Decentering the LinkedIn user

Yesterday I wrote a long LinkedIn post with my thoughts about why a new feature it’s testing—the ability to turn on and off political content—is ethically dicey idea at best, and why it has has the potential for harm.

(Aside: I was expecting a lot more push back than I’ve so far received from the typically conservative LinkedIn community. Has my post already been filtered out for those who didn’t want to see it?)

When you create tools for the public, especially when you have the size and influence of a company like LinkedIn, you have a moral responsibility to think beyond the experience of the individual user. Many UX design communities have begun to recognize this, moving away from “user-centered” language, and intentionally “de-centering” the user, considering indirect impacts on other communities as part of the process.

In this case, the individual user experience of turning off political content is a good one: those who want to keep it can, and those who don’t can opt out. But the indirect impact is that it will create an information filter bubble, a la Facebook’s News Feed, that will be socially harmful. Those who want to push the business community to consider its social impacts (when and where the algorithm determines that content to be “political”) will be restricted from interacting with those who don’t.

Silicon Valley has long glorified decentralization, especially with the rise of blockchain technology. When will it more widely adopt a decentralized mindset around individual experience?

PS, New Pocket Change drops tomorrow, with a focus on the types of cultural language we use to make (or not make) change.