TFGL2021 - S2 - Ep5 - Access to Choice

Welcome to this episode of the Tech For Good Live podcast.

Jonny Rae-Evans is on hosting duties and he is joined by TFGL team members Greg Ashton and Tom Passmore. 

Our Special guest this week is Mia Peters, a user centred service design and research practitioner with extensive public sector experience.

Transcript

Jonny: Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Tech For Good life podcast. The glorious sunshine of last week has been replaced with dark skies and miserable showers. Could this be used as a metaphor for Bex taking the week off hosting only to be replaced by miserable old me? Possibly. Are we going to dwell on that? Absolutely not. Despite my return to the podcast, there are reasons for you to stick around and to keep listening. First off, we have a great episode lined up for you today. She'll be talking about a universal basic income trial. That's fun. We'll be talking about institutional racism and bias in the charity sector. Absolutely not fun. And finally, Zuckerberg and Tim Cook are going to have a big fight, which can only make me think of rock and sock and robots. So that's exciting, I guess. Anyway, let's get podcasting. Digging into the abyss with me today, we have Greg Ashton, reliable as always and responsible for our agenda today. Greg,I have a question for you. If you were a musical instrument, what would you be?

Greg: I really want to say piccolo because I like the word piccolo. Piccolo. But I think I’d probably be like an old cinth. Not a new one, like an old one. That's like, a little bit jaded and not all the wires work.

Jonny: [laughs] Okay, interesting. And Tom. Tom Pasmore. You’re back on the podcast. And Tom, you don't like music, which is weird.

Tom: It’s not that I don’t like it. 

Jonny: You don’t like all music. 

Tom: Yeah, I just hate all things.

Jonny: Well, if you were if you had to be an instrument, what instrument would you be?

Tom: I actually don't know that many musical instruments. 

Jonny: Oh my God. 

Tom: But the one I thought that came to my head was a banjo. 

Jonny: A banjo? Yes, along the hillbilly vibe. You do live in the hills.

Tom: I do live in the hills.

Jonny: You were in a cult for a while. 

Tom: It wasn't a cult, it was a commune.

Greg: [laughs]

Jonny: Okay. Potato, potatoh. 

Tom: There you go. 

Jonny: And I'm Jonny Rae-Evans. I'm back on the podcast and responsible for keeping it on the rails. And the musical theme is because it's a great audio podcasting behind me on the wall, there's some bass guitars and every time Bex, my wife who's on a call, she sits next to me, every time she has to say oh, I don't play them. They're not mine. I don't play them. It's happened a lot today so that was on my mind. And we have a guest with us today. Mia Peters, a consultant with extensive public sector experience. Mia, hello. 

Mia: Hiya. 

Jonny: Mia, if you were if you were a musical instrument, what would you be?

Mia: I think I'd be an oboe because they’re deep and so am I.

Jonny: Excellent.

Tom: Ohhh I like it. 

Jonny: Very, like classy about going the oboe route as well. Yeah, yeah. Where the cinth is a little bit trashy, Greg, I've gotta be honest. 

Greg: Yeah. 

Jonny: Of the oboe. There's a real gravitas with that as well.

Tom: What would you say about the banjo?

Jonny: It’ll be something terrifying about the banjo.

Greg: [laughs] 

Jonny: I think, uh. 

Mia: Lightweight and frivolous.

Jonny: [laughs]

Tom: I am a lightweight.

Jonny: [laughs] It all works out. Okay. I don't have a segue from this into the first topic, which is Start of the Week, Greg, but it is time for the Start of the Week.

Greg: Yes. So I'm heading over to America where a two year trial has just ended for universal basic income. And one of the main findings of this trial is that those on a guaranteed income found full time work at more than twice the rate of non-recipients of the guaranteed income. So this was from the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, also known as SEED, which makes me feel a little bit sick in my mouth. So this is a California city of Stockton. So a really high poverty area is one of the highest rates in the US with an estimated 20% of inhabitants living below the poverty line. And they took 125 people, randomly selected, and they took part in the trial and they got $500 paid into their accounts every month. And yeah, the early results are generally very very positive. So this is the second kind of major trial that's ended now. There was one in Finland and then one this one in California. I think there's been other smaller trials and others that are still ongoing. But yeah, indications are very, very positive.

Tom: Wow. Who would have thought it? Remove the stress of money and people feel better.

Jonny: It's good though because like it He said there was a Finland trial, which I don't know if you've seen how that went. But there were some smaller studies, which I think were quite flawed, from my understanding of them, which were less successful and have been used to give the idea of universal basic income a bit of a kick in. So it's good to see this being successful, I guess.

Tom: Is there any information about why people found full time work, ie, like, easier to get into when they were getting it because I don't understand the correlation.

Jonny: Because I think there are certain barriers in trying to find full time work, where if you're really struggling, it can often create issues. So your appearance, the ability to, you know, like, dress well. So there are a number of charities that, you know, basically get clothes for people so that they can go to an interview and things like that. So there are barriers. And then there's the mental health aspect of it as well. The stress of struggling, and then being able to turn up to a job interview and put on your best face when, you know, you're terrified that if I don't get this job, my children might not be able to eat. So yeah, I think it's really just giving people an even keel to kind of then go out and find that work.

Mia: Yeah, I think it's often taking that stress away. I did some research about a year ago, around health inequalities, and asking people, you know, why did they smoke so much or why did they drink and it all came back to mental health. And, you know, feeling that, if their mental health was better, they would be more or more even keel, that they could then go and address some of these problems. And I think, you know, that sort of draws parallels with this, doesn't it because, you know, if you are worried about you know, your kids not having enough to eat during the day, or you haven't got enough petrol to put in your car to get that interview out of town or you know, all sorts of things, then you're not going to give your best performance, or you're not going to be really into it because of other problems that you need  to solve first. And by giving those people money, it's helped to solve some of the other problems. So it sounds like a great thing. really does. 

Greg: Yeah, it's really interesting you mentioned health inequalities there. I was working on a project last year, and I looked at this and one thing that stood out for me was that there are huge inequalities around health, and you see greater health inequalities in more impoverished areas. But one thing that, and it's really complex, because it's kind of mixed in with cultural things, and then financial things and economic things. One thing that kind of cuts through all of that is green space. So if you put some green space in an area of poverty, it alleviates a huge amount of the mental health and other issues that compound the experience of poverty, and it can actually improve people's health within an area, because it is giving them that mental health boost. So if you combine that with universal income, you could, you could see a huge benefit. And that's one thing that they mentioned in this is, so one of the criticisms is, you know, your funding, how do you fund this, but the the kind of response to that is, well, if you fund this you're paying for it down the line, so you're not having to spend that money on health and health services, because those people are going to be better off because they're able to support themselves, so their health will be better, their mental health will be better. So you're saving money in the long term by spending it in the short term.

Tom: It's like an investment into healthcare. It's like you invest money now so that you can then reap the rewards of that good health later down the line. 

Mia: You’ve also got to change the narrative around you know, this whole thing, oh, well, we give money to people that need it, and they'll go off and spend it on alcohol and cigarettes and everything. I think that when I was reading a little bit on the study, it showed that there was an extremely low percentage of people that actually did that. And people were, you know, sort of spending money on essential things like food and travel and, you know, which is very much judging the poor people and working class people, you know, we see it time and time again, in this country, benefits scum and everything whereas some, you know, we don't seem to hear that kind of judgement about very, very wealthy people. 

Tom: Yeah.

Jonny: Absolutely. So it's a two year study. Did anyone do the maths or I guess is the period not long enough to see, you know, to make that because you absolutely will have people say, oh, why are we supporting those people. Like you said, it's always the poorest of society who you get the criticism and the blaming culture, but also you'll have the same old narrative comes up doesn't it whenever universal basic income is talked about it. Because people always say, oh, we'll just stay home. Whereas this shows it's actually helped people to work, has it been any kind of analysis of the reduction in societal cost of these people not having the $500? 

Greg: That's one of the limitations of this. And one of the limitations, I think, of most of the studies that have been done is, it's really hard to kind of measure that impact on such a small cohort. And really, the only way you're going to see the true impact is if a whole community or even a whole

Jonny: If it’s universal.

Greg: Yeah. And says, you know, let's, let's see. So you're gonna have to do it at scale to really start to understand that because there's so many other factors that you can't really see a shift in a small cohort without having that bigger impact. But yeah, as with the previous ones, this has had its naysayers. So there was an article in the California Globe, which said that, so you mentioned there that they were spending largely on necessities such as food. But this article in the California Globe was claiming that that wasn't true and the team have been misled about where that expenditure was coming from. So people were claiming that they were spending on food, but actually spending it on things like spa holidays and stuff like that. 

Jonny: Why not?

Tom: Yeah. Like, it’s their money. No strings attached? Like you can do what you want with it. It gives people choice. And I'm a firm believer that give people choice. Doesn't matter what they do with that choice, just give them access to choice. And then it creates, it creates opportunity. It creates movement, like mobility, like it's yeah, choice, doesn't matter what they spend it on. Not important, not important. It's important that they have the choice to spend money on something.

Greg: But it is important because part of the argument for this is it bolsters the economy. So them spending that money is not a bad thing. It's a positive because that money is going into the, those people who sold them the spa holidays or sold them the TVs, and other things that they were supposedly buying. Great. Is that money in those people's buckets? So what's the problem?

Jonny: Yeah, we work really, really, really poor and it's not even remotely that way. Imagine living, if it is impossible to imagine living below the poverty line, and thousand stressful, awful moments a day that you must take on your mental health. And somebody says, we are going to support you and you get fired from the dollars paid and you can't open once you know it's going to be there for two years you can rely that's going to happen. And it helps you get into work. How is it like an audacious thing to go on a spa? Yeah, I go for a meal with your family when you've had a lifetime of like, struggle just to make the smallest decision and to make any decision and the day that you have to do to get through the day. Like I mean, of course, people are complaining about that and we can imagine exactly who are the people who are complaining about that kind of thing. It's the kind of people who've never had to live on $500.

Tom: Classic Californians. Classic [laughs]

Jonny: I am going to be, that was, whilst we ended on a sour note with some of the grumblings, I guess we knew that there was a bit of all this, right. It's a positive story. It's an uplifting story, but we are going to move on to something which is more challenging. So I guess like a trigger warning that we'll be talking about racism, in particular here. So over to you Greg. This is the Charity news of the week. 

Greg: Yeah, so it does feel like another week, another story about institutional bias and racism within a major charity. So in this case, it's Amnesty International. And again, it comes from an internal report, which was commissioned by the charity themselves, things had kind of come up, they'd had a number of whistleblowers, I believe. And so they commissioned this internal report. I don't think it was published for public consumption, but obviously, it's made its way out. And yeah, it was found to have a culture of white privilege with incidents of overt racism, including senior staff using the N word, micro aggressive behaviour, such as the touching of black colleagues' hair and this was all down to this internal review. Yeah, it's so, what do we think? I mean, yeah, like I said, another week, another story. And there seems to be a lot of these internal reviews and I feel like we're kind of getting to that point now where we need to stop talking about what has happened there and start thinking about, okay, what happens next?

Jonny: I remember this coming up.I don’t know if you posted it in Tech for Good Slack or not Greg and I remember being surprised by the title of this, this Guardian article was, I don't know if this was the title, this title is in the report or not. But Amnesty International has a culture of white privilege, because that was like an odd thing because white privilege is a thing that exists. It's not just going to be one organisation that has it, the best one charity, in the USA or the UK will have white privilege will be part of that. If the charity, people who work there are white, that's just a thing. It would be weird to say that. It's not white privilege. It's extraordinary racism is what it is. Like, that's, that's what it is. It was a weird, like, I know the authors don’t always get to write the headlines in news articles as well but I remember clicking on the link thinking, I wonder what this is gonna be and it immediately opens isn't it, with talking about stopping using the N word and that their behaviour around colleagues who are black, was just like unbelievably shocking, and the other title apps, not do justice for the horrors that were in that.

Mia: I think sometimes we've got to call these things out for what they actually are, haven’t we? You know, and that just seems like, a good example, and, you know, unfortunately, it doesn't surprise me at all, you know, sort of, I'm a woman of colour I've been, you know, sort of on the end of racist behaviour, you know, more times than I can remember. And unfortunately, you get to the stage where you just think, oh, yeah, another one. And the last organisation I worked in permanently, a London local authority, were making some really good steps to actually say, well, how can we co create a response with our staff to actually take this from making statements about how terrible it is to actually making a plan about how we're going to make some changes and for that plan to be very much led at grassroots level by staff and sponsored by senior management, but certainly not run by senior management. And that was, you know, that had a really promising start and I hear that that's going quite well, but sometimes it's just small steps, but, yeah, it's just disappointing. Especially, you know, well not especially but you know, an organisation like that, it's very disappointing

Jonny: Yeah. And like you said that's really encouraging that you were starting to see, like the commitment to change, you’re starting to see that people were changing. And my wonder is, like you said Greg, am I remembering correctly what you said here? So this was an internal report that I'm assume are and they published the results of it? Did they commission this? Because was it last year the charity, so why hashtag was trending about. 

Greg: And this year as well. It kind of came back. Yeah. Yeah. So it kind of really, I think it was created last year, I think. And well, yeah, it's kind of come to the fore agai, as we've seen a number of charities, again this year, have these reports released.

Jonny: Have there been any signs? So I think with the notes that you sent us around that Dave apologised for them. But are we? Are we seeing any suggestion that they are actually going to tackle this or is it a report, an apology and skin deep remorse? Do we think there's going to be change?

Greg: I think it's too early to tell. And you know, like what Mia was saying there about that local authority and the work that they were doing there. You know, things like that, I think that's really important. Is like that grassroots movement, involving people in kind of making that change throughout the whole organisation is really essential. But we're not going to know how well any of this works for a while yet, yeah, I guess. The thing that worries me is we see more of these stories, and we do start to go, Oh, here we go another one and we get a bit desensitised to it and almost switch off to it. And almost, you know, these actions, these things kind of become a little bit rote, where it's like, oh, well, we'll move out some of the executives or we'll just kind of, you know, we'll set up a committee to look at this thing. And yeah, it's both there's I think, you know, I've seen some positive actions like that local authority. It sounds like they're doing the right thing, but at the same time you've just got that fear that it is a flash in the pan and things will quiet down and then, you know, in 20 years’ time we'll be having the same conversation.

Mia: So I think organisations need a bit of humility as well and say, Look, actually, you know, we don't know the answers here. We need to learn. 

Greg: Yeah. 

Mia: We will make mistakes, but we'll make them with the intent of getting better, you know, and I think, you know, the vast majority of people would be like, yeah, okay, you know, if you put yourself out there and said, I will put myself out there, but I'm aware that I will make some mistakes, I want you to come and help me, you know, sort of grow, then I think most people would think, yeah, that's a really good intention. It's when people, I think, get scared sometimes that they don't know the right thing to say, they don't know where to set the tone, and they're afraid of offending people and they say nothing and saying nothing is terrible, you know, it's just, it's almost showing people that you just want to maintain the status quo, rather than actually making the uncomfortable journey of moving forwards.

Greg: Yeah, I think that's really important. Like, there was no way an organisation like Amnesty International, which was set up, you know, on the coattails of colonialism from kind of a, you know, from white, from a white saviour kind of perspective, there was no way there was not going to be some level of kind of white privilege baked into that organisation from the very get-go. So owning up to that is just so important. And the same for like so many other major charities. It's like, you've just got to accept that that's where you come from, but then do better. 

Jonny: It doesn't seem to be getting better is the problem as well. And like you said, there’s that risk of people become desensitised to it, or that you have less organisations doing what Mia was talking about, which is saying this is an issue that we have, this is what we're going to do. I'd like to see them, not only tell us what it is that they're going to do to address this and to say, yeah, exactly what you said, you know, we don't know how to fix this, we're going to learn, here's how we're going to learn and to continually update people about the steps they’re taking and letting us know, is it working? Because it's a sector wide issue clearly. And the sector doesn't seem to be sorting itself out. I have absolutely no faith and conviction to start this kind of thing out, either. So how does the sector grow and learn and improve as well? If people are, if we notice this issue that we have, and organisations not really talking about it, the pressure always seems to have to fall upon the people who are actually suffering to be the ones to step up and say this is my experience, this has happened to me. Which is obviously incredibly inspiring and brave for people to do that but how outrageous is the way that these stories have to come up. That it isn't the organisation saying we're doing something wrong. So I guess there’s maybe some hope that they at least instigated a report and announced it but I guess until we see any signs that they're improving, it's not really hopeful [laughs] On that really negative end point, so this, I guess, in some ways is next to tech news of the week is not a nice story. But it's so cartoon villain like that it's almost, there's almost like a hint of humour in it. Because we get to bed at like 7.30. I think, cause I saw this as we were getting into bed, and I was like, wait, it’s still daylight. And read it. I was like, Oh, I think I'd like to yikes, as I quote tweeted it. And saw it was a parody. At first Bex thought, this must be a parody. And so a few people were thinking this can't be real. And I am, of course, talking about the update from Basecamp. Take it away, Greg. This is Tech News of the Week. 

Greg: Yeah. So Basecamp founder, Jason Fried, Fried, has written a blog post about Basecamp, the organisation's new direction. And it's a fairly lengthy. 

Jonny: Downwards. 

Greg: [laughs] Lengthy exposition about... it's one of them that really annoys you, because it just dances around the topic. And you can see that he's, he's frothing at the mouth as he's written it, but he's controlled himself very well. But that means that the way is written, it really dances around the topic. And I think the real crux of this is his list of principles that will drive their organisation forward into the future. So I'll just go through them. So the first one, no more societal and political discussions on our company Basecamp account. No more paternalistic benefits, so things like gym memberships and stuff like that, that is kind of like well being stuff. No more committees. No more lingering or dwelling on past decisions. No more 360 reviews and no more forgetting what we do here. So they are a software development organisation. That's what they're going to focus on and forget about any kind of wider ethical considerations and their impact on the world at large. Guys, what do we think?

Tom: That's brilliant. They've just doubled down on that. I can't go. Yeah, but first of all, I just, yeah, let's be cartoon villain on this one. It's great. It's great.

Jonny: It's so weird because it can catch it lingers back to that kind of white privilege. Like, what a privilege thing to say, to be able to say, we're not going to talk about politics. Well, life is great for Jason and DHH. I don't know what his real name is, the other co-founder. They're not suffering from any systemic issues, to be honest. They’re rich white tech pros. Like, yeah, I'm sure it's really easy for them to kind of switch off. There was some stuff has come out around. Because people were like, this is weird. Like, it's a weird thing to do. It's a really weird thing to publicly announce. This is what you're doing. Like, did they not realise that this looks bad. Like that's really weird to me that they didn't have the foresight to see what this is going to look like, what a PR disaster, aside from the ethics of it. So everyone's like, I wonder what's happened behind the scenes like. 

Tom: Yeah. 

Jonny: So someone posted, who works there, that, you know, from the political point of view, like banning political talk, because I think people were like, hypothesising. Oh, you know, we've had politics gone mad on their internal system, which is Basecamp, like a project management kind of tool. And actually, no, it's really well structured. It’s specifically for that purpose, which opt-in. One of them was specifically around diversity and equality and inclusion, which had been approved by the founders. It read out to me, since I'm someone who's worked at big tech organisations, is, if I had to guess what has gone on with it, they know that the staff are not happy about the direction of the company and then you have two choices as leaders of the company. One is you fix the issue and you go back to what your value should be, what the values of your company should be, and you kind of make amends, and you bring everyone on the same page and there's like a real piece of work around consultation there, as well. And the other option is, you double down and you shut off the avenues that they would use to rebel. That's just me making it up but that was the thing, everyone can imagine what's happening to cause this. It’s just weird. It’s weird. Like some things, you’re like, I don’t think this is the answer than the rest of them. But the idea of, we're not gonna give you benefits or discounts or perks on certain things, we're just going to give you the money. So I’m saying, I guess it goes back to the universal basic income thing, give people a choice like that, if you announced that you can see what that would be, you know, companies have done that for the right reasons. But when you bundle that with the rest of them now, I think I have a bad reason they’ve done that though? And the whole thing just seems, anyway I'm ranting on. The whole thing seems weird to me in a bad way. 

Tom: Yeah. No more 360 reviews. Like, we're a manager now. No one judges us. We're a Director. No one judges us. Like, just so yeah, no, it's fine. It's fine. The higher you get, the more power you have and it's all good. So good.

Jonny: A company like Basecamp, maybe it was a while back, I think they did a medium post, or there was something on Twitter where they don't do, there are certain areas of user research they don't do. Maybe it's usability testing. They just release it, see what happens and fix it after it. So that very much trends with the mostly six figure reviews. We don’t want to hear what out what people think.

Tom: We don't want to do research.

Greg: I think a real insight into his thoughts around this is later on in his article where he writes, he's responsible for these changes. David and I are who made the changes, David and I did. These are our calls and the outcomes and impact land at our doorstep. Input came from many sources.Disagreements were heard. Deliberations were hard. In the end, we feel like this is the long term healthy way forward. So basically what he's saying there, and in the end, we don't give a shit what you think. I've literally had a conversation like this last year where it was like, oh, yeah, we've heard exactly what you've said but we just don't agree with anything that you said. So we're just going to carry on with this thing that we decided to do from the outset.

Mia: There's a fine line between, you know, strong leadership and bureaucratic isn't there, to support that on the other side of it, you know, it's where you're, I think leading the company like that, you need to have a level of charisma. You need to put yourself out there and lead and everything. But it sounds like they just got too much of their own hype really.

Jonny: Yeah and linking back to the Amnesty International thing as well, like I couldn't imagine what it would be like if you are, for example, a woman of colour at his company. And these two rich white tech guys who won the company have shut down the diversity and inclusion group. You are not allowed to talk about that kind of stuff on the platform. The idea that those kind of conversations or even the doubt that those kinds of conversations might not be what they want you to talk about, just knuckle down and do the work basically, is what this is saying isn’t it? Don’t complain. Knuckle down and do the work is just like, so unbelievable. I mean, it’s wrong but how tone deaf as well. I do not understand it on any level. I don't understand it from it's a bad way to run a business. I mean, who knew Basecamp was still going anyway? Do you remember using that in the early 2000s? Like, who's going to use this? It’s still going. It must be going. 

Tom: I've never heard of Basecamp. This is my first time hearing about them. It. Is it a product or is it a company behind the product?

Jonny: A company behind the product? They do the, what was more successful is they did email for rich people that hey, okay, right. That may be unfair. It's a paid for email service called Hey. But I remember having to use it as a freelance on a few client projects where I will invite you to our Basecamp. And it was in the same way I don't like Teams, it was like that. Things just didn't work for me. It didn't work with any workflow. Maybe that was a personal workflow thing. It didn't work in the way that it worked at other places that I had worked as well. It's just odd. It didn't solve the problem that I had, which maybe really unfairly. What it is, was and does now but now there’s a legitimate reason not to like it now. Is the cartoon villain who runs it. It’s like Pinky and the Brain. But maybe maybe just two Pinkys.

Greg: They did have very nice content on their website, though. It was very, very well written. I will give them that.  

Jonny: And I think, very quickly, did you say that Zuckerberg in another story, Zuckerberg and Tim Cook are gonna get into fisticuffs as well?

Greg: Yeah. So this is, this is all over everywhere this week is. So it felt like we needed to touch on this. So Apple are releasing a new privacy feature that requires iPhone owners to explicitly choose whether to let apps like Facebook, track them across other apps. So this was supposed to be released last year and it got delayed a little bit because there was some fear from people around, it was gonna kill a load of businesses. So Apple kind of said, well, we're still gonna do it but we'll push it back a little bit. And that comes into play this week. So it's really kind of ramping up tensions between Apple and Facebook that have been slowly bubbling away for a while now. I guess Facebook maybe thought they weren't going to do it and they've done it. So let's see what happens next.

Jonny: It will be interesting. They do, there’s this nice thing, where it lets you know if one app has pasted information from it into your new app. So if you sent me something on Slack, like a link and I copied it and I paste it into Signal, I get a little thing that pops up that says Signal has pasted content from Slack. I remember when that version of iOS went out to testers and beta developers, I don't know if it was a bug with it, which is entirely possible because it was early and beta versions are really buggy. Or if just all of the apps were behaving really badly, because it had someone that really opened up Snapchat and flicked to notes. And you had this dedededede, Snapchat is accessing Snapchat, essentially loads of products were constantly, every time you use an app it copied to clipboard every single time. I don't know if it was that that feature made them stop. So they don't do it now because I thought we actually let him live when those were evil or if it was a bug but yeah, I liked the thought of this freaking Facebook out is quite nice, too. But they need to do that for Google.

Greg: So not in any way supporting Facebook's activities but how do we feel about one large, super large organisation having the power to kind of hold the reins on another, in this case, a super large but it could be any other businesses business model and having that power to kind of say whether they can or can't use their business model.

Tom: I mean, that's, that's capitalism. So if you get into that bed, then you have to, that analogy got away me a little bit there [laughs]

Greg: [laughs] 

Jonny: It’s informed consent though. That's what they're doing. They're not saying you can't. 

Tom: Yeah. 

Jonny: You have to get informed consent because they know terms and conditions don't work. The whole Cambridge, I know we talked about the Cambridge Analytica thing where, it wasn't a data leak. It was data that was legitimately captured. They shouldn't have given it to someone, but actually people had consented. They didn't know they consented to it. This idea that people do not understand privacy, they don't understand how it works in the digital world. And companies like Facebook, and Apple, like we've all seen that and bits as well, how long they are, they so rarely do they actually take steps to help you understand what you're doing, what they're doing with your data. So anything that forces informed consent like this, and let’s me know what's happening, I think it is helpful.

Tom: Yeah, so I've always been a bit meh about Apple, but recently, I'm very pro their privacy stuff, like and I don't know if it's just marketing or a gimmick or whatever. But it feels like we’ve built quite expensive technology but that's how much technology costs. And we're not going to sell your data to make sure it gets into your hands, whereas so many organisations are like, here’s some hardware, it's cheap, isn't it? Yeah. Well, don't worry, it’s because we're going to be selling your data on the back end of it. Whereas Apple, I don't know, it's just a feeling that I have and gone down this route of it’s expensive because that's how much it costs. And I'm very pro this idea of price should tell the truth.

Jonny: Yeah, I think they do privacy well. I think the sense in which they care about it now I don't know. They used to back in the day. I guess it's easier for them to double down and sell it as a feature, because it's their business model is to sell data, right? So wherever it is, they care about your privacy anymore, or they don't, they don't need to sell it because they're making enough money that they can, you know, talk about the benefits of it. But I guess, you know, they haven't pivoted to sell, they could collect a massive amount of data if they wanted. You know, their reach, yeah, well, they know they don't. So I guess that's in the world of mean, there's lots of other things where that trickles down, but I always thought like, they will unveil the new Max, which I like. And whenever they talk about how environmental they are, there are some things that are environmental about them. Like some things are, but the whole thing is filled with glue. so you can’t fix them and reuse them. He says that. I'm talking to an eleven year old Mac, that still works perfectly, and I've only ever spent £30 on fixing it. And my keyboard’s dodgy. But yeah, there's other things you need to fix. But I do like the privacy stuff. 

Mia: There's something that feels like from both organisations, the corporate narrative that is very much, you know, we have sort of the cultural superiority around this, and we decide what the narrative should be. And there doesn't seem to be, you know, when the Cambridge Analytica thing came out, and people had very sort of, like, emotional reaction to feeling like, you know, their trust had been broken and everything. And I don't really see those kinds of consumer needs coming forward. It's almost like, Well, whatever they're releasing, they're releasing something and we know it's gonna fit a business model, it’s profit driven and everything and they're not necessary identify what the real consumer needs is, which I think ultimately would move them forwards in a profitable direction in the future, but it might be a little bit more of a longer life cycle.

Greg: Really good point actually. I'd never thought about it that way. Like, neither of them are kind of, when you think about the business model at its core it's really about, like what's best for them rather than what's best for the customers. So, yeah, it kind of dances around, because people are, they think they're getting what they want but actually, you know, in the longer term, they’re kind of losing out, whether it's from environmental impacts, or from data impacts.

Jonny: Yeah, and you see that with good examples of social media, not caring about what's right for users, what’s right for them. We don't do GDPR. They apply those changes to the countries that they fell under, but didn't apply those privacy changes elsewhere. And, you know, Twitter's long, non existent battle to fight like Nazis on the platform. You know, we were trying to fix it, we're trying to fix it. They did ban it in Germany because it's a crime and they'd get in serious trouble but they didn't roll out those changes elsewhere. Yeah, they focused on what's right for them, not what's right for people. And I imagine you’ll see the only chance you'd see Facebook taking actually are really decent principled stance on privacy is where it's going to cost them money not to. Like, I wonder how much, was it £50 million to Signal rather than WhatsApp over two or three days when they changed the WhatsApp terms and services. I wonder how much that scared them that you know, there's still lots of people on WhatsApp, I'm sure it's still doing good business. But you know, as I start to see people swinging towards making purchasing decisions based on things like privacy and ethics, how soon we'll see those companies start to spring back to, no  we care about ethics. Please, please. Reactivate your account. 

Tom: I’m not gonna hold out on it. 

Jonny: No, I mean, I don't think people will do that because convenience is a big driver than ethics. A lot of people like a free service. But if I think if that did happen, if it was you're going to lose your customers, because they care about privacy and make some privacy changes. But what is it 500 million users or how many users they've got? It's probably more than that. They've got more than a billion. So although most of them are dead. 

Tom: What? Anyway. 

Jonny: It’s not most of them. But there's a significant amount of Facebook users who are just dead. Facebook didn't kill them. They're just accounts of people who have died. Because they’ve been working on a service for how to, essentially, and it does exist. You can basically assign someone in your Facebook account to take over it when you die. 

Greg: Yeah. 

Jonny: Like, a specific will, just for social media.

Greg: Yeah. And then you can turn it into like a memorial for that person.

Jonny: So yet again, we've ended a topic on a fun point. 

Greg: [laughs]

Jonny: Rant of the week. We have a Rant of the Week. This is right, isn't it? Was this edge cases?

Mia: Yes. Yes. Yes, definitely. So I always see, edge cases mean a couple of different things. Say just as an example, you've made a photo editing website and you design it so that people maybe upload between say 5 and 35 photos a day. Now, your edge case there is what if somebody tries to upload 10,000 in a day, you know, is the system going to fall over and everything? Now that's a valid sort of technical edge case. But what makes my blood boil is when people talk about accessibility, when they talk about disability, people who are neurotypical or neurodiverse, rather, you know that's an edge case. No, it isn't an edge case, that's just giving someone the dignity and the equity to be able to use your services. And so when you know, I'm talking to people, and they say, right, okay, we've got to do some edge cases, with somebody who's, you know, sort of visually impaired, or somebody who's got hearing impairment and everything. I think, no, they're not edge cases. And it just makes me very cross. And I think, you know, if we keep on using that kind of language, and if we keep on saying that disabled people are edge cases, rather than disabled people are members of society who we should be designing for and if we design wel, for disabled people, then we're designing well for everybody. And that's the thing that really gets me and I've been in meetings where I have ranted about that.

Greg: I totally agree with that. Like if you start because we always think right we’ll design for the biggest group of people, and then, you know, kind of do some stuff to try and make it easier for the other people the edge cases to fit in. But I work with a designer and his whole thing was, well, if we start with the people with like, the highest level of need, if we can make it easy for them to use, then surely everybody else with lower levels of need are going to be fine, because the person with the, you know, the greatest need can use the thing. So that means it's really, really easy to use. So he always tried to flip it around and start from that point and work backwards. Which for me, I was just like, oh, yeah, shit, that's just common sense, isn’t it really. 

Jonny: Yeah, it is a term that we apply called crisis cases. I think we stole from Sarah Hoxie batches, stress cases around this around. Yeah, that those folks that you often might, you know, in traditional software terms, yeah, classed them as edge cases. So essentially that the volume is so low, the cost to design a service or a feature to meet their needs is not worth it, because you won't get a return. Like the 10,000 posts. But yeah, especially when you're working in the social sector, that those folks are often the ones where you need to spend more money and investment to get it right because their potential crisis cases that they might die if you get this wrong. Which, you know, works on some that you have as well back where that is very much a real a real scenario that can happen. That if you get that wrong, there can be really, really serious, serious consequences. So they actually need more time and more investment rather than just yeah, yeah, really. But it still keeps happening, doesn't it? It keeps happening. Like you’ve said, you've been in conversations this week where it's coming up. Hopefully we'll see the end of that. Do we have a fun and finally, Greg?

Greg: We do. We do. A dystopian fun and finally. 

Jonny: A dystopian and fun? [laughs] Okay. 

Greg: [laughs] I do like this. So this is from Energym. Fantastic name. 

Jonny: That sounds like energy with a Y N to me. Energym.

Greg: So basically, there's currently a market full of peloton competitors. And this one's got quite an interesting point of difference. So the RE:GEN from Energym basically, as you pedal, you charge up a battery on the back of the bike, and you can use it to charge your devices around your home.

Jonny: Oh my God. There's so many potential evil things that that could be used for.

Tom: No, name one.

Jonny: Okay, here's one. Tomorrow Basecamp are gonna announce that they want their employees to be healthier, and happier and fitter. So they're removing standing desks. Instead, you're gonna have cycling desks, but actually, they're just using people as human batteries to power some Bitcoin scheme that they have. 

Greg: But would that be a bad thing? 

Tom: Yeah, would that be a bad thing? 

Jonny: Yeah. 

Tom: Talk to me. See, cause like, when I saw this, I was like, ah, this is the start of my favourite Black Mirror episode. So it's called 15 million merits, were like they're on bikes and they get money. Well, they get like digital credits to buy digital avatar stuff and then just keeps going and I'm like, yes, that's the future that's great. That'd be fantastic because people just buy rubbish anyway. May as well be digital progress that that creating just by the power of their own muscles.

Jonny: I think an important context for our listener, is that your disdain for the human race Tom, I remember when you watched The Matrix that you thought the machines were the goodies and the human beings were the baddies and, you know, essentially made use of the meatbags that we are. So yeah. I think that's important context.

Tom: I mean, that is an important context, but I think this is one of these hills I'm happy to die on. I think getting human beings cycling all day, every day until their final demise is a great way of living. I went on a cycle tour for nine months. I loved it.

Jonny: You hated it. Elements of it. You told me nine stories of how you nearly died. 

Tom: Yeah. 

Jonny: And you’re inducted without borders because you feel like you hate travelling so much because of that bit.

Tom: Yes, right. Okay. Brilliant. Fantastic. Yes, I nearly died cause I nearly fell off bikes a lot and then nearly froze off a mountain. Fine. 

Jonny: Didn't like, a wild animal chased you for like 400 miles, trying to kill you.

Tom: 400 miles. There was the web icing and coyotes and Cougars. But no no, that's but but this is all, this will be in a warehouse somewhere. Can't fall off. Not travelling.

Jonny: You’ll shackle people to the bikes, that way they're not going to fall off. I just don't…

Greg: [laughs]

Mia: I went to a festival once where they had a smoothie bike.

Jonny: A smoothie bike?

Greg: Yeah. I've seen them.

Jonny: Tell me more about it Mia. This sounds more like my bike.

Mia: You cycle and it powers the smoothie maker. And if you cycle a lot, then you get a smoothie at the end.

Jonny: Okay, I'm more on board with that.

Tom: Then what? The ability to cycle and get anything?

Jonny: Well feel free to power your Bitcoin machine. Yeah.

Tom: I don't know. There's not, they'll never be enough bikes in the world to power Bitcoin machines. I just yeah, I went, I went to a. Sorry sorry. Go for it Greg. I get excited about this.

Greg: The weirdest thing about this is that they talk about what it would charge and it's like 2.6 MacBook Pro 13 inch, but then right at the bottom, it's like you could get a charge for 30 miles on your ebike. Who's gonna want to ride on the bike at home and then be like, oh, I'm just gonna go for a bike? [laughs]

Jonny: That’s fabulous. 

Mia: They haven’t thought about the user case there, have they?

Jonny: It is extraordinary. And there's definitely some grim dystopian things that come to mind from it. But excellent branding Energym. 

Greg: If anyone would like to buy me one so I can give you a full review, feel free.

Tom:  Yeah, or ten and then we can all start this energy builder or  power Glossop. We could power the whole town if we get enough of them.

Jonny: I'm gonna move on before we need to take action against you Tom such as, you know, probably assassinate you for the good of humanity because this is where you rise up as an evil dictator. So yeah, I think we're probably out of time. I need to stop ending the segments with misery and death. But before I jumped into each section, I thought it was good. So that is all we have time for. Thank you so much for listening to us. Mia, how was that for you?

Mia: As my first time, it went pretty well.

Jonny: And where can people find you online?

Mia: On twitter at Crimson heart one.

Jonny: Fantastic. And we will link to that in the description of this podcast. So please do go and giveMia a follow. If you liked the podcast, we'd love to hear your thoughts. You can get in touch with us on Twitter at Tech for Good Live, or you can email us at Hello at Tech for Good dot live. And we would love it if you would give us a nice review on iTunes and tell your friends about this podcast. Or I mean, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably don't have friends, so maybe just the next person that you see. That would be great. And that is all from us. So goodbye.

Greg: Bye. 

Tom: Bye.

Mia: Bye.