Situational susceptibility
Fatigue, time pressure, grief, distress, urgency or dependency may temporarily reduce the space for reflection.
Concept product · Assessment design 0.1
MOMENT · Vulnerability Event Assessment
Do not label the person.
Test the moment.
MOMENT tests whether a consumer's circumstances, the system's knowledge and the surrounding choice architecture combine to create an exploitable vulnerability event.
The operational questionWhat did the system know, how did it adapt and did that adaptation turn a human limit into commercial advantage?
Find the moment. Test the adaptation. Protect the choice.
MOMENTVulnerability event
PersonAttention · emotionResources · confidence · fatigue
SystemProfiling · timingFriction · ranking · inference
ContextUrgency · pressureStakes · scarcity · social cues
Vulnerability event
Do not label the personTest the moment
Vulnerability is relational.
Influence is not the enemy.
Adaptation changes the stakes.
Exploitation crosses the line.
The problem
The same person may face a different risk in a different moment.
Vulnerability assessments often rely on fixed categories or universal claims. A closed list can miss situational susceptibility. A universal label can make the concept too broad to distinguish ordinary persuasion from unfair exploitation.
A capable consumer may make an ordinary purchase without difficulty during the day. The same consumer may act differently late at night while tired, distressed or under financial pressure, particularly where a system has learned when urgency, friction or social pressure will work best.
The question is not whether the user is weak. It is whether the system makes weakness profitable.
System knowledge
Interaction history, payment signals, timing, previous refusals and propensity scores may reveal or predict the moment.
Adaptive choice architecture
The service may alter timing, ranking, prompts, price, friction, disclosure or support in response.
Profit and risk allocation
The trader may capture the benefit while the consumer bears the financial, psychological or practical downside.
What it is · what it is not
A person-system-context assessment.
MOMENT is
A scenario-based assessment of vulnerability events.
- It records the consumer decision, stakes and surrounding context.
- It distinguishes what the system knows or infers from how the service adapts.
- It constructs a counterfactual and tests agency, reversibility, contestability and allocation of benefit and risk.
- It separates ordinary influence, heightened sensitivity, vulnerability and exploitative adaptation.
MOMENT is not
A diagnosis, vulnerability score or targeting engine.
- It does not identify consumers who may convert more easily.
- It does not perform emotion recognition or psychological profiling.
- It does not declare that every child, older person or financially distressed person lacks agency.
- It does not replace child-rights, equality, accessibility, safety, data-protection or professional legal assessment.
The method disciplines the environment without pathologising the person.
How it works
Seven steps from decision context to safeguard plan.
Define the decision and stakes
Identify the consumer choice, possible consequences, product objective and practical reversibility of the outcome.
Describe person-side conditions
Record relevant scenario factors without diagnosis: fatigue, distress, time pressure, financial stress, dependency, overload, social pressure or developmental stage.
Record system-side knowledge
Identify what the system actually knows or predicts from timing, history, account status, payment signals, previous refusals, engagement or support interactions.
Map the adaptation
Explain how the service changes timing, ranking, price, offer, prompt frequency, disclosure, default, reward, friction, support or reversal.
Construct the counterfactual
Compare the actual or proposed experience with a non-personalised, protective or autonomy-preserving alternative.
Test agency and allocation
Ask whether the consumer can understand, pause, refuse, reverse and contest the intervention, and who captures the benefit or bears the risk.
Select safeguards and triggers
Record prohibited adaptations, protective defaults, cooling-off measures, monitoring metrics, responsible owners and events that require reassessment.
Outcomes
Five positions on the influence-to-exploitation continuum.
MOMENT does not assume that all influence is harmful. It identifies where the evidence places the assessed scenario.
Ordinary influence
The system informs or persuades without materially exploiting the scenario.
Heightened sensitivity
The context warrants additional safeguards, although the current design does not establish exploitation.
Vulnerability event
Person, system and context create a foreseeable reduction in autonomous choice.
Exploitative adaptation
The system uses known or inferred susceptibility to increase conversion, spending, engagement, disclosure or rights abandonment.
Do not deploy
The design creates an unacceptable risk that focused controls cannot resolve.
Worked example
Late-night failure signals trigger a time-limited purchase offer.
M
Fictional mobile gameRepeated failure, late-night play and immediate monetisation
Exploitative adaptation
The service identifies repeated unsuccessful attempts, recent purchase failures and sustained play after midnight. It then increases the prominence of a time-limited virtual-item offer and shortens the interval before the next prompt.
Illustrative conclusion. The adaptation aligns predicted susceptibility with an immediate monetisation opportunity. The service provides no spending pause, cooling-off control, protective default or meaningful reversal route.
- System knowledge includes time, failure and purchase signals.
- Adaptation increases urgency and prompt salience.
- Commercial benefit is immediate; consumer risk is externalised.
- Protective counterfactual would delay the offer and introduce a pause.
Outputs
A record of what the system knew, changed and gained.
Person-System-Context Map
The three elements of the scenario and the relationship that may produce reduced autonomous choice.
Vulnerability Event Chain
The sequence from condition and system knowledge through adaptation to consumer consequence.
Knowledge and Adaptation Register
What the system actually knows or predicts and how each signal changes the experience.
Counterfactual Comparison
The actual design compared with a non-personalised or autonomy-preserving alternative.
Benefit and Risk Allocation
Who gains, who bears the downside and whether the consumer can understand, refuse, reverse or contest.
Safeguard and Deployment Decision
Controls, prohibited adaptations, monitoring, owners, review triggers and the reasoned outcome.
Users
For products that know when a consumer may be easier to influence.
Technical details
A local scenario engine, not a consumer-scoring system.
InterfaceThree-part scenario builder
Person, system and context appear in separate but linked panels with a visual event chain.
ScenariosSynthetic by default
Teams assess invented or cohort-level cases without uploading real vulnerability data.
ComparisonCounterfactual engine
The application compares the proposed experience with protective, non-personalised and user-controlled alternatives.
LogicDeterministic factors
Knowledge, adaptation, agency, allocation, reversibility and evidence govern the provisional route.
ProfilesSector scenario packs
Initial packs may cover late-night retail, financial distress, gaming failure, teenage social validation and essential-service dependency.
RecordsLocal save, JSON and PDF
Projects remain in the browser unless exported, with methodology and scenario-pack version identifiers.
Anti-misuse boundary. The licence will prohibit use of MOMENT to improve conversion targeting or identify consumers who are easier to exploit. A technical product cannot eliminate misuse by itself, so purpose restrictions, method design and report language must reinforce the boundary.
Pricing model
Accessible scenario testing with a specialist methodology.
Free
Three fictional scenarios showing different vulnerability events.
- Editable person-system-context map
- Watermarked sample report
- No real consumer information
£495 + VAT
One product or service, one use case and up to six scenarios.
- Counterfactual comparisons
- Local save and evidence attachments
- Full PDF and JSON export
- 120-day completion period
£9,500 per year + VAT
Repeated internal use by one named legal entity.
- Unlimited internal assessments and users
- Core sector and scenario packs
- Method and legal-rule updates
- Version comparison and priority support
Proposed pricing, not a live online offer. Bespoke scenario packs and professional review remain separate services.
Why now
Digital fairness increasingly turns on what the system infers and how it adapts.
MOMENT gives organisations a disciplined way to examine the middle ground between ordinary influence and high-threshold prohibited manipulation.
Manipulation and vulnerability
The AI Act prohibits certain manipulative, deceptive and exploitative practices where the cumulative statutory conditions, including material distortion and significant harm, are met.
Read the official regulationChildren and unfair personalisation
The Commission's current policy direction includes addictive design, unfair personalisation and stronger protection for children and other consumers in vulnerable circumstances.
Read the Commission overviewInfluence is not the enemy
MOMENT does not treat every recommendation or nudge as exploitative. It asks what the system knew, how it adapted, whether agency survived and how benefit and risk were allocated.
Read the shared methodFAQs
Common questions about MOMENT.
The full suite FAQ and legal boundary appear on separate pages.
Open all suite FAQs →Does MOMENT decide whether a person is vulnerable?
No. It assesses a defined interaction among person-side conditions, system knowledge and context. The output concerns the scenario and architecture, not a permanent label attached to the individual.
Can useful personalisation pass the assessment?
Yes. Personalisation may improve accessibility, reduce search costs or provide protective support. The issue is whether the system uses asymmetry, opacity or inferred susceptibility to impair autonomous choice.
Does MOMENT require sensitive personal data?
No. The default method uses synthetic or cohort-level scenarios. Organisations should not upload real vulnerability data unless they have a separate lawful, necessary and secure basis for doing so.
Can the outcome prove an AI Act prohibition?
No. MOMENT may organise evidence relevant to manipulation, vulnerability and harm, but the statutory prohibition contains cumulative legal thresholds and requires case-specific legal assessment.
MOMENT
Do not pathologise the user. Discipline the environment.
Register interest in the fictional demonstration, a controlled pilot or an organisation licence.