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What's a respectful app?

October 2, 2025

I often describe FairScan as simple and respectful. But what does "respectful" really mean when we talk about apps? We live in a world where there’s an app for everything, and we’re constantly pushed to install more. Yet almost no one talks about "respectful apps". A quick search online gives barely a few hundred results. In other words: it’s not even a topic. So let me explain what I mean when I use that word.

Disrespectful behaviors in mobile apps

Before working on FairScan, I tried quite a few Android apps for scanning documents. And all of them exhibited behaviors that I certainly don't want.

Some of those behaviors are intended to be very visible: ads of all kinds, but also messages to upgrade to a premium version of the app. In some apps, such messages take up the whole screen.

Some others are hidden, almost invisible to users. Trackers are the best example: most users don't know about them, but some apps have dozens of trackers, and they collect massive amounts of data about us and send it to data brokers and Big Tech.

Most often, it's in between. For example when the app notifies you in small characters that all your scans are stored in their cloud: you have no choice but to give them your private data. Or when the app stops working after you scanned 3 documents unless you buy the paid version. Welcome to the world of dark patterns.

As a user, I would expect my apps to not have those behaviors. Or, at least, to be able to disable them. When we talk about relations between humans, we have words for that: manipulation, concealment, unfair pressure... All are considered disrespectful. Why would it be different with an app? What would make it more acceptable?

Whose interest is it about?

If those behaviors are against the interest of users, why do they exist? That's because they serve the interest of someone else: the app's publisher, sometimes referred to as "developer" but the people who develop an application write code that their employer asks for.

Who develops and publishes applications? It can be individual developers or various kinds of organizations or public institutions. But the most well-known applications are developed by companies, small or big. And we get to know those applications because the companies that produce them have marketing budgets to serve their business goals.

In the end, the way an app behaves reflects a conflict: the user wants an app that does a given task without hassle, while the company producing the app just wants profit. Most companies that distribute a "free" app do it to make money through ads or to lure users into buying a premium version. Big tech companies, on the other hand, are more interested in getting user data ("If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product"). It doesn't make a big difference in the end: those disrespectful behaviors exist only to serve the business goals of those companies.

How can we know? What can we do?

What can we do about that as users? The first thing is to think twice before installing an app, maybe we don't really need an app for everything in our lives. You can:

The fact that an application is open source doesn't make it automatically respectful but it's probably the best guarantee you can get: if it contains disrespectful code, someone can remove that code and republish the application.

You may also consider paid apps: it gives the company a clear way to get money from the app, although it certainly doesn’t guarantee respectful behavior.

To sum up, a respectful app is one that puts the user’s interest first, without tricks or hidden agendas. I wish we saw as much creativity in building those apps as we see in inventing new dark patterns. I hope FairScan can be an example of an app that does its job well and respects its users.