User Experience Digital Forensic Investigation
What is the difference between User Experience Digital Forensic Investigation and Cyber Crime Investigation?
Why am I demanding the provision of User Experience Digital Forensic Investigation in the district Consumer Court?
I’ll explain it with the help of a few examples. Often we come across such cases where we find that a gullible layman has searched for the customer care number of his bank in Google. The layman then selects the customer care number shown at the top of Google search results and makes the call. It was later discovered that the number was actually a Google ad that had been promoted by a dubious conman. The conman succeeds in trapping the layman in his act to convince the layman to share an OTP on the pretext of verifying the layman’s identity. A big amount has been suddenly deducted from the layman’s bank account on sharing the OTP with the conman. This is called cyber crime. But we need to acknowledge that the layman falls for the trap because the layman couldn’t able to identify the fake promoted ad on the Google search result page that looked very similar to the following rest of the search results on the page. Thus the layman couldn’t able to differentiate between the ad put up by the conman and the rest of the search results and ended up calling the number shown in the fake ad. This has been happening for quite some time. Google, on the other hand, keeps the looks and feel of the ads similar to the rest of the search results because it wants people to click ads instead of regular search results as clicking on ads will add to the revenue of Google. In a normal scenario, such a tactical business practice is acceptable but in the above scenario, such a practice has a counter effect. Then how can we compel Google to make changes in the way users perceive and differentiate between ads and normal search results? Certainly, any changes would impact Google’s revenue. Companies tend to take the path of least resistance crumbling under revenue pressure from time to time. Manipulating UX and Usability seems to be the path of least resistance in the absence of investigative provisions in the lower judiciary. We can compel digital companies for making changes in the UI design, information architecture, user flows, and interactions by establishing the provision of ‘User Experience and Usability digital forensic investigation’ in the court of law. Let’s take it one step further. Say, Google disagrees to make changes in the look and feel of the ads with respect to the rest of the search results. In such a case Google can be asked to dig deeper into the capabilities of AI and machine learning to design their algorithms in such a way that the system could compare similar name ads with similar name top search results to find out the discrepancies in the customer care number and other details. If the customer care number of the ad and the following regular search result don’t match then it could be considered as a potential red flag con ad. On the basis of this discovery, the backend system could be altered and the user can be alerted with some change in the look and feel of the ad such that the user could identify suspicious ads on the page differentiating it from the following search results.
We need the provision for ‘User Experience and Usability Digital Forensic Investigation’ at the level of the district consumer court and district civil court because we are living in a digitally tech-savvy society. Living in a tech-savvy society, hundreds of applications are installed on our mobiles with millions of applications and games available in the play store. In other words, we are surrounded by ubiquitous computing. The Government of India and the private sector are equally promoting interaction through digital interfaces to avail government and retail services. The Central Government and State Government are also running official campaigns to promote Digital Startups through schemes like Startup India. At the same time, citizens of India should have the provision at the district level lower court to easily challenge the ‘Design’ of digital services if they feel that in any way the application has been deliberately designed in a dubious manner to discourage the user from availing the service easily or to outright fool the users in different ways.
I’ll draw one more perspective into the cause by comparing the context of the UX digital forensic investigation with a traditional analogy. Why foreign & domestic liquor are legally sold but local liquor isn’t? It is because we can evaluate liquors to state that the local liquor is inconsistent, poisonous & dangerous. Similarly, a lot of gamified addicted apps will turn illegal on ‘UX digital forensic investigation’ by the Judiciary.
The traditional Legal and Justice system has a well-defined apparatus to support Healthcare fraud victims with any range of complaints. The Healthcare para-legal consultants decipher and comprehend the scenario on behalf of the layman victim. The judiciary identifies and acknowledges the discrepancies precisely to order forensic investigations and then pronounce the verdict. In today’s digitally tech-savvy society, everyone is using smartphones with plenty of apps and is surrounded by ubiquitous computing. The judiciary needs to develop its capability with the advancement in society and should copy the model of healthcare legal structure to establish rapid UX & Usability Digital Forensic Investigation process to mitigate the rising issues related to user scenarios, user stories, user journeys, use cases, user flows, the concept of gamification, UX dark patterns, and dark algorithms in the socio-digital ecosystem.
It is a matter of time before UX and Usability will be a formally, and professionally recognized legal practice increasingly assisting a great number of investigations in the ever-advancing digitally tech-savvy civil societies of India and around the world.
Similar to mandatory yearly accounting audits in companies’ accounts, UX Usability audits, & Data Science Algorithm audits would likely be a yearly audit affair in a digitally advancing tech-savvy society surrounded by ubiquitous computing services provided by digital companies.
What is the difference between user experience digital forensic investigation and data science dark algorithms forensic investigation?
UX digital forensic investigations could identify the UX Dark Patterns in user flows, information architecture, and interaction design. Dark patterns are basically dubious designs deliberately created to exploit the user which can be visually identified by trained UX professionals. On the other hand, Dark Algorithms can’t’ be visually identified in the age of personalization where each person has been served personalized curated content on their social media wall. Say, I and you are taking a class. A professor is teaching the lessons. I can look at your copy and you can take a look at my copy to compare the deficiencies and help each other. In the same way, if you take a look at my social media wall and I take a look at your social media wall, it is likely that I will think this is what you have been watching all the time and vice-versa. I won’t be able to compare your wall with any reference point so I’ll never doubt the things you are browsing with respect to the feeds that are showing up on your wall even though you complain that your wall is forcefully feeding you the content that you are not interested in. It could be the election season and someone is pumping money into the ad and content network to promote the content of a specific type of political ideology, on your wall. The personalization ends up creating ‘Echo Chambers’ around a person that is unidentifiable by anyone else around that person. The comparability factor and subsequent identifiers have been reduced to zero by personalization. The series of videos ‘The Dead Internet Theory’ on YouTube describes the Echo-Chambers in detail. (Link)
The problem doesn’t end here. Let’s say you and I both like to learn from anatomy art videos. We both subscribe to anatomy art channels when we find a nice video in the feed. It could be very well possible that social media is showing feeds of ‘master class’ level quality curated videos to you and ‘tom dick harry’ level basic videos to me just on the same topic because someone is rigging manually or with the help of algorithms, the quality of the content been featured to each individual based on their class, caste, race, religion, city of residence, income or some other larger social stratification. This is called educational debasement. Similarly, there exists linguistic debasement and cultural deterioration. Planned linguistic debasement can be carried out by feeding one set of users with non-literary colloquial content and another set of users with highly literary content resulting in improved vocabulary, expression, and communication. Recently, people on the internet have been discussing the way the TikTok algorithm of personalized feeds is different for China and the rest of the world. TikTok seems to show personalized curated literary content to the users in China and mind-diverting FOMO pop & punk content to the rest of the world. This results in planned cultural deterioration of the citizens of a whole country. Videos like, ‘How TikTok is Making You Dumber’ on YouTube have described planned cultural deterioration by TikTok in detail. (Link)
Shadow banning on social media is another form of a dark algorithm that happens without the notice of the user. Google defines, shadowbans refers to a web moderation technique in online forums and social platforms where a user (or a user’s content) is blocked without it being apparent to them that they’ve been blocked. In the lack of concrete identifiers in the age of personalization, it gets very difficult to find out about the shadowban of a user.
There are articles about Facebook using dark algorithms for mood manipulation of individual users by showing discouraging content to one set of users and encouraging content to another set of users. This is also known as the Facebook depression experiment.
Thus researching dark algorithms requires a complicated web of systems and subject matter experts.
A quick search on YouTube about UX dark patterns and dark algorithms would help you to learn about the topic further. One such video available on YouTube is ‘Dark Side of the Algorithm A Video Essay’. (Link)
We need the provision for ‘User Experience and Usability Digital Forensic Investigation’ and ‘Data Science Dark Algorithms Forensic Investigation’ at the level of the district consumer court and district civil court because we are living in a digitally tech-savvy society. Living in a tech-savvy society, hundreds of applications are installed on our mobiles with millions of applications and games available in the Play Store. In other words, we are surrounded by ubiquitous computing. The Government of India and the private sector are equally promoting interaction through digital interfaces to avail government and retail services. The Central Government and State Government are also running official campaigns to promote Digital Startups through schemes like Startup India. At the same time, citizens of India should have the provision at the district level lower court to easily challenge the ‘Design’ & ‘Algorithms’, of digital services if they feel that in any way the application has been deliberately designed in a dubious manner to discourage the user from availing the service easily or to outright fool the users in different ways.
I’ll draw one more perspective into the cause by comparing the context of the UX digital forensic investigation with a traditional analogy. Why foreign & domestic liquor are legally sold but local liquor isn’t? It is because we can evaluate liquors to state that the local liquor is inconsistent, poisonous & dangerous. Similarly, a lot of gamified addicted apps will turn illegal on ‘UX digital forensic investigation’ and ‘Data Science Dark Algorithms Forensic Investigation’ by the Judiciary.
The traditional Legal and Justice system has a well-defined apparatus to support Healthcare fraud victims with any range of complaints. The Healthcare para-legal consultants decipher and comprehend the scenario on behalf of the layman victim. The judiciary identifies and acknowledges the discrepancies precisely to order forensic investigations and then pronounce the verdict. In today’s digitally tech-savvy society, everyone is using smartphones with plenty of apps and is surrounded by ubiquitous computing. The judiciary needs to develop its capability with the advancement in society and should copy the model of healthcare legal structure to establish rapid UX & Usability Digital Forensic Investigation process to mitigate the rising issues related to user scenarios, user stories, user journeys, use cases, user flows, the concept of gamification, UX dark patterns, and dark algorithms in the socio-digital ecosystem.
It is a matter of time before UX, Usability, and Algorithm investigation will be a formally, and professionally recognized legal practice increasingly assisting a great number of investigations in the ever-advancing digitally tech-savvy civil societies of India and around the world.
Similar to mandatory yearly accounting audits in companies’ accounts, UX Usability audits, & Data Science Algorithm audits would likely be a yearly audit affair in a digitally advancing tech-savvy society surrounded by ubiquitous computing services provided by digital companies.
The article has been submitted to the District Consumer Dispute Redressal Forum, Barasat, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India, in regards to case reference number A22090004397 case no CC/353/2022.
The first in the series is Judicial Investigation Friendly Digital Systems, Judibility. (Link)
Next in the series is HDFC ERGO Responded on 17 Jan 2023. (Link)
Here is a Twitter thread that discusses the concept of personalization with respect to dark algorithms. (Link)
Some of you from the core UX Research and Legal domain might be interested in a series of mundane emails exchanged with the HDFC ERGO Gervience team about the No Improvement in HDFC ERGO Policy Renewal User Flow even a year later. (Link)
Check out a couple of posts on similar lines, Assuming the Governance of Communication Science in the Age of AI Disruption (Link) and A New Role Emerging as User Experience Investigator (Link).
This course is for Journalism and Digital Media enthusiasts. Take a look at Week 3 topics on Ethics and Bias. In this module, we will discuss the three main goals of ethical AI: fairness, accountability, and transparency. We will identify common sources of bias in modeling projects and discuss approaches to detecting and mitigating bias, including organizational, process, and technical components. (Link)
Last edited on 03 Feb 2024.
