Hal Jackman

Popularity of 'gamified' apps raises new legal issues, student researchers warn

geoff.vendeville — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 17:26:33 +0000

Popularity of 'gamified' apps raises new legal issues, student researchers warn

geoff.vendeville Tue, 04/05/2022 - 13:26

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(photo by AsiaVision/Getty Images)

Nina Haikara

Topic

City & Culture

Technology and Society

Faculty of Law

Hal Jackman

With a few pushes of a button or a swipe of your fingers, you can trade stocks, hail a ride, order a pizza or find a date. But what are the implications of these gamified apps on human behaviour and the law?

Law students in the University of Toronto's Future of Law Lab explore these questions in a new research report that focuses on how current laws should respond to gamification – the introduction of elements of play and gaming across activities and aspects of life.

“My research interest is in securities law, so gamification really captured my attention with the whole meme stock craze, and speculation about how online trading apps might have fed into it,” says Doug Sarro, a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Law.

“By gamifying investing, did online trading apps lead their users to trade too frequently in assets that were too risky for them? I looked around and saw gamification raises issues in other areas of law, too. For instance, when ridesharing apps use gamification to influence when and where drivers work, does this mean these drivers ought to be considered employees rather than independent contractors?

“I thought the Future of Law Lab would be a fantastic place to explore gamification and gain a broader view of the challenges it poses to law.”

The lab established a co-curricular working group led by Sarro and 16 JD students to research the implications of gamification in four areas: online trading; ridesharing and food delivery; employee productivity; and dating.

First-year law student Nikée Allen, who has a bachelor's degree in psychology with a minor in sociology from Ryerson University, looked at how dating apps can internalize and propagate racial biases among users.

“There are many – especially young – users, including vulnerable members of marginalized communities, who are being ranked by the people who are swiping on them,” Allen says. “If racialized users are being swiped on less, they are ranked lower, and they're being seen by fewer people.”

The Future of Law Lab team that worked on the gamification report (photo by Nina Haikara)

To better understand how the apps worked, Allen downloaded a dating app, made a profile and refused potential matches.

“I kept track of the kind of push notifications I was receiving: ‘You would have more matches if you did this on the app.’ ‘You should buy a boost; more people will be able to see you.’”

Allen says people who don't know how the algorithm works are being induced to engage in a particular behavior, which can have unexpected legal consequences.

“The coercive element comes in when users are being told to use the app more. If no one is seeing them, then they must pay to increase their visibility and it’s only temporary,” Allen says. “So, you keep paying to get equal access to the same service that others can access for free.”

The potential for legal injury will only grow as dating apps become more popular, Allen says.

Fellow first-year law student Samir Reynolds, for his part, studied the design techniques of ride-sharing apps.

“There’s been a lot of press coverage about whether drivers are employees, independent contractors or another classification,” says Reynolds, who has a bachelor's degree in knowledge integration, math and political science from the University of Waterloo. “However, these apps can nudge drivers to work at specific places over specific times. If we think of them as effectively telling their drivers to do that, then the drivers start to look more like employees rather than independent contractors.”

Reynolds adds that, although consumers see prices surge when drivers are in high demand, that doesn't mean the drivers are paid more during peak hours.

“These apps also tend to set artificial goals. Someone will be driving and after a ride is done, they will receive a notification they’re only $6 away from making $80 on their shift. But then after you make that, it will switch to only $7 away from $90.”

Reynolds came to U of T Law after working in the technology sector for two years.

“One of the defining problems of this generation of lawyers is going to be figuring out how law and policy, both from the court and from policy-makers, can evolve and adapt with technology, which is inherently going to advance faster than the law,” he says.

The Future of Law Lab was established in 2020 – thanks to a gift by Hal Jackman, a former U of T chancellor and lieutenant-governor of Ontario – as a co-curricular program to bring together students, academics, lawyers and other professionals to explore the intersection of law, innovation and technology.

"The Future of Law Lab provides students with an opportunity to learn about legal problems from a holistic perspective. Law does not exist in a vacuum and, in our context, legal problems are often business problems,” says lab director Joshua Morrison, a lawyer and graduate of the faculty’s global professional master of laws program with a concentration in innovation, law and technology.

“We ask our students to consider the strategic, operational, marketing, privacy and technology aspects of a particular situation. We’re encouraging them to be innovative and solutions-oriented, while encouraging collaboration among professionals of different disciplines.”

The researchers say a digital choice environment that leads people to situations where there are risks of harm should be treated the same way as a business that creates a physical choice environment that leads to the same consequences.

“Law is always trying to catch up to innovation,” Sarro says. “One of the ways it keeps up is by staying flexible. And we can leverage that flexibility to respond to many of the challenges posed by gamification.”

“If you're using gamification to influence people to work where you want them to work, and for how long, law can say that’s a form of control, and so we factor it in when assessing whether these workers ought to be deemed employees. If you're a business that profits from guiding people to engage in behaviour that creates risks of harm to themselves or others, law can impose a duty to mitigate those risks,” Sarro says.

“Anti-discrimination law has a flexible set of principles that can be used to encourage apps to reflect on the effects design choices have on different groups of people and whether those design choices are helping to mitigate risks of discrimination or are amplifying those risks.”

Allen sees the research project with the Future of Law Lab as good training for a career in technology law following graduation.

“The Future of Law Lab is the best place to set myself up for success,” she says.

Jackman Law Building officially opens

lavende4 — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 14:18:02 +0000

Jackman Law Building officially opens

lavende4 Mon, 10/03/2016 - 10:18

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Campaign Co-Chair Tom Rahilly, Chancellor Michael Wilson, Hal Jackman, Dean Ed Iacobucci, Governing Council Chair Shirley Hoy, Chrystia Freeland, President Meric Gertler, Arif Virani, student gonfalonier Christina Liao (Lisa Sakulensky photo)

Peter Boisseau

Author legacy

Peter Boisseau

Topic

Subheadline

“This is the place where the young people who will lead the practice of law and justice in our country will come”: Hal Jackman

As he spoke at the official opening of the University of Toronto’s Jackman Law Building on Sept. 29, the Hon. Hal Jackman looked towards the future as he reminisced about the past.

“It makes me very proud and somewhat humble that this is the place where the young people who will lead the practice of law and justice in our country will come,” Jackman, namesake and chief benefactor of the university’s new home for the Faculty of Law, told the audience.

He reminded them he graduated from U of T Law in 1956, less than a decade after the school opened.

“That was 60 years ago, which makes me a bit of a relic,” quipped Jackman, an icon of public service and philanthropy, who served as Lieutenant Governor of Ontario from 1991 to 1997, and has donated millions of dollars to the university and served as U of T chancellor.

Looking around the Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP Atrium, Jackman noted how well the new building ties together the main elements of the old law school – including the historic Flavelle House and the Bora Laskin Law Library, both of which have also undergone major refurbishments as part of the construction project.

“What I really appreciate is the preservation of Flavelle,” agreed law school alumnus Justice Russell Brown, of the Supreme Court of Canada. “It’s new without compromising the old.”

That nod to the past is important, said Brown’s Supreme Court colleague and fellow alumnus Justice Michael Moldaver.

“The new building is absolutely magnificent, but I still recognize a place that has wonderful memories of a great university and school I was lucky to have been a part of,” Moldaver said.

U of T President Meric Gertler has described the Jackman Law Building as an essential new piece of the university “powerhouse” for driving a “just, inclusive and prosperous society.”

Located only a stone’s throw away from Queen’s Park and the Ontario legislature, the building’s award-winning architectural design symbolizes much more than prestigious new office space and classrooms for law students and faculty.

“For too long, our Faculty of Law has operated in a physical environment that did not fully reflect its excellence and stature as one of the world’s best law schools,” Gertler said.

“The Jackman Law Building provides a cutting-edge environment designed to support the excellence of the faculty, staff and students who work and study here.”

Gertler noted the building will enable the school to “keep building on its accomplishments and realize its ambitions,” even as it stands as a testament to the alumni and friends who made it possible.

Faculty of Law Dean Ed Iacobucci noted the room was full of those benefactors.

With Jackman as the catalyst, more than 600 alumni contributed more than three-quarters of the $34.5 million raised for the project.

Iacobucci underscored the importance of having a modern facility to attract the next generation of faculty and students.

“The Jackman Law Building is four stories of beautiful spaces that will change our community for the better for generations,” he said, “and we’re eager to see what the future brings.”

Watching from the audience, second-year law student Aaron Haight recalled that a short time ago, as he pondered his choice of universities, he was debating with peers who dismissed U of T’s law school because of its lack of new facilities.

“I think the way they designed this building, the way it catches your eye as you’re driving along Queen’s Park, and having classrooms and meeting spaces where you can collaborate, really brings the school together and gives us a sense of cohesiveness.”

Haight joked that he’d already spent a lot of time in the spectacularly bright, glass-walled Torys Hall reading room, another touchstone of the past intersecting with the future.

Others marvelled at how quickly the building had gone from the drawing board to reality.

“I can remember being on the alumni committee when this building was really just a pipe dream,” said Arif Virani, alumnus and Liberal MP for Parkdale-High Park. “It’s amazing to see it come to fruition.”

International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland told the audience Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had planned to attend the ceremonies before being called away for the funeral of former Israeli prime minister and president Shimon Peres.

Trudeau wanted to honour “how important this law school was to his father,” former Canadian prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who spoke at the opening of the library in the early 1990s, Freeland noted. It was the elder Trudeau who appointed alumnus Bora Laskin to the Supreme Court as well.

Freeland later tweeted how impressed she was with a presentation she heard prior to the ceremonies from Benjamin Alarie, the Osler Chair in Business Law, and CEO of Blue J Legal, a company that uses artificial intelligence technology to help lawyers predict how their cases will be addressed by the courts. Faculty co-founders include Professor Anthony Niblett and Professor Albert Yoon.

The leading-edge company is already one of the largest employers of U of T law students on campus, said Alarie.

The modern facilities at the new law school are a perfect setting for that work, he said. “We are inventing the future here, and it’s pretty exciting.”

Former faculty member and alumnus John Laskin said the new multipurpose building and its access to technology are exactly what modern law students need. “I’m envious of the first-year students who will be going here,” he laughed.

Those sentiments were shared by law school alumnus and former Ontario premier Bob Rae.

“You’ve got to have great teachers and great students who are eager to learn, but if you have wonderful facilities, that makes it all the better.”

U of T Chancellor Michael Wilson noted that there are many ways to measure the excellence of a university, including the accomplishments of its alumni and “the presence of a great law school.”

The school’s alumni include a former prime minister, six Supreme Court justices, champions of equality and justice along with innovators and entrepreneurs, he said.

“The Jackman Law Building will ensure this tradition of national and global leadership continues will into the future.”

(Building photos courtesy of B+H Architects)