People & Planet Before Profit
Ethics are at the heart of everything Complexical is and does.
Human wellbeing, and the future of our planet, make principles more important than profit. We will never compromise on these principles to make a few extra sales.
Explainable, Non-Exploitative Research
We don’t like AI black boxes that silently absorb and regurgitate human biases. Although we use cutting edge techniques where appropriate, everything we do needs to be easily explained to a non-technical reader.
When we involve people as participants in our research, we ensure that consent is fully informed. We only collect participant data in order to benefit the people involved in our research, and their wider communities. We don’t collect data we don’t need, and we store all participant records securely and anonymously.
Because we know that data breaches are an inevitable part of online life (no matter how much effort is put into cyber security), we never store personally identifiable information about our research particpants.
Inclusion & Accessibility
We believe it’s important to go beyond the basic legal requirements, to provide an environment and experience that welcomes everyone, and to put inclusion at the heart of all we do.
We will aim to provide all our materials and services in a range of accessible formats. (This site is currently under construction, but audio recordings will be made available once the content is finalised.)
We will look to continuously improve our practices over time, keeping up to date with the latest best practice and contributing the findings of our own research. We will welcome and invite suggestions from everyone.
Sustainability
Being on the internet uses a lot of energy. Complexical.com is hosted by Kualo, a UK-based green hosting platform which is powered by 100% renewable energy and uses dedicated energy-efficient data centres. We have committed to planting additional trees via Ecologi.
No trackers, minimal advertising
We will not allow any tracking cookies or third-party advertising services on this site. This means we’re not going to add any social sharing buttons/widgets, as these tend to come with a myriad of hidden trackers. We realise this is likely to hurt our bottom line, but see point 1: principles are more important than profits.
We run regular audits using Blacklight to ensure nothing has sneaked past. Please feel free to check for yourself (this handy tool will also allow you to check any other websites you use, for free).
We have to use some third-party services to deliver some of our services. Unfortunately, we have less control over whether these services use trackers, although we have selected privacy-first providers wherever possible (e.g. using SendStack for our email newsletters, instead of popular providers such as Mailchimp that insist on converting all links to trackers).
We will never permit third-party ad services which may promote products we haven’t approved or aren’t familiar with. The only time we will allow ads is when we recommend a product or service we’re genuinely using ourselves. If we’re able to make a commission on legitimate recommendations, this can help us to fund the site and keep our research independent. We will make these clear, and you will always have the option to click through without using a referral code if you prefer for your privacy.