How Responsible Are App Developers For Decisions Their Users Make?

itwbennett writes: In a blog post, Rado Kotorov, Chief Innovation Officer at Information Builders asserts that the creators of enterprise apps implicitly assume some of the responsibility for other people's decision making. He says it's not just developers, but anyone who is involved, from defining the concept, to requirements gathering, to final implementation. Thus, the creators of the app have an ethical obligation to ensure that people can reach the right conclusions from the facts and the way they are presented in the app.

Comments

Re:There I fixed it for you...

[cayenne8]

Good luck with that. They keep building better idiots.

Yep, to this day, I"m still amazed that we have to have warning tags on hair blow dryers, that not only have it in print, but also with cartoon like diagrams warning you to NOT use the blow dryer while in the bathtub filled with water.

Seriously, I wonder if the depth of our litigious society has started to seriously interfere with natural selection, by keeping idiot genes in the pool when they should have weeded themselves out years ago.

Re:There I fixed it for you...

[cayenne8]

if there is a pedestrian on the bridge, is he responsible for his own death? after all it is well known that people get hit by cars when they decide to walk near the road

if the car has a speedometer that goes to 140 mph, can the driver assume that the car can be driven at that speed?

if the owner of a car knows full well that their ignition switch is acting strange and they keep driving the car anyway, are they responsible for the resulting deaths?

I think I can answer these all with one of two responses. You pick the correct one:

1. Shit Happens

2. Use common sense (what happened to this option over the years?).