What is it about?
This paper identifies three central debates in internet services. These are the main frameworks within which ethical discussions of internet services occur. The first is the question of whether it is it essential that personal privacy be reduced in order to deliver personalised services. I evaluate the main arguments that it is necessary to reduce privacy. I then show and alternative which demonstrates it is not - Langheinrich’s Principles of Privacy-Aware Ubiquitous Systems. This offers a design strategy which maintains functionality while embedding privacy protection. The second debate is concerned with the degree to which people who design or operate services are ethically responsible for the consequences of the actions of those systems, sometimes known as the “responsibility gap.” I briefly review two papers which argue that no one is ethically responsible for such software, then contrast them with two papers which make strong arguments for responsibility. I show how claims for no responsibility rest on very narrow definitions of "responsibility" combined with questionable understanding of the technology itself. The current shape of internet services is dominated by a tension between open and closed systems. I show how this is reflected in architecture, standards and organizational models. I then examine alternatives to the current state of affairs, including recent developments in support of alternative business models at government level, such as the House of Lords call for the Internet to be treated as a public utility (The Select Committee on Digital Skills, 2015).
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Why is it important?
Many ethical issues in the internet are central to the future of society, such as privacy, or who gets to own the systems we have come to depend on. Those supporting aspects which have negative effects often use spurious arguments, such as the technology cannot operate any other way. This paper shows that these arguments are countered by evidence and that there is plenty of technology which could be used without negative effects. In effect, bad actors on the internet are using "there's no alternative, it has to be this way" as an excuse. This paper shows the faulty logic in their thinking, and that there are technically viable alternatives.
Perspectives
This paper is designed to avoid academic or technical language, and make its points available to anyone of any background. I hope readers from all backgrounds will find this accessible and valuable. It frustrates me to see ethical debates about the internet, especially social media, fail because people are tricked by shoddy thinking. Efforts to make the internet more ethical are often confounded by a lack of knowledge of alternative ways of doing things. For every way of doing something with a computer, there are always alternative ways of achieving the same result. In many cases, people let them get away with unethical activities simply because they don't know what the alternative would be. This paper tears down the faulty logic, and shows viable alternatives.
Brandt Dainow
National University of Ireland Maynooth
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Key dialectics in cloud services, ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, January 2016, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/2874239.2874247.
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