Internet Ethics

An increasingly popular solution to the anti-scientific climate rising on social media platforms has been the appeal to more critical thinking from the user's side. In this paper, we zoom in on the ideal of critical thinking and unpack it in order to see, specifically, whether it can provide enough epistemic agency so that users endowed with it can break free from enclosed communities on social media (so called epistemic bubbles). We criticise some assumptions embedded in the ideal of critical (...) thinking online and, instead, we propose that a better way to understand the virtuous behaviour at hand is as critical engagement, namely a mutual cultivation of critical skills among the members of an epistemic bubble. This mutual cultivation allows members within an epistemic bubble (in contrast, as we will show, with the authority-based models of epistemic echo chambers) to become more autonomous critical thinkers by cultivating self-trust. We use the model of relational autonomy as well as resources from work on epistemic self-trust and epistemic interdependence to develop an explanatory framework, which in turn may ground rules for identifying and creating virtuous epistemic bubbles within the environments of social media platforms. (shrink)

Knowledge is power. Knowledge about human psychology is increasingly being produced using natural language processing (NLP) and related techniques. The power that accompanies and harnesses this knowledge should be subject to ethical controls and oversight. In this chapter, we address the ethical pitfalls that are likely to be encountered in the context of such research. These pitfalls occur at various stages of the NLP pipeline, including data acquisition, enrichment, analysis, storage, and sharing. We also address secondary uses of the results (...) and tools developed through psychometric NLP, such as profit-driven targeted advertising, political campaigns, and domestic and international psyops. Along the way, we reflect on potential ethical guidelines and considerations that may help researchers navigate these pitfalls. (shrink)

Advances in AI are powering increasingly precise and widespread computational propaganda, posing serious threats to national security. The military and intelligence communities are starting to discuss ways to engage in this space, but the path forward is still unclear. These developments raise pressing ethical questions, about which existing ethics frameworks are silent. Understanding these challenges through the lens of “cognitive security,” we argue, offers a promising approach.

Deepfakes are algorithmically modified video and audio recordings that project one person’s appearance on to that of another, creating an apparent recording of an event that never took place. Many scholars and journalists have begun attending to the political risks of deepfake deception. Here we investigate other ways in which deepfakes have the potential to cause deeper harms than have been appreciated. First, we consider a form of objectification, virtual domination, that occurs when deepfaked ‘frankenporn’ digitally fuses the parts of (...) different women to create pliable characters incapable of giving consent to their depiction. Next, we develop the idea of illocutionary harm, in which an individual is forced to engage in speech acts they would prefer to avoid in order to deny or correct the misleading evidence of a publicized deepfake. Finally, we consider the risk that deepfakes may facilitate campaigns of panoptic gaslighting, where a myriad of systematically altered recordings of a single person's life undermine their memory, eroding their sense of self and ability to engage with others. Taken together, these harms illustrate the roles that social epistemology and technological vulnerabilities play in human ethical life. (shrink)

Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical identity theory requires modification when theorising about presentations of self on social media. This chapter contributes to these efforts, refining a conception of digital identities by differentiating them from ‘corporatised identities’. Armed with this new distinction, I ultimately argue that social media platforms’ production of corporatised identities undermines their users’ autonomy and digital well-being. This follows from the disentanglement of several commonly conflated concepts. Firstly, I distinguish two kinds of presentation of self that I collectively refer to (...) as ‘expressions of digital identity’. These digital performances (boyd 2007) and digital artefacts (Hogan 2010) are distinct, but often confused. Secondly, I contend this confusion results in the subsequent conflation of corporatised identities – poor approximations of actual digital identities, inferred and extrapolated by algorithms from individuals’ expressions of digital identity – with digital identities proper. Finally, and to demonstrate the normative implications of these clarifications, I utilise MacKenzie’s (2014, 2019) interpretation of relational autonomy to propose that designing social media sites around the production of corporatised identities, at the expense of encouraging genuine performances of digital identities, has undermined multiple dimensions of this vital liberal value. In particular, the pluralistic range of authentic preferences that should structure flourishing human lives are being flattened and replaced by commercial, consumerist preferences. For these reasons, amongst others, I contend that digital identities should once again come to drive individuals’ actions on social media sites. Only upon doing so can individuals’ autonomy, and control over their digital identities, be rendered compatible with social media. (shrink)

Children continue to be overlooked as a topic of concern in discussions around the ethical use of people’s data and information. Where children are the subject of such discussions, the focus is often primarily on privacy concerns and consent relating to the use of their data. This paper highlights the unique challenges children face when it comes to online interferences with their decision-making, primarily due to their vulnerability, impressionability, the increased likelihood of disclosing personal information online, and their developmental capacities. (...) These traits allow for practices such as hypernudging to be executed on them more accurately and with more serious consequences, specifically by potentially undermining their autonomy. We argue that children are autonomous agents in the making and thus require additional special protections to ensure that the development of their autonomy is safeguarded. This means that measures should be taken to prohibit most forms of hypernudging children and thus ensure that they are protected from this powerful technique of digital manipulation. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine how the availability of massive quantities of data i.e., the “Big Data” phenomenon, contributes to the creation, spread, and harms of online misinformation. Specifically, we argue that a factor in the problem of online misinformation is the evolved human instinct to recognize patterns. While the pattern-recognition instinct is a crucial evolutionary adaptation, we argue that in the age of Big Data, these capacities have, unfortunately, rendered us vulnerable. Given the ways in which online media outlets (...) profit from the spread of misinformation by preying on this pattern-finding instinct, we conceptualize the problem that we identify as a morally objectionable form of “epistemic exploitation.” As we argue, the consumer of digital misinformation is often exploited by having her pattern-recognition instinct used against her. This exploitation is morally objectionable because it deprives her of an epistemic good to which she has a right. This epistemic good is the integrity of the pattern-recognition instinct itself which, we argue, is a capacity that allows us to participate in uniquely human goods. While our primary goal is to bring attention to this form of epistemic exploitation, we conclude by briefly evaluating some general solutions to the growing problem of online misinformation. (shrink)

Augmented reality (AR) technologies function to ‘augment’ normal perception by superimposing virtual objects onto an agent’s visual field. The philosophy of augmented reality is a small but growing subfield within the philosophy of technology. Existing work in this subfield includes research on the phenomenology of augmented experiences, the metaphysics of virtual objects, and different ethical issues associated with AR systems, including (but not limited to) issues of privacy, property rights, ownership, trust, and informed consent. This paper addresses some epistemological issues (...) posed by AR systems. I focus on a near-future version of AR technology called the Real-World Web, which promises to radically transform the nature of our relationship to digital information by mixing the virtual with the physical. I argue that the Real-World Web (RWW) threatens to exacerbate three existing epistemic problems in the digital age: the problem of digital distraction, the problem of digital deception, and the problem of digital divergence. The RWW is poised to present new versions of these problems in the form of what I call the augmented attention economy, augmented skepticism, and the problem of other augmented minds. The paper draws on a range of empirical research on AR and offers a phenomenological analysis of virtual objects as perceptual affordances to help ground and guide the speculative nature of the discussion. It also considers a few policy-based and designed-based proposals to mitigate the epistemic threats posed by AR technology. (shrink)

Most online platforms are becoming increasingly algorithmically personalized. The question is if these practices are simply satisfying users preferences or if something is lost in this process. This article focuses on how to reconcile the personalization with the importance of being able to share cultural objects - including fiction – with others. In analyzing two concrete personalization examples from the streaming giant Netflix, several tendencies are observed. One is to isolate users and sometimes entirely eliminate shared world aspects. Another tendency (...) is to blur the boundary between shared cultural objects and personalized content, which can be misleading and disorienting. A further tendency is for personalization algorithms to be optimized to deceptively prey on desires for content that mirrors one’s own lived experience. Some specific - often minority targeting -“clickbait” practices received public blowback. These practices show disregard both for honest labeling and for our desires to have access and representation in a shared world. The article concludes that personalization tendencies are moving towards increasingly isolating and disorienting interfaces, but that platforms could be redesigned to support better social world orientation. (shrink)

In this article I investigate online misinformation from a media philosophy perspective. I, thus move away from the debate focused on the semantic content, concerned with what is true or not about misinformation. I argue rather that online misinformation is the effect of an informational climate promoted by user micro-behaviours such as liking, sharing, and posting. Misinformation online is explained as the effect of an informational environment saturated with and shaped by techno-images in which most users act automatically under the (...) constant assault of stirred emotions, a state resembling what media philosopher Vilém Flusser has called techno-magical consciousness. I describe three ways in which images function on social media to induce this distinctive, uncritical mode of consciousness, and complement Flusser’s explanation with insights from the phenomenology of emotions. (shrink)

This paper analyses the communicative and epistemic value of retweeting (and more generally of reposting content on social media). Against a naïve view, it argues that retweets are not acts of endorsement, motivating this diagnosis with linguistic data. Retweeting is instead modelled as a peculiar form of quotation, in which the reported content is indicated rather than reproduced. A relevance-theoretic account of the communicative import of retweeting is then developed, to spell out the complex mechanisms by which retweets achieve their (...) communicative goals. The last section outlines the epistemic threats posed by the increasing prevalence of retweeting on social media, linking them to the low reputational, cognitive and practical costs linked to this emerging form of communication. (shrink)

Since at least 2016, many have worried that social media enables authoritarians to meddle in democratic politics. The concern is that trolls and bots amplify deceptive content. In this chapter I argue that these tactics have a more insidious anti-democratic purpose. Lies implanted in democratic discourse by authoritarians are often intended to be caught. Their primary goal is not to successfully deceive, but rather to undermine the democratic value of testimony. In well-functioning democracies, our mutual reliance on testimony also generates (...) a distinctively democratic value: decentralized testimonial networks evade control by the state or powerful actors. The deliberate exposure of deception in democratic testimonial networks undermines this value by implicating citizens in their own epistemic corruption, weakening the resilience of democratic society against authoritarian pressure. In this chapter I illustrate that danger through a close reading of recent Russian social media interference operations, showing both their epistemic underpinnings and their ongoing political threat. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: So far in this book, we have examined algorithmic decision systems from three autonomy-based perspectives: in terms of what we owe autonomous agents (chapters 3 and 4), in terms of the conditions required for people to act autonomously (chapters 5 and 6), and in terms of the responsibilities of agents (chapter 7). -/- In this chapter we turn to the ways in which autonomy underwrites democratic governance. Political authority, which is to say the ability of a government to exercise (...) power, may be justifiable or not. Whether it is justified and how it can come to be justified is a question of political legitimacy. Political legitimacy is another way in which autonomy and responsibility are linked. This relationship is the basis of the current chapter, and it is important in understanding the moral salience of algorithmic systems. We will draw the connection as follows. We begin, in section 8.1, by describing two uses of technology: crime predicting technology used to drive policing practices and social media technology used to influence elections (including by Cambridge Analytica and by the Internet Research Agency). In section 8.2 we consider several views of legitimacy and argue for a hybrid version of normative legitimacy based on one recently offered by Fabienne Peter. In section 8.3 we will explain that the connection between political legitimacy and autonomy is that legitimacy is grounded in legitimating processes, which are in turn based on autonomy. Algorithmic systems—among them PredPol and the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook-Internet Research Agency amalgam—can hinder that legitimation process and conflict with democratic legitimacy, as we argue in section 8.4. We will conclude by returning to several cases that serve as through-lines to the book: Loomis, Wagner, and Houston Schools. -/- The link below is to an open-access copy of the chapter. (shrink)

There are prima facie ethical reasons and prudential reasons for people to avoid or withdraw from social media platforms. But in response to pushes for people to quit social media, a number of authors have argued that there is something ethically questionable about quitting social media: that it involves — typically, if not necessarily — an objectionable expression of privilege on the part of the quitter. In this paper I contextualise privilege-based objections to quitting social media and explain the underlying (...) principles and assumptions that feed into these objections. I show how they misrepresent the kind of act people are performing in quitting, in part by downplaying its role in promoting reforms in communication systems and technologies. And I suggest that this misrepresentation is related to a more widespread, and ultimately insidious, tendency to think of recently-established technological states of affairs as permanent fixtures of our society. (shrink)

Some of the world's most powerful corporations practise what Shoshana Zuboff (2015; 2019) calls ‘surveillance capitalism’. The core of their business is harvesting, analysing and selling data about the people who use their products. In Zuboff's view, the first corporation to engage in surveillance capitalism was Google, followed by Facebook; recently, firms such as Microsoft and Amazon have pivoted towards such a model. In this paper, I suggest that Karl Marx's analysis of the relations between industrial capitalists and workers is (...) closely analogous to the relations between surveillance capitalists and users. Furthermore, three problematic aspects of industrial capitalism that Marx describes – alienation, exploitation and accumulation – are also aspects, in new forms, of surveillance capitalism. I draw heavily on Zuboff's work to make these parallels. However, my Marx-inspired account of surveillance capitalism differs from hers over the nature of the exchange between users and surveillance capitalists. For Zuboff, this is akin either to robbery or the gathering of raw materials; on the Marx-inspired account it is a voluntary sale. This difference has important implications for the question of how to resist surveillance capitalism. -/- Joint winner of the 2020 Philosophy essay prize. (shrink)

YouTube has been implicated in the transformation of users into extremists and conspiracy theorists. The alleged mechanism for this radicalizing process is YouTube’s recommender system, which is optimized to amplify and promote clips that users are likely to watch through to the end. YouTube optimizes for watch-through for economic reasons: people who watch a video through to the end are likely to then watch the next recommended video as well, which means that more advertisements can be served to them. This (...) is a seemingly innocuous design choice, but it has a troubling side-effect. Critics of YouTube have alleged that the recommender system tends to recommend extremist content and conspiracy theories, as such videos are especially likely to capture and keep users’ attention. To date, the problem of radicalization via the YouTube recommender system has been a matter of speculation. The current study represents the first systematic, pre-registered attempt to establish whether and to what extent the recommender system tends to promote such content. We begin by contextualizing our study in the framework of technological seduction. Next, we explain our methodology. After that, we present our results, which are consistent with the radicalization hypothesis. Finally, we discuss our findings, as well as directions for future research and recommendations for users, industry, and policy-makers. (shrink)

This article investigates religious ideals persistent in the datafication of information society. Its nodal point is Thomas Bayes, after whom Laplace names the primal probability algorithm. It reconsiders their mathematical innovations with Laplace's providential deism and Bayes' singular theological treatise. Conceptions of divine justice one finds among probability theorists play no small part in the algorithmic data-mining and microtargeting of Cambridge Analytica. Theological traces within mathematical computation are emphasized as the vantage over large numbers shifts to weights beyond enumeration in (...) probability theory. Collateral secularizations of predestination and theodicy emerge as probability optimizes into Bayesian prediction and machine learning. The paper revisits the semiotics and theism of Peirce and a given beyond the probable in Whitehead to recontextualize the critiques of providence by Agamben and Foucault. It reconsiders datafication problems alongside Nietzschean valuations. Religiosity likely remains encoded within the very algorithms presumed purified by technoscientific secularity or mathematical dispassion. (shrink)

Can we identify potential long-term consequences of digitalisation on public health? Environmental studies, metabolic research, and state of the art research in neurobiology point towards the reduced amount of natural day and sunlight exposure of the developing child, as a consequence of increasingly long hours spent indoors online, as the single unifying source of a whole set of health risks identified worldwide, as is made clear in this review of currently available literature. Over exposure to digital environments, from abuse to (...) addiction, now concerns even the youngest (ages 0 to 2) and triggers, as argued on the basis of clear examples herein, a chain of interdependent negative and potentially long-term metabolic changes. This leads to a deregulation of the serotonin and dopamine neurotransmitter pathways in the developing brain, currently associated with online activity abuse and/or internet addiction, and akin to that found in severe substance abuse syndromes. A general functional working model is proposed under the light of evidence brought to the forefront in this review. (shrink)

Many of us assume that all the free editing and sorting of online content we ordinarily rely on is carried out by AI algorithms — not human persons. Yet in fact, that is often not the case. This is because human workers remain cheaper, quicker, and more reliable than AI for performing myriad tasks where the right answer turns on ineffable contextual criteria too subtle for algorithms to yet decode. The output of this work is then used for machine learning (...) purposes to generate algorithms constructed from large data sets containing thousands of correctly coded observations. The fact that ghost workers are treated as consumers distorts the basic logic of the employment relationship, effectively placing the worker-as-consumer in the worst of both worlds, in which they hold the legal rights of neither group. This puts them in a regulatory limbo position in which they have little or no protection, control, or guarantee of return on investment. This is because the platforms that facilitate ghost work have orchestrated a three-way virtual relationship that absolves all parties of responsibility, while placing nearly all the risks and opportunity costs squarely on the shoulders of the workers. As a result, we believe such a work arrangement as it stands, does not uphold basic standards of Rawlsian justice as fairness. (shrink)

In this panel, we explore the future of value sensitive design (VSD). The stakes are high. Many in public and private sectors and in civil society are gradually realizing that taking our values seriously implies that we have to ensure that values effectively inform the design of technology which, in turn, shapes people’s lives. Value sensitive design offers a highly developed set of theory, tools, and methods to systematically do so.

Two art exhibitions, “Training Humans” and “Making Faces,” and the accompanying essay “Excavating AI: The politics of images in machine learning training sets” by Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen, are making substantial impact on discourse taking place in the social and mass media networks, and some scholarly circles. Critical scrutiny reveals, however, a self-contradictory stance regarding informed consent for the use of facial images, as well as serious flaws in their critique of ML training sets. Our analysis underlines the non-negotiability (...) of informed consent when using human data in artistic and other contexts, and clarifies issues relating to the description of ML training sets. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied on social media by an explosion of information disorders such as inaccurate, misleading and irrelevant information. Countermeasures adopted thus far to curb these informational disorders have had limited success because these did not account for the diversity of informational contexts on social media, focusing instead almost exclusively on curating the factual content of user’s posts. However, content-focused measures do not address the primary causes of the infodemic itself, namely the user’s need to post content (...) as a way of making sense of the situation and for gathering reactions of consensus from friends. This paper describes three types of informational context—weak epistemic, strong normative and strong emotional—which have not yet been taken into account by current measures to curb down the informational disorders. I show how these contexts are related to the infodemic and I propose measures for dealing with them for future global crisis situations. (shrink)

In this chapter we argue that emotions are mediated in an incomplete way in online social media because of the heavy reliance on textual messages which fosters a rationalistic bias and an inclination towards less nuanced emotional expressions. This incompleteness can happen either by obscuring emotions, showing less than the original intensity, misinterpreting emotions, or eliciting emotions without feedback and context. Online interactions and deliberations tend to contribute rather than overcome stalemates and informational bubbles, partially due to prevalence of anti-social (...) emotions. It is tempting to see emotions as being the cause of the problem of online verbal aggression and bullying. However, we argue that social media are actually designed in a predominantly rationalistic way, because of the reliance on text-based communication, thereby filtering out social emotions and leaving space for easily expressed antisocial emotions. Based on research on emotions that sees these as key ingredients to moral interaction and deliberation, as well as on research on text-based versus non-verbal communication, we propose a richer understanding of emotions, requiring different designs of online deliberation platforms. We propose that such designs should move from text-centred designs and should find ways to incorporate the complete expression of the full range of human emotions so that these can play a constructive role in online deliberations. (shrink)

Recent conversation has blurred two very different social epistemic phenomena: echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Members of epistemic bubbles merely lack exposure to relevant information and arguments. Members of echo chambers, on the other hand, have been brought to systematically distrust all outside sources. In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. It is crucial to keep these phenomena distinct. First, echo chambers can explain the post-truth phenomena in a way that epistemic (...) bubbles cannot. Second, each type of structure requires a distinct intervention. Mere exposure to evidence can shatter an epistemic bubble, but may actually reinforce an echo chamber. Finally, echo chambers are much harder to escape. Once in their grip, an agent may act with epistemic virtue, but social context will pervert those actions. Escape from an echo chamber may require a radical rebooting of one's belief system. (shrink)

Les principaux problèmes rencontrés par les scientifiques qui travaillent avec des ensembles de données massives (mégadonnées, Big Data), en soulignant les principaux problèmes éthiques, tout en tenant compte de la législation de l'Union européenne. Après une brève Introduction au Big Data, la section Technologie présente les applications spécifiques de la recherche. Il suit une approche des principales questions philosophiques spécifiques dans Aspects philosophiques, et Aspects juridiques en soulignant les problèmes éthiques spécifiques du règlement de l'UE sur la protection des données (...) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation, « GDPR »). La section Problèmes éthiques détaille les problèmes spécifiques générés par le big data. Après une brève section de Recherche de big data, sont présentées les Conclusions sur l’éthique de la recherche dans l’utilisation du big data. SOMMAIRE: Abstract 1. Introduction - 1.1 Définitions - 1.2 Les dimensions du big data 2. La technologie - 2.1 Applications - - 2.1.1 En recherche 3. Aspects philosophiques 4 Aspects juridiques - 4.1 RGPD (GDPR) - - Étapes du traitement des données personnelles - - Principes du traitement des données - - Politique de confidentialité et transparence - - Finalités du traitement des données - - Confidentialité par conception et confidentialité implicite - - Le paradoxe (juridique) des mégadonnées 5. Problèmes éthiques - L'éthique dans la recherche - Prise de conscience - Consentement - Contrôle - Transparence - Confiance - Propriété - Surveillance et sécurité - Identité numérique - Réalité ajustée - De-anonymisation - Inégalité numérique - Confidentialité 6. Recherche des mégadonnées Conclusions Bibliographie DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.10128.56328 . (shrink)

2020 is the year of the first pandemic lived through the Internet. More than half of the world population is now online and because of self-isolation, our moral and social lives unfold almost exclusively online. Two pressing questions arise in this context: how much can we rely on the Internet, as a set of technologies, and how much should we trust online platforms and applications? In order to answer these two questions, I develop an argument based on two fundamental assumptions: (...) the development stage of today’s Internet is a contingent and not a necessary one and technologies are never neutral. My argument is that today’s pandemic produced an acceleration of the change which started almost 30 years ago, one of online migration, datafication and algorithmization of day to day life, a change in which digital technologies take on the classic role of institutions, both formal and informal. My thesis is a descriptive one, although it has some normative implications: this take over is not just a translation, but a modification or mutation which demands a creative collective answer, although users don’t have direct power over it. When they play the role of institutions, these technologies are surrogates or simulacra. I offer the paradigmatic case of online education, an experiment we were forced into because of the pandemic, in order to show that the institutional matrix of education cannot be reproduced online, due to the limitations of the medium and of the applications, especially those concerning physical presence. In the end I will critically address the question of the role played by Artificial Intelligence in the pandemic, and then I will show that the open source ethics was more useful in approaching scientifically and technologically the problems generated by the epidemic. (shrink)

The Internet has been identified in human enhancement scholarship as a powerful cognitive enhancement technology. It offers instant access to almost any type of information, along with the ability to share that information with others. The aim of this paper is to critically assess the enhancement potential of the Internet. We argue that unconditional access to information does not lead to cognitive enhancement. The Internet is not a simple, uniform technology, either in its composition, or in its use. We will (...) look into why the Internet as an informational resource currently fails to enhance cognition. We analyze some of the phenomena that emerge from vast, continual fluxes of information–information overload, misinformation and persuasive design—and show how they could negatively impact users’ cognition. Methods for mitigating these negative impacts are then advanced: individual empowerment, better collaborative systems for sorting and categorizing information, and the use of artificial intelligence assistants that could guide users through the informational space of today’s Internet. (shrink)

Communicative practices in online and social media sometimes seem to amplify political conflict, and result in significant harms to people who become the targets of collective outrage. Many complaints that have been made about political correctness in the past, we argue, amount to little more than a veiled expression of resentment over the increasing influence enjoyed by progressive activists. But some complaints about political correctness take on a different complexion, in light of the technologically-driven changes to our communicative practices and (...) political discourse. Given the ways in which they are entangled in these new forms of online communication, well-meaning attempts to police the norms of political correctness may end up contributing to individual wrongs, or to destructive social patterns. In this paper we examine these worries, situate them in a broader sociological context, and offer some tentative proposals about how they might be addressed. (shrink)

In the wake of high profile and recent events of blatant privacy violations, which also raise issues of democratic accountability as well as, at least potentially, undermining the legitimacy of current local and international governance arrangements, a rethinking of the justification of the right to privacy is proposed. In this paper, the case of the violation of the privacy of a bullied autistic youngster and the consequent prosecution of 3 Google executives will be discussed first. We will then analyse the (...) arguments made by both academic experts and pundits who agree with Google’s claim that if the first sentence had been left unchallenged, it would have opened the floodgates to several other jurisdictions that would as a consequence have used it as a pretext to increase control on the internet, jeopardising in such a way free speech, which has been seen so far as an inalienable right which should not be censored. Finally, by going beyond the sentences and their immediate contexts, we will propose a theoretical justification of our analysis. Our main claim is that the value of the right to privacy is based on the argument that its violation would undermine citizens’ capacity to participate effectively in democratic politics. (shrink)

Compartmentalizing our distinct personal identities is increasingly difficult in big data reality. Pictures of the person we were on past vacations resurface in employers’ Google searches; LinkedIn which exhibits our income level is increasingly used as a dating web site. Whether on vacation, at work, or seeking romance, our digital selves stream together. One result is that a perennial ethical question about personal identity has spilled out of philosophy departments and into the real world. Ought we possess one, unified identity (...) that coherently integrates the various aspects of our lives, or, incarnate deeply distinct selves suited to different occasions and contexts? At bottom, are we one, or many? The question is not only palpable today, but also urgent because if a decision is not made by us, the forces of big data and surveillance capitalism will make it for us by compelling unity. Speaking in favor of the big data tendency, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg promotes the ethics of an integrated identity, a single version of selfhood maintained across diverse contexts and human relationships. This essay goes in the other direction by sketching two ethical frameworks arranged to defend our compartmentalized identities, which amounts to promoting the dis-integration of our selves. One framework connects with natural law, the other with language, and both aim to create a sense of selfhood that breaks away from its own past, and from the unifying powers of big data technology. (shrink)

In this position paper for the 2019 CSCW workshop Good Systems: Ethical AI for CSCW I propose one tool and one idea for navigating the complex ethical problem space that results from the interaction of human and/or AI agents in shared, hopefully cooperative, computing environments.

Odată cu creșterea volumului de date pe Internet, în media socială, cloud computing, dispozitive mobile și date guvernamentale, Big Data devine în același timp o amenințare și o oportunitate în ceea ce privește gestionarea și utilizarea acestor date, menținând în același timp drepturile persoanelor implicate. În fiecare zi, folosim și generăm tone de date, alimentând bazele de date ale agențiilor guvernamentale, companiilor private și chiar cetățenilor privați. Beneficiem în multe feluri de existența și utilizarea Big Data, dar trebuie să ne (...) amintim de asemenea că „nu există nimic gratuit”. Există riscuri în utilizarea Big Data, un fel de parte întunecată. Schimbările de piață pot fi obținute prin utilizarea Big Data: în timp ce acestea pot fi pozitive pentru cineva, ele pot dăuna altcuiva. Riscurile potențiale provin și de la agențiile publice. Este clar că datele mari pot aduce beneficii cetățenilor și companiilor, dar trebuie să fie echilibrate de o conștientizare sporită a „părții întunecate” a Big Data în exploatarea noilor capacități și oportunități pe care le oferă tuturor . -/- CUPRINS -/- 1. Big Data - Definiție - Caracteristici - Clasificarea datelor mari - Arhitectura - Tehnologii - Oportunități - Provocări - Critici - - Criticile paradigmei Big Data - - Criticile modelului "V" - - Criticile de noutate - - Criticile execuției Big Data - 1.1 Viața datelor mari - - Nașterea - - Copilăria - - - Educație - - - Divertisment - - Adolescența - - - Servicii online - - - Comunicații mobile - - - Servicii de streaming - - Adulți tineri - - - Căutarea de locuri de muncă - - - Servicii bancare și asigurări - - - Utilități - - - Dating online și pornografie - - Vârsta medie - - - Servicii de sănătate - - - Aplicații pentru îngrijire și aplicații pentru sănătate și fitness - - - Căutarea de locuri de muncă - - - Dating online - - Bătrânețea - - - Îngrijirea sănătății - - Moartea - 1.2 Aplicații - - Guvern - - Dezvoltare internațională - - Fabrici - - Sănătate - - Educaţie - - Mass-media - - Asigurare - - Internetul obiectelor (IoT) - - Tehnologia informației - 1.3 Studii de caz - - Guvern - - - China - - - India - - - Israel - - - Regatul Unit - - - Statele Unite ale Americii - - Cu amănuntul - - Ştiinţă - - Sport - - Tehnologie - - Activități de cercetare - - - Prelevarea de date mari - 1.4 Agenda europeană privind societatea digitală - - Cadrul juridic - - Peisajul opiniei părților interesate - 1.5 GDPR - - Etapele procesării datelor personale - - Principiile procesării datelor - - Politica de confidențialitate și transparența - - Scopurile procesării datelor - - Confidențialitate prin design și implicită - - - Paradoxul (legal) al Big Data - - Domeniul teritorial al GDPR - - Definirea datelor mari, a datelor personale și a datelor anonime - - Etapele procesării datelor cu caracter personal - - Principii de prelucrare a datelor - - Politica de confidențialitate și Transparența - - Scopuri de prelucrare a datelor - - Confidențialitate prin design și confidențialitate în mod implicit - - Paradoxul (legal) al datelor mari 2. Analiza Big Data - 2.1 Analitica - - Analitica vs. analiză - - Aplicații ale analiticii - - - Optimizarea marketingului - - - Analiza oamenilor - - - Analiza portofoliului - - - Analitica riscurilor - - - Analitica digitală - - - Analitica securității - - - Analitica software-ului - - Provocări - - Riscuri - 2.2 Analitica predictivă - - Definiție - - Procesul de analitica predictivă - - Tipuri - - - Modele predictive - - - Modele descriptive - - - Modele de decizie - - Aplicații - - - Managementul relațiilor cu clienții analitic (CRM) - - - Protecția copilului - - - Sisteme de suport decizional clinic - - - Analiticile colecțiilor - - - Vânzări încrucișate - - - Retenția clienților - - - Marketing direct - - - Detectarea fraudelor - - - Prezicerea rezultatelor deciziilor legale - - - Previziuni privind portofoliul, produsele sau economia - - - Managementul riscului de proiect - - - Acceptanța (Underwriting) - - Tehnologia și influențele big data - - Tehnici analitice - - - Tehnici de regresie - - - - Model de regresie liniară - - - - Modele de alegere discretă - - - - Regresie logistică - - - - Regresie logistică multinomială - - - - Regresie probit - - - - Logit versus probit - - - - Modele pentru serii de timp - - - - Analiza supraviețuirii sau a duratei - - - - Arborele de clasificare și regresie (CART) - - - - Funcții spline adaptive de regresie multivariate - - - Tehnici de învățare automată - - - - Rețele neuronale - - - - Perceptron multistrat (MLP) - - - - Funcții radiale de bază - - - - Mașini cu vectori de suport - - - - Bayesiene naive - - - - Vecinul k-cel mai apropiat - - - - Modelarea predictivă geospațială - - Instrumente - - - PMML - - Critici - 2.3 Analitica prescriptivă - - Istorie - 2.4 Studiul critic al datelor - - Perspective critice - - Abordare: Pragmatismul și etica discursului 3. Etica Big Data - Datele personale ale copiilor - Rolul instituțiilor - - State naționale - - Bănci - Articole relevante de știri despre etica datelor - Legislație relevantă privind etica datelor - 3.1 Principii ale eticii Big Data - - Etica în cercetare - - Conștientizarea - - Consimţământul - - Controlul - - Transparența - - Încrederea - - Proprietatea - - Supravegherea și securitatea - - Identitatea digitală - - Realitatea ajustată - - De-anonimizarea - - Inegalitatea digitală - - Confidențialitatea - - Financiar - - - Cât de mult merită datele? - - Deschidere - 3.2 Probleme etice în cercetare - - Etica cercetării pentru cercetarea socială - - Principalele aspecte etice ale cercetării sociale - - - Intimitate - - - Consimțământ informat - - - De-identificarea - - - Inegalitate – Diviziune digitală - - Integritatea cercetării - - Probleme emergente - - Aviz legal - 3.3 Aspecte filosofice - 3.4 10 reguli de bază în lucrul cu Big Data - - Concluzie Referințe Despre autor - Nicolae Sfetcu - - De același autor - - Contact Editura - MultiMedia Publishing . 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The dominant legal and regulatory approach to protecting information privacy is a form of mandated disclosure commonly known as “notice-and-consent.” Many have criticized this approach, arguing that privacy decisions are too complicated, and privacy disclosures too convoluted, for individuals to make meaningful consent decisions about privacy choices—decisions that often require us to waive important rights. While I agree with these criticisms, I argue that they only meaningfully call into question the “consent” part of notice-and-consent, and that they say little about (...) the value of notice. We ought to decouple notice from consent, and imagine notice serving other normative ends besides readying people to make informed consent decisions. (shrink)

Technological advances are bringing new light to privacy issues and changing the reasons for why privacy is important. These advances have changed not only the kind of personal data that is available to be collected, but also how that personal data can be used by those who have access to it. We are particularly concerned with how information about personal attributes inferred from collected data (such as online behaviour), can be used to tailor messages and services to specific individuals or (...) groups. This kind of ‘personalised targeting’ has the potential to influence individuals’ perceptions, attitudes, and choices in unprecedented ways. In this paper, we argue that because it is becoming easier for companies to use collected data for influence, threats to privacy are increasingly also threats to personal autonomy—an individual’s ability to reflect on and decide freely about their values, actions, and behaviour, and to act on those choices.4 While increasing attention is directed to the ethics of how personal data is collected, we make the case that a new ethics of privacy needs to also think more rigorously about how personal data may be used, and its potential impact on personal autonomy. (shrink)

This paper investigates whether search engines and other new modes of online communication should be covered by free speech principles. It criticizes the analogical reason-ing that contemporary American courts and scholars have used to liken search engines to newspapers, and to extend free speech coverage to them based on that likeness. There are dissimilarities between search engines and newspapers that undermine the key analogy, and also rival analogies that can be drawn which don’t recommend free speech protection for search engines. (...) Partly on these bases, we argue that an analogical approach to questions of free speech coverage is of limited use in this context. Credible verdicts about how free speech principles should apply to new modes of online com-munication require us to re-excavate the normative foundations of free speech. This method for deciding free speech coverage suggests that only a subset of search engine outputs and similar online communication should receive special protection against government regulation. (shrink)

According to psychological research, people are more eager to help identified individuals than unidentified ones. This phenomenon significantly influences many important decisions, both individual and public, regarding, for example, vaccinations or the distribution of healthcare resources. This paper aims at presenting definitions of various levels of identifiability as well as a critical analysis of the main philosophical arguments regarding the normative significance of the identifiability effect, which refer to: (1) ex ante contractualism; (2) fair distribution of chances and risks; (3) (...) anti-aggregationist principles that recommend the distribution of bad effects and the concentration of good ones. I will show that these arguments, although connected with interesting philosophical problems regarding e.g. counterfactuals, aggregation, or probability, are unconvincing. (shrink)

Social media platforms allow users to perform different speech acts: status updates could be assertives, a like is an expressive, a friendship request is a directive, and so on. But sharing (or "retweeting") seems to lack a fixed illocutive status: this explains why present controversies concerning the sharing of misinformation have been debated in legal procedure and discussed from the point of view of personal responsibility without reaching a general consensus. The premise of this paper is that the diffusion of (...) false or unwarranted information could be better analyzed if we consider sharing a precisely definable speech act. I will describe some dominant interpretations of the act of sharing that are not, however, sufficient to fully explain it. As an alternative, it will be shown that there is a specific illocutive structure of the act of sharing, which not only consists in asserting the "shareworthiness" or the relevance of a content, but is primarily comparable to an "attention-orienting" directive. (shrink)

This volume compiles international contributions that explore the potential risks and chances coming along with the wide-scale migration of society into digital space. Suggesting a shift of paradigm from Spiral of Silence to Nexus of Noise, the opening chapter provides an overview on systematic approaches and mechanisms of manipulation – ranging from populist political players to Cambridge Analytica. After a discussion of the the juxtaposition effects of social media use on social environments, the efficient instrumentalization of Twitter by Turkish politicans (...) in the course of the US-decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is being analyzed. Following a case study of Instagram, Black Lives Matter and racism is a research about the impact of online pornography on the academic performance of university students. Another chapter is pointing out the potential of online tools for the successful relaunch of shadow brands. The closing section of the book deals with the role of social media on the opinion formation about the Euromaidan movement during the Ukrainian revolution and offers a comparative study touching on Russian and Western depictions of political documentaries in the 2000s. (shrink)

This paper applies a virtue epistemology approach to using the Internet, as to improve our information-seeking behaviours. Virtue epistemology focusses on the cognitive character of agents and is less concerned with the nature of truth and epistemic justification as compared to traditional analytic epistemology. Due to this focus on cognitive character and agency, it is a fruitful but underexplored approach to using the Internet in an epistemically desirable way. Thus, the central question in this paper is: How to use the (...) Internet in an epistemically virtuous way? Using the work of Jason Baehr, it starts by outlining nine intellectual or epistemic virtues: curiosity, intellectual autonomy, intellectual humility, attentiveness, intellectual carefulness, intellectual thoroughness, open-mindedness, intellectual courage and intellectual tenacity. It then explores how we should deploy these virtues and avoid the corresponding vices when interacting with the Internet, particularly search engines. Whilst an epistemically virtuous use of the Internet will not guarantee that one will acquire true beliefs, understanding or even knowledge, it will strongly improve one’s information-seeking behaviours. The paper ends with arguing that teaching and assessing online intellectual virtues should be part of school and university curricula, perhaps embedded in critical thinking courses, or even better, as individual units. (shrink)

Мета статті – з’ясувати концептуальний контекст виникнення нових медіа. Задля цього здійснено огляд ключових для нових медіа ідей Алана Кея та Теда Нельсона, а саме: перетворення комп’ютера на персональний метамедіум за допомогою користувацького інферфейсу та ідеї гіпертексту. Підкреслено, що створення медіа на базі комп’ютерних технологій супроводжувалось впливом медіа-теорії Маклюена та поєднанням технічного і гуманітарного дискурсів. Від початку створення нових медіа осмислювалась їхня метапозиція щодо традиційних медіа через здатність перших до симуляції наявних медіа-форм та створення нових. Теоретичні підвалини нових медіа як (...) проекту дають змогу дійти висновку, що вони можуть природньо вписуватись у культурологічні студії. (shrink)

Responding to Danaher et al. on self-tracking technologies, I argue that human lived experience is becoming increasingly mediated by generalized, statistical information, which I term our "infotality." Drawing on the work of Foucault, I argue that infotality is historically novel and best understood as the product of biopolitics, healthism, and informatics. I then critique the authors' "stance of cautious openness,” which misunderstands the aims of the technology in question and the fundamental ambiguity of the role information plays in the achievement (...) of human wellbeing. Self-tracking technologies are not primarily designed to change behavior; they are designed to create and sustain the desire for their use. I conclude by suggesting that infotality names a new way to fall for an old ruse: the promise that more information means more wellbeing. (shrink)

If one lives in a city and wants to be by oneself or have a private conversation with someone else, there are two ways to set about it: either one finds a place of solitude, such as one’s bedroom, or one finds a place crowded enough, public enough, that attention to each person dilutes so much so as to resemble a deserted refuge. Often, one can get more privacy in public places than in the most private of spaces. The home (...) is not always the ideal place to find privacy. Neighbours snoop, children ask questions, and family members judge. When the home suffocates privacy, the only escape is to go out, to the coffee shop, the public square. For centuries, city streets have been the true refuges of the solitaries, the overwhelmed, and the underprivileged. -/- Yet time and again we hear people arguing that we do not have any claim to privacy while on the streets because they are part of the so-called public sphere. The main objective of this chapter is to argue that privacy belongs as much in the streets as it does in the home. (shrink)

Copyright is at the centre of both popular and academic debate. That emotions are running high is hardly surprising – copyright influences who contributes what to culture, how culture is used, and even the kind of persons we are and come to be. Consequentialist, Lockean, and personality interest accounts are generally advanced in the literature to morally justify copyright law. I argue that these approaches fail to ground extensive authorial rights in intellectual creations and that only a small subset of (...) the rights accorded by copyright law is justified. The pared-down version of copyright that I defend consists of the right to attribution, the right to have one’s non-endorsement of modifications or uses of one’s work explicitly noted, and the right to a share of the profit resulting from the commercial uses of one’s work. I also cursorily explore whether contribution to another person’s work gives rise to moral interests. (shrink)

“Filter bubble”, “echo chambers”, “information diet” – the metaphors to describe today’s information dynamics on social media platforms are fairly diverse. People use them to describe the impact of the viral spread of fake, biased or purposeless content online, as witnessed during the recent race for the US presidency or the latest outbreak of the Ebola virus (in the latter case a tasteless racist meme was drowning out any meaningful content). This unravels the potential envisioned to arise from emergent activities (...) of human collectives on the World Wide Web, as exemplified by the Arab Spring mass movements or digital disaster response supported by the Ushahidi tool suite. (shrink)

The internet of things is increasingly spreading into the domain of medical and social care. Internet-enabled devices for monitoring and managing the health and well-being of users outside of traditional medical institutions have rapidly become common tools to support healthcare. Health-related internet of things (H-IoT) technologies increasingly play a key role in health management, for purposes including disease prevention, real-time tele-monitoring of patient’s functions, testing of treatments, fitness and well-being monitoring, medication dispensation, and health research data collection. H-IoT promises many (...) benefits for health and healthcare. However, it also raises a host of ethical problems stemming from the inherent risks of Internet enabled devices, the sensitivity of health-related data, and their impact on the delivery of healthcare. This paper maps the main ethical problems that have been identified by the relevant literature and identifies key themes in the on-going debate on ethical problems concerning H-IoT. (shrink)

Online shaming is a subject of import for social philosophy in the Internet age, and not simply because shaming seems generally bad. I argue that social philosophers are well-placed to address the imaginal relationships we entertain when we engage in social media; activity in cyberspace results in more relationships than one previously had, entailing new and more responsibilities, and our relational behaviors admit of ethical assessment. I consider the stresses of social media, including the indefinite expansion of our relationships and (...) responsibilities, and the gap between the experiences of those shamed and the shamers’ appreciation of the magnitude of what they do when they shame; I connect these to the literature suggesting that some intuitions fail to guide our ethics. I conclude that we each have more power than we believe we do or than we think carefully about exerting in our online imaginal relations. Whether we are the shamers or the shamed, we are unable to control the extent to which intangible words in cyberspace take the form of imaginal relationships that burden or brighten our self-perceptions. (shrink)

In this chapter, we analyze the relationships between the Internet and its users in terms of situated cognition theory. We first argue that the Internet is a new kind of cognitive ecology, providing almost constant access to a vast amount of digital information that is increasingly more integrated into our cognitive routines. We then briefly introduce situated cognition theory and its species of embedded, embodied, extended, distributed and collective cognition. Having thus set the stage, we begin by taking an embedded (...) cognition view and analyze how the Internet aids certain cognitive tasks. After that, we conceptualize how the Internet enables new kinds of embodied interaction, extends certain aspects of our embodiment, and examine how wearable technologies that monitor physiological, behavioral and contextual states transform the embodied self. On the basis of the degree of cognitive integration between a user and Internet resource, we then look at how and when the Internet extends our cognitive processes. We end this chapter with a discussion of distributed and collective cognition as facilitated by the Internet. (shrink)

Статтю присвячено феномену Інтернет-фольклору, який розглядається на прикладі візуального образу персонажа «бітард». Наведено деякі аргументи для обґрунтування доцільності вживання поняття «Інтернет-фольклор», описано особливості комунікації через специфічний тип анонімних форумів – іміджборд, а також процес формування фольклору іміджборд. Проаналізовано один із елементів цього фольклору – персонаж «бітард», як відображення досвіду користувачів форумів. Описано його визначальні риси та головні характеристики.

This review makes a case for scholars putting up their works online and for removing pay-walls of any kind. Therefore, this review is in sync with the stated aims of philpapers.org.