What does the 1940s French Census under the Nazis have in common with an online form created by the state of Missouri in 2023? — If you’ve been tracking transgender rights stories in the United States, you may already know that Missouri is poised to become the first state to actively restrict gender-affirming care from all trans people—including adults—in the state any day now. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey unilaterally announced emergency measures to restrict…

Why it’s an important moment for more major media operations to lock their accounts and leave Twitter — National Public Radio made the very sensible conclusion to leave Twitter this week. In a story prepared by NPR’s David Folkenflik, the organization’s CEO John Lansing explained, “At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter. …

This exercise began as a joke. I just wondered how ChatGPT would react to being given the Voight-Kampff Test for determining whether someone is a replicant in the movie Blade Runner. Of course, this line of questioning didn’t work as ChatGPT makes no attempt to conceal its identity as an…

If you trick your customers into giving up their personal information, you risk losing them altogether — I’m seeing what seems to be a new deceptive design pattern deployed more often lately, which it focuses on offering potential new customers discounts when they arrive at a site. The Pattern Here’s how it works: Step 1 (Bait) — Present a popup which looks like it’s saying something like…

A case study of how Twitter’s proposed API changes will further undermine accessibility for its users — Some time ago, Portland-based developer Hannah Kolbeck noticed a gap in the accessibility of images posted to Twitter. Specifically, when users posted images without alt-text in them, people using screen readers to review tweets couldn’t review the content of those images. As a result, she created a remarkably helpful bot…

Contrary to what many believe, we don’t have enough immigrants coming into the country — Listening to the popular media lately, you might conclude that we have an enormous and unprecedented migration crisis at our borders. It’s true, we have regular waves of migrants approaching our border, which include migrant caravans and asylum seekers. But these dynamics have evolved over the decades since the United…

A coming change to LinkedIn exemplifies how social platforms often ignore the need for privacy as a default — Last week I received a one-off email from LinkedIn, the subject line of which read: “Updates that help you discover more newsletters.” That sounds helpful, doesn’t it? It’s not unusual for a platform like LinkedIn to send you an email announcing new features, of course, but I don’t think that’s…

How Crosby’s life-saving liver transplant kept him with us for another 3 decades — When David Crosby died earlier this week, I remembered the time I briefly met him in a previous life and career, along with my colleagues from the South Carolina Organ Procurement Agency (aka SCOPA, now We Are Sharing Hope SC). Crosby was on tour with Crosby, Stills and Nash in…

Social media platforms are leaning into deceptive design patterns to capture your attention but they’re just contributing to our growing “notification anxiety” — They’re on the rise. They strike at you from a new angle every day now. Enticing you. Striving to pull you onto platforms you’re now trying to avoid. You’ve turned off so many notifications, but they just keep coming. Let’s call them “desperation notifications.”