotify and Finn from the Norwegian Consumer Agency, amongst others speaking at the launch event.
We’re excited to see how the Policy Design Lab’s work develops and hope to play our part as they gather evidence, develop actionable principles and practices, and work to change the rules and policies that shape our world.
More locally in Manchester, Paper Frogs is working with Noisy Cricket to challenge the ways tech and data reinforce inequalities through the Federation Programme and the Responsible Tech Collective, in partnership with the Co-op Foundation and Luminate.
Get in touch if you'd like to know more.
Find out more about the Web Foundation’s work on dark patterns: techlab@webfoundation[dot]org
Visit the Co-op Foundation’s blog to find out more about the Federation Programme.
To get involved with the Responsible Tech Collective, find the latest updates on Twitter.