Definition:
The application user is being discriminated against by the application, its services, or its community. This concern also includes users who have an issue with having fewer functionalities available to them because they live in a different geographical area.
Against:
Yes, I do think it’s concerning because it’s not really
something that matters for the application. I don’t
think so. It should also not be a way of a filtering out
the people with a different skin color or a different
background like. I don’t think that’s relevant at all,
and it shouldn’t be in such an application process.[1]
Neutral:
That’s the exact same thing when you go and interview with, say, a director that has a certain mindset.
Let’s say that he’s a, kind of had only experiences
with white people from Harvard, and will only talk to
white people from Harvard, will not discuss anything
from someone that just came from a country that is
on a visa to work and everything. It’s biased, and it’s
illegal, actually, to discriminate against specific minorities. But this guy only knows that the job is done
and can be done by Harvard students that are white.
You know what I mean? This is just what always has
happened.[1]
It is not clear if this person condemns such behavior of software. They state that things have always been that way. To them it is obvious that algorithms will mimic human biases. But they are not clear about if they want the software to be changed to address this issue. They can oppose discrimination and still be in favor of not addressing this issue in software.
In favor:
[1] Yagil Elias, Tom P. Humbert, Lauren Olson, Emitzá Guzmán. What is unethical about software? User perceptions in the Netherlands. Proceedings of ICSE-SEIS (2025). IEEE.
[2] Tjikhoeri, N., Olson, L. & Guzmán, E. The best ends by the best means: ethical concerns in app reviews. Empir Software Eng 29, 138 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-024-10463-7
[3] L. Olson, E. Guzmán and F. Kunneman, “Along the Margins: Marginalized Communities’ Ethical Concerns about Social Platforms,” 2023 IEEE/ACM 45th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society (ICSE-SEIS), Melbourne, Australia, 2023, pp. 71-82, doi: 10.1109/ICSE-SEIS58686.2023.00013.