Projects
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Rethinking news algorithms: nudging users towards diverse news exposure
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Information, Communication & the Data Society (ICDS)
Activities
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Hoe betrouwbaar zijn gezondheidsapps?
Focus, NPO Radio 1.
29-04-2021
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Beleid voor CoronaCheck-apps ontbreekt jammerlijk
Opinie NRC Handelsblad
25-04-2021
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PhD-defence Marijn Sax: Between Empowerment and Manipulation: The Ethics and Regulation of For-Profit Health Apps
Online
26-03-2021
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Gezondheidsapps: tussen hulp en manipulatie: Promotie Marijn Sax over commerciële gezondheidsapps
UvA.nl
18-03-2021
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Filosofen over de corona-app: begrijpt de overheid privacy wel?
Trouw
10-04-2020
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Discussion with Helen Nissenbaum: How should we think about obfuscation?
Spui 25
11-10-2017
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‘Let op de subtiele vermenging van commercie en adviezen in gezondheidsapps’
Opinie in De Volkskrant.
25-03-2017
Marijn Sax
Dr.
- : Marijn
I am a postdoc at the Institute for Information Law where I am part of an interdisciplinary project that researches diversity in algorithmic news recommenders. I combine ethics and political philosophy to investigate 1) how, why, and what kinds of diversity matter in algorithmic news recommenders, and 2) to what extent nudging strategies are legitimate tools to promote news diversity.
I completed my PhD (cum laude) at the Institute for Information Law and Department of Philosophy. My dissertation, Between Empowerment and Manipulation: The Ethics and Regulation of For-Profit Health Apps, combines ethical and legal approaches. Building on theories of autonomy, vulnerability, trust, and manipulation I try to show how ongoing commercial relations between health apps and their users come with a promise of user empowerment, but also with an almost inevitable risk of manipulation. I propose reinterpretations of key concepts in the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive to help address the manipulative potential of for-profit health apps. I was visiting PhD researcher at the Digital Life Initiative (Cornell Tech) from September until December 2018. To make this visit possible, I received grants from Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Studiefonds Ketel1, and the University of Amsterdam ('Lustrumbeurs').
I have a background in Political Science (BSc.) and Philosophy (BA., MA., both cum laude).
Publications
| Sax, M. In: & Jan Willen Duyvendak, Lukas M. Verburgt (Ed.): pp. 109-113, Amsterdam University Press, 2023. @inbook{nokey, |
| Sax, M. Utilisme ‘on steroids’: effectief altruïsme, longtermism en uitlevering aan big tech In: De Nederlandse Boekengids, vol. 2023, iss. 2, 2023. @article{Sax2023, |
| Sax, M. Algorithmic News Diversity and Democratic Theory: Adding Agonism to the Mix In: Digital Journalism, 2022. @article{Sax2022,The role news recommenders can play in stimulating news diversity is receiving increasing amounts of attention. Democratic theory plays an important role in this debate because it helps explain why news diversity is important and which kinds of news diversity should be pursued. In this article, I observe that the current literature on news recommenders and news diversity largely draws on a narrow set of theories of liberal and deliberative democracy. Another strand of democratic theory often referred to as ‘agonism’ is often ignored. This, I argue, is a mistake. Liberal and deliberative theories of democracy focus on the question of how political disagreements and conflicts can be resolved in a rational and legitimate manner. Agonism, to the contrary, stresses the ineradicability of conflict and the need to make conflict productive. This difference in thinking about the purpose of democratic politics can also lead to new ways of thinking about the value of news diversity and role algorithmic news recommenders should play in promoting it. The overall aim of the article is (re)introduce agonistic theory to the news recommender context and to argue that agonism deserves more serious attention. |
| Helberger, N., Micklitz, H.-W., Sax, M., Strycharz, J. Choice Architectures in the Digital Economy: Towards a New Understanding of Digital Vulnerability In: Journal of Consumer Policy, vol. 45, iss. 2, pp. 175-200, 2022. @article{nokey,In the digital economy, consumer vulnerability is not simply a vantage point from which to assess some consumers’ lack of ability to activate their awareness of persuasion. Instead, digital vulnerability describes a universal state of defencelessness and susceptibility to (the exploitation of) power imbalances that are the result of the increasing automation of commerce, datafied consumer–seller relations, and the very architecture of digital marketplaces. Digital vulnerability, we argue, is architectural, relational, and data-driven. Based on our concept of digital vulnerability, we demonstrate how and why using digital technology to render consumers vulnerable is the epitome of an unfair digital commercial practice. |
| Sax, M. Between Empowerment and Manipulation: The Ethics and Regulation of For-Profit Health Apps Wolters Kluwer, 2021, ISBN: 9789403537917. @book{Sax2021f, |
| Fokkens, A., Helberger, N., Mattis, N., Müller, J., Reuver, M., Sax, M., Tintarev, N., Van Atteveldt, W., Verberne, S., Vrijenhoek, S. In: The 1st Workshop on NLP for Positive Impact: NLP4PosImpact 2021 : proceedings of the workshop, pp. 47-59, 2021. @article{Reuver2021, |
| Sax, M. Opinie: Wie naar Dokter Quin gaat, betaalt de rekening voor technologie-kwakzalverij 2021. @periodical{Sax2021bb, |
| Sax, M. Voorbij privacy: manipulatie is het échte probleem in gezondheidsapps In: Privacy & Informatie, no. 3, pp. 117-120, 2021. @article{Sax2021b,Ze zijn enorm populair en zullen alleen nog maar populairder worden: gezondheidsapps. Er zijn populaire gezondheidsapps met tientallen tot soms honderden miljoenen gebruikers voor van alles en nog wat: dieetadviezen en calorieëntellen (MyFitnessPal), meditatie en mindfulness (Headspace), het tracken en onderling vergelijken van sportactiviteiten (Strava), het tracken van je algehele bewegings- en gezondheidspatronen via een wearable (Fitbit), enzovoort. Hun huidige populariteit zal alleen nog maar toenemen, aangezien werkgevers en verzekeraars steeds nadrukkelijker het gebruik van gezondheidsapps aanprijzen. 1 Gezondheid is goed, meer gezondheid is beter. Geweldig toch, die alsmaar toenemende populariteit van gezondheidsapps? |
| Helberger, N., Sax, M., Strycharz, J. Opinie: Beleid voor CoronaCheck-app ontbreekt jammerlijk 2021. @periodical{Sax2021bb, |
| Sax, M. Between Empowerment and Manipulation: The Ethics and Regulation of For-Profit Health Apps 2021. @phdthesis{Sax2021bb,In the digital society, many of our everyday activities take place within digital choice architectures that become increasingly good at understanding and shaping our behavior. Health apps are a perfect example of this trend: they are easy to download and use and promise user empowerment. By collecting and analyzing user data, health apps promise to be able to ‘get to know’ their users and deliver personalized feedback and suggestions for better health outcomes. But this promise of user empowerment also comes with a risk of user manipulation. Most of the popular health apps are for-profit services. To monetize their userbase, they can rely on the very same user data collection, data analysis, and targeting techniques to shape the behavior of health app users in ways that benefit the health app provider, rather than the users themselves. As it turns out, the very conditions for empowerment largely overlap with the conditions for manipulation. This dissertation offers an ethical and legal analysis of the tension between empowerment and manipulation in for-profit health apps, and digital choice architectures more generally. Building on ethical theories of personal autonomy and manipulation, the dissertation develops an ethical framework to evaluate the design and commercial practices of health apps. This ethical framework is then used to develop novel interpretations of key concepts in the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD). Based on these novel interpretations of key concepts, it is argued that the UCPD has an important role to play in addressing consumer manipulation. |
| Helberger, N., Lynskey, O., Micklitz, H.-W., Rott, P., Sax, M., Strycharz, J. EU Consumer Protection 2.0: Structural Asymmetries in Digital Consumer Markets 2021. @techreport{Helberger2021, |
| Ausloos, J., Sax, M. In: Interactive Entertainment Law Review, vol. 4, no. 1, 2021. @article{SaxAusloos2021,This paper investigates the ethical and legal implications of increasingly manipulative practices in the gaming industry by looking at one of the currently most popular and profitable video games in the world. Fortnite has morphed from an online game into a quasi-social network and an important cultural reference point in the lifeworld of many (young) people. The game is also emblematic of the freemium business model, with strong incentives to design the game in a manner which maximises microtransactions. This article suggests that to properly understand Fortnite’s practices – which we predict will become more widely adopted in the video game industry in the near future – we need an additional perspective. Fortnite is not only designed for hyper-engagement; its search for continued growth and sustained relevance is driving its transformation from being a mere video game into a content delivery platform. This means that third parties can offer non game-related services to players within Fortnite’s immersive game experience. In this paper, we draw on an ethical theory of manipulation (which defines manipulation as an ethically problematic influence on a person’s behaviour) to explore whether the gaming experience offered by Fortnite harbours manipulative potential. To legally address the manipulative potential of commercial video game practices such as the ones found in Fortnite, we turn to European data protection and consumer protection law. More specifically, we explore how the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and Unfair Commercial Practices Directive can provide regulators with tools to address Fortnite’s manipulative potential and to make Fortnite (more) forthright. |
| Sax, M. Optimization of what? For-profit health apps as manipulative digital environments In: Ethics and Information Technology, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 345-361, 2021, (Preprint available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3752597). @article{Sax2021,Mobile health applications (‘health apps’) that promise the user to help her with some aspect of her health are very popular: for-profit apps such as MyFitnessPal, Fitbit, or Headspace have tens of millions of users each. For-profit health apps are designed and run as optimization systems. One would expect that these health apps aim to optimize the health of the user, but in reality they aim to optimize user engagement and, in effect, conversion. This is problematic, I argue, because digital health environments that aim to optimize user engagement risk being manipulative. To develop this argument, I first provide a brief analysis of the underlying business models and the resulting designs of the digital environments provided by popular for-profit health apps. In a second step, I present a concept of manipulation that can help analyze digital environments such as health apps. In the last part of the article, I use my concept of manipulation to analyze the manipulative potential of for-profit health apps. Although for-profit health can certainly empower their users, the conditions for empowerment also largely overlap with the conditions for manipulation. As a result, we should be cautious when embracing the empowerment discourse surrounding health apps. An additional aim of this article is to contribute to the rapidly growing literature on digital choice architectures and the ethics of influencing behavior through such choice architectures. I take health apps to be a paradigmatic example of digital choice architectures that give rise to ethical questions, so my analysis of the manipulative potential of health apps can also inform the larger literature on digital choice architectures. |
| Sax, M. Privacy from an Ethical Perspective In: van der Sloot, B.; De Groot, A. (Ed.): The Handbook of Privacy Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction, Chapter 3, pp. 143-172, Amsterdam University Press, 2018, ISBN: 9789462988095. @inbook{Sax2018b, |
| Bol, N., Helberger, N., Sax, M. In: Journal of Consumer Policy, vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 103-134, 2018, ISSN: 0168-7034. @article{Sax2018,In this article, we discuss mHealth apps and their potential to influence the user’s behaviour in increasingly persuasive ways. More specifically, we call attention to the fact that mHealth apps often seek to not only influence the health behaviour of users but also their economic behaviour by merging health and commercial content in ways that are hard to detect. We argue that (1) such merging of health and commercial content raises specific questions concerning the autonomy of mHealth app users, and (2) consumer law offers a promising legal lens to address questions concerning user protection in this context. Based on an empirically informed ethical analysis of autonomy, we develop a fine-grained framework that incorporates three different requirements for autonomy that we call “independence,” “authenticity,” and “options.” This framework also differentiates between three different stages of mHealth app use, namely installing, starting to use, and continuing to use an app. As a result, user autonomy can be analysed in a nuanced and precise manner. Since the concept of autonomy plays a prominent, yet poorly understood role in unfair commercial practice law, we utilize the ethical analysis of autonomy to guide our legal analysis of the proper application of unfair commercial practice law in the mHealth app domain. |
| Sax, M. Book Review: The Crisis of Presence in Contemporary Culture In: European Data Protection Law Review, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 293-296, 2017. @article{Sax2017, |
| Sax, M. Opinie: 'Let op de subtiele vermenging van commercie en adviezen in gezondheidsapps' 2017. @periodical{Sax2017b, |
| Sax, M. Big data: Finders keepers, losers weepers? In: Ethics and Information Technology, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 25-31, 2016. @article{Sax2016,This article argues that big data’s entrepreneurial potential is based not only on new technological developments that allow for the extraction of non-trivial, new insights out of existing data, but also on an ethical judgment that often remains implicit: namely the ethical judgment that those companies that generate these new insights can legitimately appropriate (the fruits of) these insights. As a result, the business model of big data companies is essentially founded on a libertarian-inspired ‘finders, keepers’ ethic. The article argues, next, that this presupposed ‘finder, keepers’ ethic is far from unproblematic and relies itself on multiple unconvincing assumptions. This leads to the conclusion that the conduct of companies working with big data might lack ethical justification. |