The 41st Special Seminar of School of Engineering "Disloyal Design"

Companies yield remarkable power when they design the technologies that people use every day. Unfortunately, these tools are often designed in self-serving ways to encourage people to make dangerous choices. Scholars have studied these designs as "dark patterns" or "manipulative interfaces," but policymakers have struggled to clearly spell out when and why such designs go too far. It's not always clear when dark patterns cause a concrete, legal harm. One possible solution is to focus on the relationships of trust between people and companies. At base, dark patterns are not just harmful; they are disloyal to the people who trust companies with their data and online experiences. This talk will explore the concept of disloyal design and how it might be implemented in policy and practice to better protect people against dark patterns and make companies more trustworthy.

Monday, April 15, 2024, 2:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.

Rm. 508, 5th Floor, West 9 Bldg., Ookayama Campus, Tokyo Tech

Tokyo Tech students, faculty, staff, and the general public

Free

English

School of Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology

Woodrow Hartzog
Professor of Law, Boston University

No advance registration required.