On Friday 30 January 2026, the INNOVADE consortium met with its Ethical Advisory Board (EAB) to collect high-level feedback on the project’s ethical direction and on a set of design choices that can shape how citizens experience digital participation. The members of the EAB, Dr. Emmanuel Goffi (AI Philosopher and Ethics Researcher) and Dr. Hubert Etienne (CEO of Quintessence AI and Adjunct Professor in AI ethics), were addressed with a question that many civic-tech initiatives face: when we talk about gamification – badges, ribbons, points, rewards – are we talking about harmless engagement, or are we sliding toward social scoring?
The interesting part is not only what these mechanisms do, but what they mean in the public imagination. “Gamification” tends to sound benign. It suggests learning curves, progress, and a personal sense of achievement. “Social scoring”, by contrast, immediately evokes ranking people, assigning reputational value, and turning behavioural data into consequences. In democratic settings, that change in perception is ethically loaded, because participation should not become a proxy for “civic worth”, nor a pathway to discrimination, exclusion, or pressure.
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During the meeting, Dr. Goffi framed the issue as inherently “tricky”. His point was not that all incentives are unethical, but that democracies can criticise social scoring in principle and then reproduce similar dynamics through “goodies” and rewards. In his view, scoring systems are “two-faced” - even if launched with the intention to reward positive contributions, control over the tool may shift over time. He highlighted the concrete governance risk that if such a mechanism ends up in the hands of public authorities or other powerful actors, there is no guarantee it will not be repurposed to punish, restrict, or stigmatise. For that reason, his personal and explicitly cautious recommendation leaned toward the safest route of avoiding scoring altogether where possible.
Dr. Etienne offered a more conditional stance. He was clear that he is not against scoring “per se”, but he shared the concern about where the tool could end up and what it might enable. For him, ethical acceptability hinges on strict safeguards. This means that participation must remain voluntary, and scoring must have no impact on people’s lives. Users should be able to leave, delete the app, or erase their account without consequences. He also pushed the consortium asking a basic but often overlooked question: what is the purpose of scoring and what behaviour is it really optimising?
From these two perspectives, it is clear that gamification does not automatically become social scoring, but design choices can move it closer – or keep it safely distant.
In the context of digital democracy platforms communities with user interactions, if rewards and ribbons are kept private inside the user profile, they primarily function as self-directed progress signals. This reduces social comparison and avoids creating visible hierarchies between participants. Ethically, it is easier to justify because it nudges learning and continuity without turning community space into a reputation marketplace.
If rewards take the form of coupons or vouchers linked to public services (transport, museums), anonymity can sometimes be preserved once the voucher is issued. Yet anonymity alone does not resolve the ethical question. The risk shifts to the quality of participation, i.e., material incentives can attract users who engage mainly to obtain benefits, not to deliberate, understand issues, or contribute meaningfully. Over time, this can distort participation dynamics and weaken trust in outcomes, even if no one is publicly “ranked”.
Finally, visible badges in forums introduce a subtler but very real social effect: unequal trust. A “community ribbon” may cause users to defer to those with status markers and discount others, especially newcomers. Even when badges are awarded for genuine contributions, visibility can foster perceived tiers of legitimacy. If some users are “tagged” and others are not, the community may read that difference as an endorsement of certain voices – creating distrust, resentment, or self-censorship. This is not “social scoring” in the strict sense, but it can resemble it in everyday experience.
What matters, in short, is not the vocabulary we choose – gamification or social scoring – but whether the mechanism creates hierarchy, pressure, or consequences, and whether governance safeguards prevent future drift.
Article written by Luca Ceselli, ICTLC
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