THE PROBLEM AT HAND: TRUST AS TECHNOLOGICAL TRUSTWORTHINESS

Technology providers are constantly attempting to ‘build trust with users’, whether channelling such efforts through dedicated Trust and Safety teams, or by wielding privacy-protecting design. However, mainstream framings of digital trust often fall short on two accounts. First, they can be disproportionately technical, and therefore employ a top-down lens that does not capture the agency of users. Trust in technology is often conflated with technological trustworthiness, understood usually as the degree to which a technology is reliable. Consistent and predictable functioning, although essential for users to form a relationship with the technology, has little bearing on whether the technology is perceived by users as meeting their needs^[1].

More expansive ideas of digital trust acknowledge factors such as those of privacy protection, security around data, and robust redressal mechanisms^[2]. Although these represent crucial aspects of the user-technology relationship, their dominance paints a picture of technologists and other stakeholders as decision-makers, and of the user as someone who receives trustworthy technology, not a unique individual capable of regulating and giving trust in ways that another does not. Thinking about trust in this way leaves out users’ decision-making patterns that operate in non-violation settings, or “neutral” scenarios – such as choosing to try a new app based on the features it offers, or recommending it to a friend. Overall, by prioritising digital optimization for trust, the user’s decision-making in digital trust scenarios is at worst erased, and at best understood as universal for the goals of the technology and the entities driving them.

WHAT DIGITAL TRUST REALLY IS: USER-EMERGENT AND CONTEXTUAL

Additionally, discourse around users’ digital participation, especially in the context of the Global South territories, skews heavily towards questions of access and usage: this inevitably sheds more light on issues of network connectivity, cultural attitudes and local challenges to using technology. While these are necessary to unbundle, they do not by themselves capture a more graded and complex picture of how a user engages with technology. Understanding ‘trust’ in this context can provide a crucial axis for the construction of ‘meaningful’ digital relationships beyond access; it also helps centre sustainability in conversations about adoption and usage.

Formed over time, trust is constantly renegotiated and precariously maintained. The important consideration here is not just how complex it is at the level of the individual, but also that it is in continuous interaction with the social and physical context of the user. Gender, for instance, emerges as a significant influence on how different users interact with technology. Social expectations and gendered cultural patterns impact women’s perceptions of value, their risk appetite on digital platforms, and their responses to technological trust breakdowns; these differ vastly from those aspects of men’s experiences, resulting in gender-specific trust attitudes and behaviours.

In India, gender roles impact women’s ability to form meaningful digital relationships and build trust in several ways:

1. Shared phone access: For 28% of Indian women, shared phone access is a barrier to their internet use.^[3] Adolescent girls and women in India using a “household” device or one that belongs to another family member often do not have the space and resources to form independent relationships with the technology. Family members may enact surveillance or restrict access or women may adopt self-surveillance mechanisms in anticipation of such criticism.
2. Social perceptions: Patriarchal attitudes towards women’s capability and roles in society constrain women’s agency to enact trust in technology. Lack of faith in their ability to navigate digital spaces, and distrust on moral grounds motivate others’ expression of disapproval or active interference with women’s digital usage.
3. Self-imposed barriers: Women’s tendency to have low self-confidence – both within and outside the digital context – impacts their response to errors and subsequent digital engagement. Negative self-perceptions can lead to hesitation, as well as a risk-benefit analysis that may not align with their actual abilities to navigate digital systems.
4. Vulnerability to digital harms and violations: Indian women are left to grapple with online harassment in its various forms, from physical threats to revenge porn, as well as targeted fraudulent activities, all in the absence of adequate support from their social circles or the platforms themselves. This leads to an exposure to digital risk that lends itself to severely limited and fearful usage.

Women are thus not only most at risk in their physical spaces, but also their digital spaces. For instance, fifteen-year-old Gita (name changed) shared her apprehensions regarding using the phone going forward, “Voh mujhe torture karta hai, par log mujhe characterless bolenge.” Such risks place a high standard on technology to meet women’s trust needs with the intention of keeping them safe and encouraging willingness to occupy digital spaces.

HOW WE MIGHT BEGIN TO CHANGE THINGS: USER-FIRST APPROACHES

Beyond access and usage, trust is important to study for women users qualitative digital participation, as its psycho-social role and impact upon the user-technology relationship pushes a more ‘intentional’ approach to technology design and development. Such an approach pushes not just interventions at the problem-solving level, but also in ways that unlock the environmental conditions necessary for women to feel safe, encouraged and empowered in building trustworthy digital spaces for themselves.  When technology is not merely reactive to harms that women face, but also intentionally responds to their aspirations and needs in this way, women users are likely to have digital experiences that feel personally meaningful and encourage deeper engagement.

Owing to its contextual and ephemeral nature, ‘trust’ manifests differently for different users, and so, there is no universal pathway for the establishment and maintenance of trust between user and technology. Trust is also an exceedingly intricate idea with close allies in a variety of concepts linked to digital participation, from confidence to risk and vulnerability. Because it shares dependencies with a host of other ideas, attempts to demystify trust are simultaneously attempts at solving the entire puzzle.

Decentering technology in conceptions of digital trust allows for a more expansive understanding of the idea. It enables relevant stakeholders to acknowledge the dynamic nature of the relationship, as well as develop or modify interventions such that they trigger high-impact domino effects that address women’s unique approaches to trust-building. For instance, programming communication applications with voice-recognition functionality enables low-literate users to access platforms as well as leapfrog the issues that come with language-induced incomprehensibility or delays in making the technology work for them. Initiatives such as the Indian government’s AI translation tool, Bhashini, adopt a similar approach to drive greater user inclusion. Technology-builders can use more deeply-investigated user insights on trust-building to create responsive features that make or break the difference at critical junctures, such as feedback mechanisms that cushion the impact of digital errors. This kind of feature would be specifically impactful for women’s digital self-confidence.

It is necessary, then, to undertake intentional and context-specific approaches to technology research, design, and deployment that centre the user in building trust. Doing so also allows us to unpack how specific users, such as women across India, make decisions in the face of intersecting vulnerabilities, social perceptions, and personal aspirations around technology. By leveraging users’ perspectives, experiences, and behaviours, stakeholders can infuse a responsive approach to trust-building and maintenance that has an enduring impact.

[1] Expert interview with Dr. Alex Pentland

[2] Earning Digital Trust: Decision-Making for Trustworthy Technologies

[3] The Mobile Gender Gap Report, GSMA