I snagged one of the 3 invites and my initial impression that I am skeptical of the methodology used to generate the scores and feel it fails to capture company impact adequately.
The example I first noticed was Microsoft scoring a 76 despite constantly being in trouble for openly agreeing to lend the use of their data centers to regimes commiting genocide and having subsidiaries who poor track records for treating workers well I.e Activision-Blizzard, among many other issues.
I understand that a project like this is a difficult to scale but I can't help but feel the site is misleading in certain cases.
That being said I admire the idea behind this project and want to see it grow. The feature I would be most interested in is being able to drill down into specific products. I want to be able to see the ethics of using a Google Pixel phone but not have YouTube affect the score for example. Large companies are effectively composed of subsections that would ideally be scored separately.
I understand that a project like this is a difficult to scale but I can't help but feel the site is misleading in certain cases
You're right that Microsoft's score is off. It doesn't have full scoring impacts yet, which is true of many companies in the database right now. In those cases the score defaults to scoring data aggregated from various sources. The app accepts community contributed score impacts! I understand if you don't have the time or inclination but you brought up some good candidates for new impacts.
It would be interesting to be able to separate Pixel from YouTube. That's something that could be possible with community support, but it would need to be a fairly large community.
My thinking at this point is that, using your example, if Google is doing shady things at YouTube, it should ideally impact their profits across their whole ecosystem, Pixel included.
Made an account and am browsing. Seems fairly detailed so far, and the interface seems nice and clean.
My first point of input from a cursory glance: maybe it's because I'm on mobile, but I'm not seeing details on which "avoid lists" companies are on. Just the fact they're on a list. Will the icons only apply for lists made by you (Custodian), or for all lists made by anyone? Is there a way to see what lists they're on?
On that note, interesting to see half the "Ethics Villain" list is green. When I checked some of them, their ethics also seemed to be well-rated, and it didn't give a breakdown of why they're on that list. The green companies on the list include United Healthcare, Altria Group (Marlboro) and Johnson & Johnson, all of which showed positive metrics on the site. The only score impact listed for all three had to do with the environment score. I agree with their inclusion on the list, but could you explain the criteria used for the list?
That's a good point, and it's already on my list to add something to the UI to show which lists a company shows up on. I'll move it to the top.
The icons/badges show a count of all lists a company shows up on. The above UI change would add a List detail section to the company pages that shows specific lists they're on globally. I may eventually add a setting to control that behavior (badges show for all lists or just owned/followed lists)
You're right about the Villain lists, some of the companies don't yet have full scoring impacts. I've been working on that this week. The aggregate data sources (where the base scores come from) are... imperfect. The champion list companies are fully scored, and most of the environment villains list. Once the impacts are finished it should be more clear why they're included.
I'm all for cool projects and such but I'm wondering, what makes this different than something like Buycott? I haven't used any of the invites or anything yet, but I'm curious.
Also as general constructive criticism, I'd maybe move the section on your backstory till after you describe what the project actually is :)
I hadn't heard of Buycott, but at a glance it looks like Buycott is a barcode database that links products to user created campaigns. It doesn't appear to have any info on the companies and brands themselves.
When I did a search for "Apple" from their main page it took about 15 seconds before returning "no results". When I chose the "brand" search and tried again it took another 10+ seconds before returning a page of results that didn't include Apple. Coca-Cola was the top result. After a few other searches it looks like the brand search always returns the same list of results for any search term.
atomicshoreline | 10 hours ago
I snagged one of the 3 invites and my initial impression that I am skeptical of the methodology used to generate the scores and feel it fails to capture company impact adequately.
The example I first noticed was Microsoft scoring a 76 despite constantly being in trouble for openly agreeing to lend the use of their data centers to regimes commiting genocide and having subsidiaries who poor track records for treating workers well I.e Activision-Blizzard, among many other issues.
I understand that a project like this is a difficult to scale but I can't help but feel the site is misleading in certain cases.
That being said I admire the idea behind this project and want to see it grow. The feature I would be most interested in is being able to drill down into specific products. I want to be able to see the ethics of using a Google Pixel phone but not have YouTube affect the score for example. Large companies are effectively composed of subsections that would ideally be scored separately.
unkz | 7 hours ago
Kind of reminds me of The Good Place where nobody has entered heaven since the Industrial Revolution made every action slightly immoral.
Eric_the_Cerise | 2 hours ago
Just added this to my "to watch" short list, based entirely on this description. Thanx.
[OP] ethoscore | 10 hours ago
You're right that Microsoft's score is off. It doesn't have full scoring impacts yet, which is true of many companies in the database right now. In those cases the score defaults to scoring data aggregated from various sources. The app accepts community contributed score impacts! I understand if you don't have the time or inclination but you brought up some good candidates for new impacts.
It would be interesting to be able to separate Pixel from YouTube. That's something that could be possible with community support, but it would need to be a fairly large community.
My thinking at this point is that, using your example, if Google is doing shady things at YouTube, it should ideally impact their profits across their whole ecosystem, Pixel included.
Thanks for the feedback!
[OP] ethoscore | 11 hours ago
Invites
Reply to this comment for an invite.
Here are a few to start things off:
https://ethoscoreproject.com/invite?code=e96d7c7457daadc1https://ethoscoreproject.com/invite?code=57bde1f4421083a0https://ethoscoreproject.com/invite?code=2d451e5d7ed50778[OP] ethoscore | 11 hours ago
Fresh invite link:
https://ethoscoreproject.com/invite?code=0a2cb8e9ba8c15a0https://ethoscoreproject.com/invite?code=8d39c44f51125a28https://ethoscoreproject.com/invite?code=abb1f3e5a29077ebhttps://ethoscoreproject.com/invite?code=ae4010c85eac9ba7https://ethoscoreproject.com/invite?code=8b83c82f99289a23https://ethoscoreproject.com/invite?code=635f11c8acf1e90ehttps://ethoscoreproject.com/invite?code=06d7011316c376a8
I'll keep refreshing this periodically but please reply or DM to get an invite faster.
CannibalisticApple | 10 hours ago
Made an account and am browsing. Seems fairly detailed so far, and the interface seems nice and clean.
My first point of input from a cursory glance: maybe it's because I'm on mobile, but I'm not seeing details on which "avoid lists" companies are on. Just the fact they're on a list. Will the icons only apply for lists made by you (Custodian), or for all lists made by anyone? Is there a way to see what lists they're on?
On that note, interesting to see half the "Ethics Villain" list is green. When I checked some of them, their ethics also seemed to be well-rated, and it didn't give a breakdown of why they're on that list. The green companies on the list include United Healthcare, Altria Group (Marlboro) and Johnson & Johnson, all of which showed positive metrics on the site. The only score impact listed for all three had to do with the environment score. I agree with their inclusion on the list, but could you explain the criteria used for the list?
[OP] ethoscore | 10 hours ago
Thanks for the detailed notes!
In order:
I love that the interface feels clean.
That's a good point, and it's already on my list to add something to the UI to show which lists a company shows up on. I'll move it to the top.
The icons/badges show a count of all lists a company shows up on. The above UI change would add a List detail section to the company pages that shows specific lists they're on globally. I may eventually add a setting to control that behavior (badges show for all lists or just owned/followed lists)
You're right about the Villain lists, some of the companies don't yet have full scoring impacts. I've been working on that this week. The aggregate data sources (where the base scores come from) are... imperfect. The champion list companies are fully scored, and most of the environment villains list. Once the impacts are finished it should be more clear why they're included.
phoenixrises | 11 hours ago
I'm all for cool projects and such but I'm wondering, what makes this different than something like Buycott? I haven't used any of the invites or anything yet, but I'm curious.
Also as general constructive criticism, I'd maybe move the section on your backstory till after you describe what the project actually is :)
[OP] ethoscore | 11 hours ago
I hadn't heard of Buycott, but at a glance it looks like Buycott is a barcode database that links products to user created campaigns. It doesn't appear to have any info on the companies and brands themselves.
When I did a search for "Apple" from their main page it took about 15 seconds before returning "no results". When I chose the "brand" search and tried again it took another 10+ seconds before returning a page of results that didn't include Apple. Coca-Cola was the top result. After a few other searches it looks like the brand search always returns the same list of results for any search term.