One of the main discussions around the service was about who had the authority to initiate it and make judgements about the veracity of ethical claims about products and services. Who has enough neutral respect and authority in the public eye that could administer these judgements without fear of corruption or bias? This question ultimately unveils the need for someone to design algorithmic assessments, which would ‘solve’ ethical dilemmas at a global scale —people felt uneasy about where that responsibility is placed.

This question of authority goes even further when we consider the implications of the ‘ethical guides’ in Ethos. The idea that popular organisations, companies and individuals can intervene and nudge people’s actions at such a granular level, allows for huge new power amongst collectives wanting to act on the world. Large companies may be forced to comply with any widely held values of their customers. Who is to question the legitimacy of ethical standpoints?

This may seem like a simple extension of the role of an instagrammer or sponsored celebrity, but it could ultimately instill ethical decisions way beyond daily life and possibly create divisions between people in a potentially harmful way.

People found the concept of learning about the implications of everything appealing because it meant that the politics of everyday life could become more real and actionable. If buying a particular snack for lunch aligned you with a set of values, in the same way as buying a particular newspaper voting for a different leader, then you could feel more proactive and engaged as a citizen.

One criticism of the service is that it places all the responsibility of an ethical society in the hands of the consumer. Some participants felt the service could only be used by wealthy people because ‘it costs money to be ethical’ and would make people with less money feel bad.

There is an argument to be made that a service like this would still help people use ethics to discern between products, even if they have low economic power, and if it were the case that the range of products available to less wealthy people were all similarly unethical (or misaligned to some people’s values), then there is still more opportunity for people to act collectively based on the increased knowledge of a products ethics, than if there were no transparency.

That said, the service does seem to make a judgement in its assessment of the alignment between your values and how you act —it essentially questions how ‘true’ you are to your beliefs. This judgement is offensive and must either become neutral or be weighted by people’s capacity to purchase ethically, so that it would not be seen as a callous willingness to compromise to save money.

Users also felt that there was an interesting conflict within the service. The idea that the service understands you, learns what is important to you and recommends you alternatives based on that logic or based on an ‘ethical guide’ means that you can detach yourself from the complexity and burden of each decision. On the other hand, the fact that there is so much information available about the implications of each action means that you could dig deeper into any decision.

Users felt that by handing over decision making responsibilities you could live aligned to your values without the impossibly huge level of assessments that it would take to decide these things manually. However, people should regularly engage with these decisions because the world would change, new information emerges and people’s beliefs change. So, for someone to be decoded and then follow that prescribed course indefinitely would be an abdication of responsibility.