Surveillance based Persuasion: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Sanju Ahuja

and Jyoti Kumar

Department of Design, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi, India

Keywords: Persuasive Technology, Surveillance, Ethics, Freedom, Autonomy, Policy.

Abstract: Surveillance-based persuasive technologies have become ubiquitous in the form of fitness trackers,

advertisement engines, recommendation systems and birthday reminder applications. They are also being

integrated into socio-economic systems such as insurance, health and education. In reported literature,

surveillance has raised significant ethical concerns about privacy and persuasive intentions of technology

have come under scrutiny for undermining human autonomy. This paper discusses the ethical implications of

persuasive technologies from the perspective of human autonomy and freedom. It begins by acknowledging

the reported and possible future advantages of surveillance-based persuasive technologies, with an emphasis

on the conditions which make them beneficial (the good). It then discusses the ethical trade-offs involved and

the problems with how those trade-offs are designed and implemented in technology (the bad). Lastly, the

paper discusses severe ethical concerns which involve coercion or manipulation of users into being persuaded

for economic or even paternalistic needs of the technology (the ugly). This paper has argued for designers and

businesses to employ an ethical approach to persuasive technology design and has presented possible

suggestions for such an approach. These suggestions can help design technologies in a manner more

conducive to autonomous decision making and freedom of choice for the users.

1 INTRODUCTION

Persuasive technology refers to technologies

explicitly designed to influence attitudes or behaviour

of their users (Fogg, 2003). The role of computers as

persuasive agents is still in a nascent stage of

understanding, but certain differences between

humans and computers as persuaders are noteworthy,

especially for their ethical implications. Because of

their novelty, positive reputation and lack of emotion,

computers can be especially persuasive without

shouldering any responsibility (Fogg, 2003). At the

same time, they can be persistent in their attempts to

persuade and they can control the interactive

possibilities, making some actions easier and others

impossible. In recent decades, surveillance has

become an integral aspect of many persuasive

technologies (Desclaux et al., 2019; Hadjimatheou,

2017; Orji & Moffatt, 2018). Surveillance has been

defined as “any collection and processing of personal

data, whether identifiable or not, for the purposes of

influencing or managing those whose data have been

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5178-5077

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3810-3262

garnered” (Lyon, 2001). While surveillance by itself

raises significant individual and collective privacy

issues (Bernal, 2016), the use of surveillance systems

for influencing or managing people raises concerns

about human freedom and autonomy in the

information age (Nagenborg, 2014). In the last few

decades, surveillance technologies have become

cheaper and persuasive technologies have become

readily available in the market. Surveillance-based

persuasion has been normalized by being positioned

in the market as a solution to humanity’s mental

shortcomings, both for individual users who

voluntarily adopt these technologies as well as for

corporations and governments seeking compliance

from their users, employees, clients and citizens

(Lemieux, 2018; Zuboff, 2019).

This paper aims to argue that surveillance-based

persuasive technologies create serious ethical

concerns that have not been adequately addressed

through technology design or policy. The act of

persuasion, even with the purest of intentions, has

always been in tension with the values of autonomy

and freedom (Maclean, 2006; Spahn, 2012; Strauss,

120

Ahuja, S. and Kumar, J.

Surveillance based Persuasion: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

DOI: 10.5220/0010121401200127

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer-Human Interaction Research and Applications (CHIRA 2020), pages 120-127

ISBN: 978-989-758-480-0

2018). These concerns are aggravated when

persuasive technologies are designed not with the sole

intention of beneficence but are intermingled with

economic motives. This paper discusses the ethical

implications of surveillance-based persuasion for

human autonomy and freedom, and outlines the

aspects of persuasion that may not be ethically

acceptable because of their excessively coercive,

manipulative or paternalistic nature (Susser et al.,

2019). The paper begins by acknowledging the

reported and possible future advantages of

surveillance-based persuasive technologies, with an

emphasis on the conditions which make them

beneficial (the good). It then discusses the ethical

trade-offs involved and the problems with how those

trade-offs are designed and implemented in

technology (the bad). Lastly, the paper discusses

severe ethical concerns which involve coercion or

manipulation of users into being persuaded for

economic or even paternalistic needs of the

technology (the ugly). Through these arguments, this

paper aims to promote an ethical approach in the

design of persuasive technologies, especially those

that rely on surveillance which is intrinsically

violating of users’ privacy. Implications for economic

arrangements mediated by surveillance are also

discussed.

2 AUTONOMY AND FREEDOM

In philosophical literature, personal or individual

autonomy refers to an individual’s psychological

capacity to be self-governing (Buss & Westlund,

2018). Autonomy is thought to consist of two aspects:

authenticity and competence (Friedrich et al., 2018;

Levy, 2007). Authenticity roughly consists in one’s

actions being true to oneself, rather than being

influenced by social roles and conventional ways of

living (Levy, 2007). Competence refers to the mental

ability or the capacity to critically reflect on the

mental states that underlie one’s actions. Accounts of

personal autonomy in philosophy evoke competence

in multiple ways (Buss & Westlund, 2018): as the

ability to be sensitive to external reasons and as the

ability to reason about one’s beliefs and desires.

Friedrich et al. (2018) proposed a three-component

account of competence: 1) ability to use information

and knowledge to produce reasons, 2) ability to

ensure that intended actions are realized effectively

https://www.inc.com/jeremy-goldman/6-apps-to-stop-

your-smartphone-addiction.html

(control) and, 3) ability to enact intentions within

concrete relationships and contexts.

Freedom consists in the availability of choices of

action that an individual has. It has the function of

keeping doors ‘open’ and it consists in having options

that the individual may not ultimately choose but

whose existence is still valued (Nagenborg, 2014).

3 THE GOOD

In favour of persuasive technologies, one argument is

that they can be designed with beneficial intentions,

which has been made frequently in reference to

nudges designed for the public good (Thaler &

Sunstein, 2008). Persuasive technologies can be

valuable when intended to help overcome human

irrationality, which leads to systematic errors in

judgment (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). People who

are cognizant of their own biases can choose to be

voluntarily persuaded, even when the persuasive

methods undermine their autonomy through

‘trickery’. For example, mobile applications that are

designed to help users quit smoking or alcohol track

their behaviour and utilize persuasive techniques

from psychology to modify it (Bascur et al., 2018;

Nagenborg, 2014). If the users endorse the methods

and outcomes of such technologies, their overall

autonomy to pursue their authentic goals is enhanced.

This is possible even when the technology functions

by reducing the freedom of users. For example,

certain smartphone applications can be designed to

lock users out of their own phones after a pre-

specified amount of phone usage

. This enables the

users to manage their device addiction, enhancing

their autonomy by restricting their freedom.

Another autonomy enhancing aspect of

surveillance technologies may lie in their ability to

provide more self-relevant information to users than

they would generally have access to (Friedrich et al.,

2018). For example, a fitness band may provide users

with information about their body and their

behaviour, like the number of steps they walk daily,

their heart rate, etc. The mere availability of such

information may enhance their autonomy by helping

them make better informed decisions about their

fitness. However, this argument is valid only when

the information is comprehensible, and it does not

confuse or debilitate the user, in which case it may

actually undermine their autonomy (Friedrich et al.,

2018).

Surveillance based Persuasion: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

121

Lastly, there may be situations or scenarios in

which even coercion may be deemed ethically

appropriate, subject to certain conditions. There are

vehicles which are programmed to not start or sound

a loud, annoying alarm unless the driver is wearing a

seatbelt. In the wake of the recent COVID-19 spread,

cab companies have built facial monitoring systems

to ensure that drivers wear face masks

and the same

could be monitored, say, at the beginning of every

ride. In such contexts, these surveillance systems do

not merely remain persuasive, they become coercive.

However, they are designed to function for the

collective good by restricting individual freedoms. It

is argued here that such designs need democratic

procedures of acceptance to prevent them from

becoming overly paternalistic or excessively punitive

(Verbeek, 2009).

4 THE BAD

In the last three decades, with the way the information

economy has evolved, persuasive technologies have

become integrated into several economic products

and services, such as social media, e-commerce and

financial systems. There is an inherent conflict of

interest between monetization and beneficence. This

conflict has led to private companies making implicit

value and outcome trade-offs on behalf of the users,

without their awareness or informed consent. Even

when users endorse the intended functional outcome

of a technology, they may not be aware of the costs,

undermining their autonomy, or their decision to

adopt the technology may be reflective of a lack of

freedom because of a lack of acceptable alternatives

for the services that they seek.

Revisiting the case of a fitness band, which can

enhance users’ autonomy by providing them access to

information they would otherwise not have. A user

may voluntarily consent to the capture of data about

their walking steps or heart rate to persuade themselves

into following a fitness regimen. However, if a user is

not aware that the product aggregates their data to

target them with advertisements, or that the company

which makes the fitness band engages in the

commercial trade of their data, they lack the relevant

information to make an informed choice about the

adoption of the fitness band. Such deliberate or

indeliberate omission of the information about value

trade-offs involved in the design of persuasive

technologies undermines user autonomy.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/07/uber-may-use-its-

selfie-tech-to-verify-drivers-are-wearing-masks/

Nagenborg (2014) discusses the trade-offs

between macrosuasion and microsuasion. He argues

that even when users consent to the ‘macro’ or the

functional aspects of persuasive technologies, their

autonomy may be undermined by the ‘micro’ aspects.

For example, a technology may be designed to make

users more dependent on the technology for achieving

their goal, rather than enabling them to achieve it by

themselves. This conflict between the endorsed

functionality and possibly unethical microsuasive

elements has also been demonstrated by Rughinis et

al. (2016) for smoking cessation applications. In some

technologies, this conflict may be a side effect or an

unintended consequence of the functionality.

However, it may also be intentional on the part of the

persuading agents, because of the blurred boundaries

between economic motives and motives of

beneficence.

Consider the example of birthday reminder

applications. These applications collect the birthday

information of users’ contacts to send them reminders

for the same. Users may voluntarily adopt such a

technology to compensate for their forgetfulness or

their busy schedule. However, these applications do

not explicitly verbalize the value trade-offs involved.

In a social relationship, remembering a birthday is

normally considered a signifier of personal

importance or worth, not a task to be completed. The

effort that goes into remembering a birthday is what

might make the exercise valuable in the first place,

not the actual accomplishment. Therefore, even if this

form of surveillance-based persuasion can achieve a

desirable outcome, the outcome loses its intrinsic

value because of technology. The technology itself

might have persuasive functionalities other than the

birthday reminders. It may persuade users to purchase

a gift from a specific website in exchange for a

portion of the profits. This functionality may be

integral for the economic survival of the company

which makes the application, but it is not a

functionality that the user has consented to.

There are many such examples of technologies

which mis-represent or completely omit information

about the privacy, value and outcome trade-offs

involved in surveillance-based persuasion during the

process of technology adoption. The conflict between

the designers’ economic incentives and the users’

authentic goals has led to the creation of many

technologies which have been normalized into

acceptance without the informed consent of the user.

The evolving information economy has also made

CHIRA 2020 - 4th International Conference on Computer-Human Interaction Research and Applications

122

these value trade-offs impossible to avoid. Most

technologies available in the market require users to

make value trade-offs even if they explicitly wish to

avoid them, restricting their freedom of choice.

5 THE UGLY

The ugly side of surveillance-based persuasion

involves technologies that the users are not aware of,

whose primary intentions they do not endorse, or that

they have been coerced into adopting. Severe

negative effects on individuals or society also

constitute the ugly side of these technologies. These

conditions can be illustrated with the following

examples, along with how they impact human

freedom, autonomy and dignity.

When news reports surfaced about the Facebook

advertisement engine being used to influence the

2016 presidential elections in the United States

, they

brought the harms of surveillance-based persuasion at

the forefront of public discourse. The personal data of

voters was allegedly used to build their psychological

profiles and target their vulnerabilities to influence

their voting behaviour through advertisements

sabotaging a particular candidate. The users were

unaware of this intervention, and it is reasonable to

assume that they would not reflectively endorse its

intentions. This case became the focal point of public

discourse on surveillance-based persuasion, not least

because the effects of this technology were analysed

to be severely damaging for election integrity, which

lies at the heart of the democratic process. This kind

of stealth deployment of technology without user

awareness and endorsement seriously undermines

human autonomy (Burkell & Regan, 2019).

As discussed in Section 4, the boundaries between

motives of monetization and beneficence are blurring.

When economic motives are taken to the extreme, it

is possible for beneficence to be treated as a fortunate

by-product of a technology, not the primary intended

outcome. With the rise of pervasive computing, it has

become extremely easy to bundle persuasive

technologies that have negative consequences with

valuable products and services, bypassing awareness

and consent altogether. Pervasive computing has

normalized surveillance-based persuasion as a part of

digital economic activity. There is a thin line between

what constitutes service from a product (that the user

has consented to) and what constitutes persuasion that

https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/cambridge-

analytica-files

the user has grudgingly accepted to live with. For

example, the primary revenue sources of many digital

products such as social media, video streaming, e-

commerce and search engines are surveillance-based

persuasive technologies (advertisement and

recommendation engines). There are little or no

mechanisms to bypass this surveillance, even if the

user is willing to pay for the cost of service, restricting

their freedom of choice. Avoiding these services

altogether may impose significant social costs on

users. In these and similar cases, surveillance-based

persuasion is not a business model, it is the business

model.

The monetization of persuasive technologies has

begun to enter the dangerous territory of coercive

adoption, in which individuals have no choice but to

accept these technologies as a part of significant

social systems such as employment, banking,

insurance, health and education (Timmer et al., 2015).

Reconsider the case of a fitness band or an application

which monitors the number of steps a user takes,

motivating them to complete their voluntarily pre-set

daily exercise goals. Imagine that this data, along

with some other predetermined metrics for positive

fitness behaviour, is linked to health insurance

premiums. This economic arrangement is initially

popularized into acceptance by claiming that this

system incentivizes customers who put an effort into

their fitness. This technological application, which

has begun to be implemented by some companies

has significant problems that remain unaddressed by

design or policy. It is not difficult to understand how

a design which incentivizes a specific fitness goal

punishes users who do not wish to live by that goal,

or simply do not wish to externalize their motivation.

Fitness is, for a significant number of people, a

personal endeavour for wellness which they may not

wish to monetize or even capture. So, if a person

refuses to share their data with their insurance

company, they are punished not for a lack of

motivation towards their health and fitness, but for a

lack of a desire to capture and share it. Such an

economic arrangement also threatens to push society

towards a paternalistic template for what healthy

behaviour constitutes, reducing the incentives for

non-quantifiable or unmonitored fitness behaviours.

This template may be insensitive towards

demographic factors or user vulnerabilities, such as

gender, race, occupation or literacy (Jacobs, 2019). It

may not have enough room for individual

https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/26/17905390/john-

hancock-life-insurance-fitness-tracker-wearables-

science-health

Surveillance based Persuasion: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

123

manoeuvres in terms of letting people decide what

constitutes fitness for their own bodies. In short, this

economic arrangement is coercive by design.

These coercive technologies mediating

arrangements between users and private companies

(and even governments) are being widely developed

in multiple industries. Theoretically, it could be

possible to coercively monitor vehicle drivers if they

wish to purchase vehicle insurance, universities could

make it mandatory for students to be monitored for

their health through physiological sensors, employers

could deploy eye and gait recognition cameras in the

workplace to monitor employees’ laziness or

distracted behaviour and link it with their salaries,

medical insurance could require for patients to track

their medicine intake through medication adherence

systems (Jacobs, 2019; Lupton, 2012), and

governments could track citizen behaviour through

facial recognition systems. As of now, even though

these technologies are being marketed as voluntary, it

is not difficult to imagine them stepping into the zone

of mandatory, changing the social and economic

order to be more conducive towards compliance and

less towards freedom, even if it is the freedom to be

wrong, lazy, distracted or unhealthy.

6 DISCUSSION

In the previous sections, the paper discussed the

positive and negative aspects of surveillance-based

persuasive technologies. Persuasive technologies can

prove to be beneficial, especially when they are

voluntarily adopted by users to pursue their authentic

goals. However, they can be ethically problematic

when they undermine human autonomy and freedom

through misrepresentation or omission of value trade-

offs, or when they are coercive, excessively

paternalistic and punitive. In this section, the authors

have surmised certain suggestions which emerged

from the above discussions to make the design of

persuasive technologies conducive to autonomous

decision making and freedom of choice for the users.

Some of these suggestions have also emerged from

previous literature, such as in the discussion by

Jacobs (2019) on the ethical design of persuasive

technologies for vulnerable populations. These

suggestions support the authors’ argument for the

need of an ethical approach to the design of

persuasive technologies. They are meant to aid the

design process with explicit consideration of the

ethical factors which pertain to human autonomy.

6.1 Surveillance Awareness

Users are often not aware that they are in a persuasive

digital environment in which their behaviour is under

surveillance. This lack of awareness is widely

prevalent on the web, and what may be partially

responsible for this phenomenon is a complete lack of

information, cues or indicators to communicate this

knowledge explicitly within the persuasive

environment. Instead, this information is typically

embedded in the long, vague legalese in terms and

conditions of service, which most users do not read

(Obar & Oeldorf-Hirsch, 2020). There is an ethical

obligation for persuasive surveillance technologies to

create an awareness of their existence in digital and

smart environments. Failure to do so undermines

users’ autonomy by depriving them of the

information required to give consent for any

persuasive interactions.

6.2 Minimal Surveillance

From the perspective of surveillance ethics, a

straightforward suggestion that emerges is that of

minimal surveillance. In privacy literature, this is

known as the data minimization principle

(Alshammari & Simpson, 2017), which proposes to

minimize the types of data that a technology can

collect based on its purpose or function. Persuasive

technologies should ethically collect only as much

data as is required to achieve the objectives that the

user has voluntarily endorsed. When users typically

adopt persuasive technologies, it is not in their

capacity to analyse whether all the data that the

technology claims to collect for an objective is indeed

required from a technological perspective. Users tend

to voluntary endorse the intentions of technology, not

the individual parameters of surveillance. With the

complexity of technologies increasing drastically, it

should not even be expected of the users to

understand this complexity. However, it is reasonable

to assume that the users would not consent for the

surveillance of information that does not contribute to

the fulfilment of their endorsed objectives. Therefore,

the data minimization principle is relevant to users’

autonomy in the adoption of persuasive technologies.

For technologies which collect additional data for the

purposes of system monetization, this distinction

needs to be made clear during the process of

technology adoption, as discussed further in

Section 6.3.

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6.3 Intention Disclosure

While users may consent to surveillance in exchange

for a free service, they may not always be aware or

knowledgeable of the intentions behind such

surveillance. Revisiting the case of the United States

elections discussed in Section 5, at least some users

might have been aware of Facebook’s surveillance

practices before the election scandal news reports

surfaced. However, despite their consent to

surveillance in exchange for a free account on

Facebook, they had not consented for their data being

used to be targeted as voters. In privacy literature, this

is covered under the ‘purpose limitation’ principle

(Forgó et al., 2017), which states that users’ data

cannot be processed for purposes beyond those

disclosed at the time of data collection. It is argued

here that the purpose limitation principle also holds

relevance for users’ autonomy because it

encompasses the element of intention disclosure,

which constitutes any user’s voluntary consent to

being persuaded.

6.4 Foreseeable Side Effects Disclosure

It is almost inevitable for persuasive technologies to

have consequences other than those primarily

intended by design. The birthday reminder

applications discussed in Section 4 may not only

contribute to an increased remembrance of birthdays

with the help of technology (intended) but also to the

increased forgetfulness of birthdays without the help

of technology (unintended side effect). It has been

argued previously that designers should be held

ethically responsible for the predictably unintended

consequences of technology (Berdichevsky &

Neuenschwander, 1999). In an extension of this

suggestion, it is argued here that if any such

foreseeable or predictable side effects are known to

designers or businesses, they need to be disclosed

during the process of persuasive technology adoption.

Foreseeable consequences are not just relevant to the

concept of ethical responsibility but also to the

autonomous decision of technology adoption by its

users. To enhance the autonomy of users, designers

and businesses need to make these trade-offs

explicitly known.

6.5 Freedom to Opt-out

In Section 5, the integration of persuasive

technologies with significant social and economic

systems was discussed. This integration has already

materialized in the case of services like social media,

video streaming and e-commerce, where surveillance

for advertisements and recommendations is the only

form of economic exchange available to users. This

form of surveillance is coercive in a society in which

opting out of these systems carries a significant social

cost. It is argued here that no social and economic

systems should be surveillance-based by design. Each

technology, product or socio-economic system

should provide users with the freedom to opt-out of

surveillance-based persuasion at a fair cost.

6.6 Democratic Coercion

It was discussed in Section 3, that in rarest of

circumstances, even surveillance-based coercion may

be justified in the interest of public good. However,

any coercive technologies, especially those that are

punitive by design, need to be defended through the

democratic process (Verbeek, 2009). Therefore,

contrary to popular market opinion, economic

systems like fitness information based health

insurance premiums should not be allowed to operate

without significant public and policy discourse. They

punish users who do not wish for their privacy to be

intruded with higher insurance costs, severely

infringing upon their freedom without any reasonable

justification of the public good.

7 CONCLUSIONS

This paper discussed the ethical concerns about

human autonomy and freedom in the context of

surveillance-based persuasive technologies.

Autonomy and freedom are highly valued ideals in

modern societies, making it necessary to investigate

the implications of rapidly evolving persuasive

technologies on human autonomy and freedom.

Persuasive technologies have the potential to enhance

human autonomy by providing users access to new

information and by helping them overcome biases in

their own judgment. With the voluntary use of

persuasive technologies such as fitness bands or

technologies designed to help quit smoking, users can

work towards their own authentic goals. On the other

hand, the paper also discussed how persuasive

technologies can undermine users’ autonomy through

practices like covert surveillance, not providing

relevant information about value trade-offs and

omitting knowledge about their vested interests in the

persuasive interaction. Moreover, when surveillance-

based persuasion is integrated into socio-economic

systems, it can become punitive and coercive,

severely infringing upon people’s freedom. Coercive

Surveillance based Persuasion: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

125

surveillance values compliance over freedom, and it

undermines human dignity.

In light of these concerns, this paper has argued

for designers and businesses to employ an ethical

approach to persuasion design. The arguments

provided in this paper can help design technologies in

a manner more conducive to autonomous decision

making and freedom of choice for the users. The

proposed ethical arguments include the principle of

minimal surveillance and an explicit creation of

awareness mechanisms such that the users have real-

time awareness of being under surveillance. Other

arguments include the explicit disclosure of the

intentions by the persuasive technology as well as the

disclosure of its side effects or foreseeable unintended

consequences. For technologies bordering on the

coercive, the paper suggests that digital products

always provide users with the freedom to opt-out of

persuasion, and that a democratic process is used for

coercive technologies being integrated into

significant socio-economic systems.

The aim of this paper was to highlight that

surveillance-based persuasive technologies can be

used to both enhance human autonomy and freedom

or to reduce it. The long-term social consequences of

these technologies will significantly depend upon

how they are integrated into socio-economic systems

and how policymakers design technology policies

with explicit consideration for these factors. There is

a potential for misuse of these technologies, which

can be used by private companies as well as

governments to create power imbalances and to evoke

compliance from their users, clients, employees or

citizens. Therefore, there is a need for designers to

take an ethical approach to technology design, as well

as for policymakers to incorporate these insights into

emerging policies in the domain.

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