Programmers who built manipulative interfaces can teach students to dismantle them

Evidence

So he asked himself: How can I DECONSTRUCT this technology that I myself helped build? The answer came to him in the very situation that produced the question: He would teach his young programming students how to hack the deceptive designs and quick-shill principles that had helped build the modern internet. He would combine his coding sessions with critical histories of the internet’s privatization and the implications of an advertising business model. He would teach his students to recognize dark-pattern tricks—design techniques that manipulate users’ behavior. He hopes the next generation of programmers can right the wrongs that his generation brought about. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 407

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to dark-pattern scholarship and the ‘move fast and break things’ generation’s reckoning; also echoes the counter-coding strategy named in the reader’s manifesto program.