User:Charlie/Tactical Design - Notes

Lieslescht ☺ Text: Tactical Design by Nolwenn Maudet (English translation by Doriane)

Personal Summary

Introduction

The monopolies of big Internet platforms such as YouTube or Instagram hinders the development and growth of competing alternatives. Not because the big platforms offer a unique and non-replicable design, but because people are reluctant to leave and/or change to new platforms. This reluctance grows alongside those platforms’ monopoly of the social media landscape. This makes creating alternative, new platform designs a risk often not worth taking. And hence limits the possibilities for design all together. As designers, removed from decision-making power, resistance towards these systems may be the only solution; Tactical design. Design that comes forth not to enhance and reaffirm the existing systems, but to counter them. In theory.

Recent forms of design protests

Protest practices in design have a long history. For example, the concept of Critical Design (Dunne & Raby, 1999) aims to ‘point out the obvious’ in contemporary problems through objects and propose new possibilities. Antagonistic Design (DiSalvo, 2012), rather than confront and reaffirm the existing systems through design, aims to more explicitly expose the existing power structures.

Tactic and Design

Similarly but more explicitly, Tactical Design aims to solve rather than merely make problems visible within a system. Specifically, through the appropriation of the systems, or components of them, by users. Different to strategy, tactics can only be employed within and in relation to the existing systems they aim to counter.

“Tactics can only exist in relation to the other. So it has to play with the terrain imposed on it, as organized by the law of a foreign force. It does not have the means to remain within itself, at a distance, in a position of withdrawal, anticipation and self-gathering [...]” (4)

Tactical, as a term, is also being used in urban planning to refer to a diverse set of practices in which, most often, local communities re-appropriate public space to serve said community. Although, tactical urbanism is also sometimes employed by urban planners in the development stages. When it comes to tactical design practices in digital technologies, it most often refers to a design(er’s) approach, not necessarily the users personal interaction with the technology.

Creeping in the opponent

Turkopticon (Irani & Silberman, 2008) is a browser-extension created in reaction to Amazon

Mechanical Turk, a platform designed for employers to find and hire temporary workers. These workers operate as contractor’s, which legally blocks their access to equal labour rights, such as the right to demand minimum wage. However, instead of opposing this work form, Turkopticon focused on recognizing and addressing inequal features and functionalities on Amazon’s platform. E.g.: Inability to send in a complaint as a worker or contest the offered pay.

The add-on, a “user script” that directly adds functionalities to the platform, lets the worker users rate, comment and discuss their experiences, whilst building solidarity between the contractors.

What makes Turkopticon tactical is that it was developed for and works in tandem to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, instead of being an entirely separate infrastructure. In that way, it does not compete with it, but effectively infiltrates and rearranges its power structures from within. In addition, implementing a rating system acts as a form of reappropriation of that feature by the workers, who are usually the ones made to bare the negative consequences of rating systems on other platforms most. E.g.: Uber firing workers over marginally bad ratings. This may be seen as “tactical quantification”; Whilst it doesn’t necessarily make the working conditions more equitable, it works to the benefit of the workers and lends them more agency.

“Design from below: techniques from below show the circumventions and counter-practices of those who are subordinate to or subject to governance from above.” (10)

Turning the opponent’s strength against himself

Another interesting, yet more antagonistic browser extension is Consent-O-Matic. This add-on helps its users automatically fill out cookie pop-ups based on their set preferences. It was specifically designed to counter exploitative pop-ups. More specifically, cookie banners that are purposefully (and illegally) designed in a confusing and misleading manner, despite EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. Consent-O-Matic acts as soon as pop-ups appear in the browser, making cookie banners almost unnoticeable.

The add-on detects banners so efficiently because a considerable amount of websites seem to all be using the same sets of banner templates, created by a small source of private companies.

“[..]in 2020 in the UK, almost 60% of the 10,000 most-visited websites used a cookie banner offered by 5 companies.” (14)(15)

While it makes browser extensions such as Consent-O-Matic easier to program, the hegemonic use of the same pop-up banners also poses a cyber security risk to the many websites using them. One attack could have the potential to target a large amount of sites.

Adversarial Interoperability: “Interoperability is the ability of a system to communicate and function with other, sometimes technically different systems, and adversarial interoperability is the idea of interfacing with other systems without their permission or support.” and “[..]fundamental to the history of computing, and has enabled its vitality.”

Diverting an opponent’s strength to a competitor’s advantage

Amazon Killer has a similar approach. This browser extension’s purpose is to redirect users to the Place des librairies website (a site which helps source local books stores), when they find and want to buy a book on Amazon. With an interface perfectly emulating Amazon’s visual identity and blending in on the page. The add-on exploits Amazon’s search engine and Internet monopoly to its advantage and to support competitors. As does Peertubify, which uses YouTubes search engine to redirect to Peertube, “a decentralized video viewing platform”.

Cleaning up the existing

Another adversarial tactic is cleaning, “removing or hiding interface elements”, e.g. ad-blockers.

Besides blocking ads, other extensions have been created to remove a wide array of site-specific elements. Especially elements secondary to the primary function of a site, most often added with the goal to divert and heighten user interaction.

Unhook is an extension which hides all distracting elements on YouTube, such as recommended videos and comments, leaving only the video player. Whilst the Demetricator hides all numerical indicators (e.g.: likes, followers, retweets, etc) on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

While such cleaning add-ons can easily override stylistic elements of interfaces, it only targets the display. They cannot as easily target invisible elements of an interface, such as algorithms.

The browser, a tactical design enabler

All examples of tactical digital resistance given so far are browser extensions, which profit from the browsers large flexibility as a tool and “the decentralized and open nature of Internet protocols (TCP/IP) and the Web”. In comparison, other softwares give far less access to control and personalize their interfaces. This is due to the inherent nature of the web and its client/server model, which separates the content/data from its formatting/the design of its interface.

Nowadays, websites are styled through CSS (structured through HTML). Before the implementation of CSS as the web-standard, web interfaces were primarily styled by the user’s browser, a.o. the user themselves. CSS was developed to give an author of a website a certain amount of control over its format and design. Yet, CSS, as a language, merely proposes the formatting of a website, giving “hints” to a preset design it “comes with”. The possibility to access and interact with the styling of a website through the browser remains.

“In the history of media, the Web thus represents a radical transfer of power to the end user.”

This infrastructure, inherent to the web-browser, enables resistance.

In comparison, other digital infrastructures such as smartphone applications for example, offer war less possibilities for tactical design. Partially, due to individual mobile operating system languages, as well as due to the strict regulations and control by hegemonic entities (App Store and Google Play Store) when it comes to the applications available.

Modest Design

Tactical design can only be modest in its practice, since it is highly dependent on the environment /the system it is being implemented in and therefore restricted both in its scope and in the solutions it is capable of offering. This modesty equally applies to the aesthetic properties of tactical design, as shown through the examples. Especially cleaning tactics, since their aesthetic focus lies in the visual removal of elements and features. This often results in these add-ons abiding to the styling of the target website through the emulation of their visual codes, made in CSS. Leaving little space for creative innovation.

This modest approach to design seemingly puts tactical design at odds with artistic practices that share its goal to “concretely counter existing oppressive systems”. One example are face-covering (e.g.: make-up, masks) made to hinder facial recognition software. These artistic projects often tend to have an aesthetic value as a key component, as a means to gather visual attention. Which the nature of tactical design seems to relinquish. To the detriment of design.

Individualized Solution

Both tactical design and artistic practices on technology resistance share a criticism: Their false emphasize on the individual’s power and responsibility.

A distraction from the realization that collective action on a systemic level has the potential to be far more efficient in countering these oppressive technological systems.

Tactical designs may spotlight problems to users, within the systems they seek to counter. However, the more notoriety these tactical designs have, the more likely they become to be intercepted by the opposing systems. Made void by quick interface changes and adjustments.

“This can lead to a tug-of-war”. These add-ons (e.g.: Ad-blockers, especially) run the risk of having to chose between: Constantly having to update and keep-up with system changes as they aim to reach a growing amount of users, or choose relative obscurity for the sake of remaining “undetected” by their adversaries.

“Another paradox raised by tactical design is the role it can play in legitimizing or accepting digital technologies.”

Despite its initial objective, tactical design has the potential to reinforce the dominating systems it tries to resist. Unlike boycotting methods or choosing to cease using a system altogether, these extension only provide a surface-level solution to the problems users face. They do not keep the users from using these oppressive system; It does not disrupt the systems.

On the contrary, tactical designs may even enhance the user experience, ultimately benefiting these systems in the end, for free. (E.g.: Turkopticon) The systems are not forced to change and therefore, remain the same.

Who can afford tactical design?

“So what happens to tactics, which are by definition short-term practices?”

As tactical designs, become integrated into the everyday life of their users, they may require reoccurring maintenance and updates to keep up with system changes. How can tactical designs remain sustainable long term?

Tools such as Turkopticon have now shifted to a user-based collectivist approach to manage that necessary work. A method that parallels open source practices.

The add-ons biggest achievement hence becomes: Its continuous participation “in the organization of Turkers and their own forms of solidarity.”

A considerable hurdle is the affordability of long term sustainability; The price at which it costs to fund the necessary maintenance. The non-commerciality of most tactical design projects is something it shares with artistic practices.

“This outlook perceives design as more than a market service: it aims to show that designers can be agents of powerful social and political change, beyond the boundaries of the commercial client-commission setting” (28) (28)

At the same time, being able to afford to focus time, money and effort on a non-commercial/non-profit driven project may signal a form of socio-economic privilege held by the designers, making tactical design a niche venture available only to a reduced demographic.

What differentiates tactical designs from practices such as critical design, or certain artistic practices, is its foremost purpose to serve the public/the users as a practical tool. As opposed to a closed audience in the creative sphere. After all, tactical design is not a practice solely performed by designers and the like. Digital user advocacy organizations and researchers are showing increasing interest in browser extensions as an activist medium.

“By becoming more explicitly involved in activist approaches, tactical design could perhaps overcome the dichotomy between localized individual response and necessarily organized systemic activism.”

Methods discussions

Methods Pad 22/01/25 [1]

Word Stew Entries ✎

• Tactical
• Fabulation
• Folklore

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