Ethics Inf Technol (2010) 12:187–193 DOI 10.1007/s10676-010-9219-5
ORIGINAL PAPER
PAPA knows best: Principles for the ethical sharing of information on social networking sites James L. Parrish Jr.
Published online: 13 February 2010 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
Abstract The advent of social networking sites has changed the face of the information society Mason wrote of 23 years ago necessitating a reevaluation of the social contracts designed to protect the members of the society. Despite the technological and societal changes that have happened over the years, the information society is still based on the exchange of information. This paper examines various historical events involving social networking sites through the lens of the PAPA framework (Mason 1986) to highlight select ethical issues regarding the sharing of information in the social-networking age. Four preliminary principles are developed to guide the ethical use of social networking sites (SNS). Keywords
IS ethics PAPA Social networking sites
Introduction ‘‘Our moral imperative is clear. We must ensure that information technology and the information that it handles, are used to enhance the dignity of mankind. To achieve these goals we must formulate a new social contract, one that ensures that everyone has the right to fulfill his or her own human potential (Mason, 1986, p. 11).’’ In 1986, Richard Mason enlightened us to the challenges we face in the information age and the threats to intellectual capital. The heart of this threat is a broad array of
J. L. Parrish Jr. (&) University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 2801 S. University Avenue, Little Rock, AR 72204-1099, USA e-mail:
[email protected]
ethical issues concerning the information on which the intellectual capital is built. In particular, Mason would have us focus on the ethical issues concerning the privacy, accuracy, property, and accessibility of information (commonly referred to by the acronym PAPA). Focusing on these issues can help those living in the information society construct the social contract by which to deal with the threats to their intellectual capital (Mason 1986). In the 23 years since Mason penned this ethical framework, one must stop to wonder if he could foresee just how ‘social’ the social contract would become. Today, social networking sites (SNS) such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr allow people to publish and share information in ways like never before. Additionally, the proliferation of mobile devices such web-enabled cell phones allow for the instantaneous collection of information for sharing on these sites. For example, a person can take a picture or video of an event, post it to a mediasharing site, and write about it in a blog, or post a comment on a SNS in almost real time as the event unfolds. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the coverage of the 2009 Iranian elections. After a landslide victory by the incumbent president, in an election believed by many to be closely contested, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets to dispute the results. Although the international media was blocked from reporting on the events, the story was still relayed in the form of web chats, emails, posted videos to YouTube and, most notably, 140 characters or less micro-blog posts or ‘‘tweets’’ to the social networking site Twitter. In response to the public’s use of these sites to relay the protest events, the government shut down many text messaging systems, SNS, and Internet sites that supported Mir Hossein Mousavi, the challenger to incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However, despite the efforts of the Iranian
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government, information still managed to find its way out of Iran via social networks and other technological means (Johnson and Murphy 2009; Murphy 2009). This information served as one of the only links between the events on the ground in Iran and the outside world. In fact, the images and words were so important to those around the world following the protests that the U.S. State Department asked Twitter to delay system upgrades that might have caused service outages in the Iranian capital (Landler and Mazetti 2009). Given the impact of this event, it seems a good look at the use of the posted information is warranted. Specifically, does the use of this information violate the social contract Mason advocated that is designed to protect individuals from such indignities as having private information revealed without their consent or having decisions that could affect their personal livelihood or that of others based on said information(Mason 1986)? The goal of this paper is twofold. The first is to illustrate some of the ethical issues regarding the sharing of information on SNS by examining the information shared in important world events such as the 2009 Iranian elections and the U.S. war in Iraq. These events will be examined through the lens of Mason’s PAPA framework to highlight issues related to each element. The second goal is to develop principles that will provide guidance to those who post to and consume information on SNS and to support the establishment of norms that will allow better definition of the social contract that protects individuals in the information age.
Social contracts Extant social contracts such as the one referred to by Mason are defined by Dunfee (1991, p. 32) as ‘‘existing social contacts embodying actual behavioral norms which derive from shared goals, beliefs and attitudes of groups or communities of people’’. The social contracts these communities create are generally informal arrangements in which the participants are not bound by an explicit set of rules, rather they consent to the norms of the group by becoming a part of or engaging in transactions within the community (Donaldson and Dunfee 1994; Dunfee 1991). A community is defined by Donaldson and Dunfee (1994, p. 262) as ‘‘a self-defined, self-circumscribed, group of people who interact in the context of shared tasks, values, or goals and who are capable of establishing ethical norms of behavior for themselves’’. It would be difficult to define a social contract that would encompass the entirety of SNS much like it would be difficult to define a social contract to govern all economic practice across the globe. This may be because, much like economic ethics, the ethics that govern SNS are
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bounded in part by its artifactual nature. In this sense, an artifactual system is one created by people and subject to change by people in the ways they are governed at the local level (Donaldson and Dunfee 1994). So, what may be ethically appropriate on one SNS, may not be on another. This may even be true within a single SNS. Take the example of the Iranian elections. The people that are interacting on the site in support or opposition of a particular political candidate certainly could qualify as a community given the definition above. However, what of the casual observer of the situation thousands of miles away? Do they share the same goals, values, or tasks? Donaldson and Dunfee (1994) attempt to reconcile this situation by differentiating the extant social contract into a macrosocial contract, which are principles shared by all participants in a system, and a microsocial contract that specifies ethical norms for the local communities. According to Donaldson and Dunfee (1994), the general principles that make up this macrosocial contract are: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Local communities may enable microsocial contracts to establish norms for their members. The microsocial contracts must contain a right to exit and be grounded in informed consent. The required elements of the microsocial contract must be compatible with hypernorms. In attempting to satisfy the previous principles, conflict between norms will be settled by assigning priority to norms in a manner consistent with the spirit and letter of the macrosocial contract.
Norms that pass principles 1 and 2, are called authentic norms. Obligatory norms are authentic norms that also pass principle 3. The hypernorms referred to in principle 3 are ethical principles that are fundamental to human existence such as human rights, freedom, physical security and wellbeing, and the obligation to respect human dignity (Donaldson and Dunfee 1994). It is apparent that Mason also considered these hypernorms as he developed the social contract illustrated in his PAPA framework. This notion of a macrosocial contract as it relates to social networking, however, is a bit amorphous in light of the pace of technological advancement. One of the primary purposes of SNS is to share information, but do the norms of this information sharing adhere to the principles of the macrosocial contract? It is apparent that local communities have the ability to establish microsocial contracts to govern them. However, the exit and informed consent in principle 2 is not so clear. The SNS Facebook has experienced some high profile issues with privacy over the past few years stemming from its Beacon program that relayed information about its user’s visits to third party websites in some cases even after their accounts had been deactivated. It has also been accused of allegedly sharing user information
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without proper consent. However, the issue of whether or not SNS are providing proper informed consent at an organizational level is a matter of argument and outside the ethical scope of this paper. At the individual level, there is little doubt a lack of informed consent as it relates to the sharing of information exists. This may not be an issue for individuals acting in a public space with little expectation of privacy, but it is for those that are acting in a space where the expectation for privacy is valid. Imagine that an individual takes pictures at a private social gathering and posts them to an SNS. What if a member of the community subscribing to the micro social contract who is pictured in those images deactivates their account, do they disappear from the images? What effect does this have on their right of exit? Furthermore, what are the chances the person posting the pictures provides informed consent to every individual captured in the images? What about those individuals who indicate what others are doing in their status updates, do they provide informed consent? These are the actions enabled by the ability to capture images and text using mobile devices for direct posting to SNS. While this technological advancement allows individuals to interact with more people and in more ways than ever before, it also inhibits the formation of authentic norms within the community on which a macrosocial contract can be defined. While the amount and type of information shared can vary from community to community, it can be argued that sharing at least some information is obligatory to become part of the community. It can also be argued that in some cases the information shared may not be compatible with hypernorms. As an example, let’s return to the example of the Iranian elections. Is the picture of a Iranian protester shared on a SNS, resulting in that person losing their freedom because they were incarcerated by the ruling party or beaten by supporters of the other candidate, compatible with hypernorms? One would think that sharing this information in certain contexts violates some of these basic human principles. For the reasons presented above, the notion of a social contract relating to communities as espoused by Donaldson and Dunfee may be inapplicable to SNS. This paper argues that the elements affecting ethical principles created for information sharing on SNS are derived not from the people involved, but from the information that is shared. For that reason, the PAPA framework seems to be a relevant foundation from which to develop the aforementioned ethical principles for information sharing on SNS.
PAPA and social networking The ethical issues relating to the use of information are wide ranging in scope and in number. However, Mason
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(1986) argues that it is important to focus on just four: privacy, accuracy, property, and accessibility. In Mason’s framework, privacy relates to the information an individual has to share with others, the safeguards they have to protect themselves as a result of sharing the information, and the rights of the individual to not share information at all. Accuracy addresses the questions of the authenticity of information, accountability for the authenticity of the information, and reciprocity as a result of damage done due to the use of inaccurate information. Issues of information ownership and exchange are covered in the area of property. Finally, accessibility is concerned with those issues surrounding the access to information (Mason 1986). Some would argue that the PAPA framework is not broad enough in scope to deal with the ethical environment of today. For example, Fairweather (2000) argues that focusing on the issues related to the four aspects of PAPA may result in other ethical issues being overlooked and some areas of information technology do not fit within the framework. This paper argues PAPA is focused on information, rather than information technology and the four areas covered in PAPA are applicable to all information. Thus, because PAPA is focused on the more stable nature of the qualities of information, rather than the dynamic nature of the technology itself or those who interact with it, it is an applicable base from which to develop ethical principles to guide the use of SNS. Privacy Mason (1986) writes that two forces threaten our privacy. One is the advancement in information technology and its ever-increasing ability to capture, compute, and communicate information. The other is the value of information to those who can use it to their advantage. For instance, mobile computing devices can be and are used to access SNS from anywhere in the world. However, the real threat to privacy lies in the fact that the devices can take still images, record video, text commentary, or any combination of the three and send it directly to SNS for consumption by the community. This information is not only valuable to those that wish to enjoy the benefits provided by SNS, but also to those that would wish to do us harm. For example, studies have shown that attempts to gain information from individuals for purposes of identity theft are significantly more successful if information about the target’s social context is used (Jagatic et al. 2007). This demonstrates the importance of taking steps to ensure the privacy of the information that one shares on SNS. In examining the world events discussed earlier, the scope of the issue of privacy broadens beyond the individual. For example, when a U.S. Representative was touring Iraq in February of 2009, he released micro-blogs
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of the trip via the social networking site Twitter. In doing so, he detailed not only his location, but that of the entire congressional delegation on a trip that was supposed to be secret (Templeton 2009). SNS have changed the privacy equation such that users of these sites must be responsible for their information privacy as well as the information privacy of all that accompany them and those that happen to be in same general vicinity as well. Take as another example the images that are being posted on SNS from the streets of Tehran. Updates from the protests in newspapers are littered with images and videos from anonymous sources (Mackey 2009). While those that take the images or record the videos have their privacy protected by the veil of anonymity, who will protect the individuals who appear in the images? Did they give consent to have the information of their attendance broadcast to the world? Who ensures their rights to privacy? The U.S. military has become all too familiar with these threats as they use SNS in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. While recognizing threats exist to themselves and to others, they also realize the benefits that SNS provide. The general response to the threats to information privacy by the service men and women has been to develop a culture of ‘‘self-censorship’’ to ensure the privacy of not only themselves, but those around them as well (Templeton 2009). This leads us to our first ethical principle of SNS: 1.
When sharing information on SNS, it is not only necessary to consider the privacy of one’s personal information, but the privacy of the information of others who may be tied to the information being shared.
Accuracy The response to the Iranian elections has also highlighted issues regarding the accuracy of the data shared on SNS. Many of the accounts and images being shared on SNS are posted by anonymous sources. This makes verifying the accuracy of the information of great importance to the groups using it. For example, look at the differing responses by journalists to the video depicting the shooting of the young woman known as ‘Neda’ posted on the social networking sites YouTube and Facebook. As the images began to appear on various worldwide media outlets, the Associated Press verified the videos existed after contacting several protesters via email or phone but found no one who actually witnessed the incident (Murphy, 2009). CNN reports they broadcast fully verified content, but they also broadcast content derived from SNS that has not been verified with the caveat of putting the content in ‘full
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context.’ In a report for the Associated Press by Brian Murphy (2009), CNN spokesperson Nigel Pritchard states: ‘‘It is important that the audience has a clear understanding of not only that (vetting) process, but also the fact that in some cases we are not able to fully verify content from those third-party sites,’’ Pritchard said. ‘‘Especially in a media situation like we have in Iran, it is vital that all elements of our reporting are placed in full context.’’ When faced with such violent and moving images such as those that are being shared on SNS, can context serve as a proxy for accuracy? It is not just the issue of anonymous posting of content on SNS that contributes to the issues of accuracy. Many people deliberately post inaccurate items or pretend to be protesters while, in reality, they are actually spectators with an agenda. For example, while the Associated Press reported items from social networking that can be connected to actual events, they are also aware that some people are changing their profile locations to Tehran in an attempt to gain more global exposure for their postings (Murphy 2009). Additionally, just because there are postings by people posing as protesters in Iran, the postings may have nothing to do with the Iranian elections. A quick look at the site twitspam.org will reveal there are postings that spread misinformation and ill will regarding the Iranian elections, suggest violence against police, make anti-Semitic remarks, or spam individuals with pornography and other unwanted sites (Twitspam 2009). The problem is compounded by the fact that those spreading disinformation have the ability to create multiple accounts to carry out their agendas. While communities such as Twitspam work diligently to inform the users of SNS of those that would misuse the sites, it is ultimately the responsibility of users to ensure that they are not legitimizing the inaccuracy of the information by passing it along to others. This is the foundation for the second principle of ethical social networking site usage: 2.
When sharing information on SNS, it is the responsibility of the one desiring to share information to verify the accuracy of the information before sharing it.
Property Perhaps no area of PAPA has changed with the advent of SNS and the user-generated content shared on them more than property. In regards to property, Mason’s (1986) concerns centered on taking information from individuals (called ‘disemmindment’) and embedding it into intelligent systems. While intellectual property rights are obviously
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important, this paper is focused on the ownership issues regarding personal information users share on SNS. As of late, the issue of who owns the information posted to SNS has been one of great debate. This debate reached critical mass in February of 2009 when Facebook changed its terms of service to allow the company to retain the content existing in user accounts indefinitely even after termination of the account. This resulted in a backlash from the users of the social networking site who believed this meant Facebook was claiming that any content that they generated on the site would be owned exclusively by and used in whatever manner Facebook wished (Selter 2009). While Facebook contended there was no malicious intent and the social networking site did not want to claim the content of its users, consumer groups saw the issue differently calling it a ‘‘digital rights grab’’ and warning users to ‘‘never upload anything that you don’t feel comfortable giving away forever (Stone and Selter 2009)’’. Three days later, responding to pressure from many angry users and the threat of litigation from a group of consumer advocacy groups, Facebook reverted back to an earlier version of their terms-of-service contract that did not contain the ownership clause and stated that it would work with its users to develop a more amenable terms-of-service contract (Stone and Selter 2009). Despite the fact that Facebook retreated on their changes to their terms-of-service contract, users should still consider carefully the content they wish to share on SNS if they don’t want to lose control of the information forever. This has nothing to do with the site. Rather, it has to do with search engines and their ability to cache content. Say, for example, a user posts an image on a social networking site and then thinks better of it a few days later. If it was cached by a search engine, it will still be accessible regardless of whether or not it is removed from the site (Mitrano 2006). Is it still the user’s picture? Do they have the right to have it removed? Of course they do. However, they now have to work through the search engine to do so by following their procedure for removing the cached content. Then, they have to follow the same procedure for any other search engine that may have indexed and cached the content on the social networking site (Mitrano 2006). The prior example deals with the loss of control and exclusive property rights to information posted on SNS (or anywhere on the Internet) via technological means. Just imagine the people that may come across a user’s profile and find something interesting enough to share with others. Perhaps the user doesn’t mind that they take a copy of whatever information that they find interesting, but then what happens to those people that take it from them, with or without permission? It seems that the very ‘disemmindment’ that Mason feared is happening on a grand scale being facilitated by the pervasive interconnectivity of the
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Internet. Whether this happens with or without the consent of the user, the point is that placing information on SNS may not relieve the user of ‘‘actual’’ ownership of the information, but there is a good chance that they will lose ‘‘effective’’ ownership of it. In order to truly ‘own’ information an individual must not only have a legal right to it, but to be able to account for its various locations as well as have access to those locations. The principle for the ethical use of SNS related to property is as follows: 3.
A user of SNS should not post information about themselves that they feel they may want to retract at some future date. Furthermore, users of SNS should not post information that is the product of the mind of another individual unless they are given consent by that individual. In both cases, once the information is shared, it may be impossible to retract.
Access Access in Mason’s framework is intended to combat ‘information illiteracy.’ His conception of access consists of access to education so that citizens of the information society can develop the intellectual skills to cope with information, access to the technological tools with which to store and process the information, and the access to the information itself. Access was an issue in 1986 when Mason originally penned the PAPA framework. Mason even went as far as to say that the level of access as he described it was in a state of retreat (Mason 1986). While this may have been the case in 1986, it is not today. Issues such as Net Neutrality, where providers can throttle down the bandwidth of some online content providers while allowing others full access to bandwidth in exchange for payment do affect an individual’s access to information, but not to the extent that they did in Mason’s time. The Internet and its effects on globalization have been well chronicled in the book The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman. In this book, Friedman discusses how the Internet has allowed individuals to collaborate and compete globally (Friedman 2005). This is partially because information technology has become ubiquitous in the global society and that gives us access to information and to each other. In the case of SNS it is also partially due to the fact that Web 2.0 technologies have made it easier for individuals to create and consume information without the requirements of possessing detailed knowledge of the technology they are using to do so. While the level of access enjoyed by the members of today’s information society is unprecedented, it comes with a level of risk. Private businesses have found reasons to restrict access to SNS citing reasons of lost worker productivity, non-business usage of network resources, and
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security (Yun and Kelley 2008). While the first two reasons are primarily of concern to organizations and are outside the scope of this paper, the third is a concern to both businesses and individuals. It has been previously noted that phishing attacks become much more successful when the attackers use information gained from sources such as SNS (Jagatic et al. 2007). However, SNS can also be used as the tools to carry out phishing attacks, as well as being distribution vectors for viruses and other forms of malware (Yun and Kelley 2008). It is this concern about the security of corporate systems and individuals that have spurred researchers (Carminati et al. 2009; Carminati et al. 2008) and practitioners (Yun and Kelley 2008) to devise ways to control access to SNS, mostly at the organizational level. Given that access to shared information is a concern to both organizations as well as individuals, what ethical obligations do individuals have relating to the access of their shared information on SNS? Mason (1986) stated that systems should be accessible so that individuals would not be illiterate with respect to information. He also believed in accessibility of systems so that people would not be deprived of information. It may be that today’s issues of access as they relate to individuals are no longer issues relating to the intellectual and technological barriers that cause information illiteracy, but rather are social and legal issues. Also, because the technology in general and SNS in particular has made the sharing of information so prevalent, individuals that are illiterate about the qualities of information may be more vulnerable to information exploitation rather than information deprivation. A recent study by security software vendor AVG found that only 43% of users of the SNS Facebook use the site’s access controls to limit the access that others have to their information. Even more alarming is that the same study reveals that 21% of SNS users accept ‘‘friend’’ requests from people they don’t know, 26% share files, and 64% click on unknown hyperlinks despite knowing the risks involved. As a result, the study found that 47% of the users surveyed had experienced a malware attack, 20% had their identity stolen, and more than 50% were phished (Ragan 2009). Additionally, sites such as Facebook and MySpace allow users to grant profile access to applications and games that can be written by anyone. Often, it is not only the individual sharing the information that is at risk. People can use the access granted by one user to attack others. Steve Ragan (2009) writes: ‘‘The idea of exploiting trust in the website and in the community circle is how many criminals stay successful. If a person or source is seen as trusted, then there is little risk associated with anything that source offers in the eyes of the user. The foreknowledge of
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any type of threat goes out the window if the content comes from someone within a circle or from a known source.’’ This means that when a user of SNS provides access to their information they are also, in many cases, providing access to the information of other users they are associated with on the SNS. Even if the access to the other user’s information is not direct, they have, at a minimum, given a reason to trust the person or program that they have granted access to. Because of this, the SNS user has some level of responsibility with regards to harm that may be caused to others as a result of allowing persons or programs that are not legitimate access to their account. One may wonder about the responsibility that the SNS has in this regard. Many SNS programs have provided a means for SNS users for not allowing a program or person access to their account or to restrict the information that is available if they do grant access. While these controls are provided to SNS users, the user has to activate them. This is most likely done for practical reasons since SNS are meant for sharing information so high levels of default security go against the spirit of the SNS. It could also be that the administrators of the SNS fear that a higher level of security would would be viewed as intrusive by their users much like the security in the Windows Vista UAC (Albro and Dahl 2007), thus causing them to go to SNS that are more user friendly. The point is that while the SNS can provide security features, the SNS user still has to make the final decision on whether or not to allow a person or program access to their account. From this stream of thought comes the final principle: 4.
It is the responsibility of the SNS user to determine the authenticity of a person or program before allowing the person or program access to the shared information.
Conclusion The explosion of SNS has changed the way human beings connect, collaborate, and live their daily lives. There is no doubt that as technology becomes more advanced these changes will continue. With these changes, however, we are also faced with a multitude of new ethical dilemmas caused by our interaction with the technology. These changes will require reconsideration of the existing social contracts that govern ethical behavior in order to stay effective in protecting the rights of SNS users. Although the information society Mason (1986) envisioned when he originally conceived of PAPA has changed dramatically over the years, it is still concerned with the ethical use of information. To summarize, the principles are:
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1.
2.
3.
4.
When sharing information on SNS, it is not only necessary to consider the privacy of one’s personal information, but the privacy of the information of others who may be tied to the information being shared. When sharing information on SNS, it is the responsibility of the one desiring to share information to verify the accuracy of the information before sharing it. A user of SNS should not post information about themselves that they feel they may want to retract at some future date. Furthermore, users of SNS should not post information that is the product of the mind of another individual unless they are given consent by that individual. In both cases, once the information is shared, it may be impossible to retract. It is the responsibility of the SNS user to determine the authenticity of a person or program before allowing the person or program access to the shared information.
The principles presented here are by no means meant to serve as a definitive set of rules for SNS users. Rather the aim is to provide some basic principles, tied to the qualities of the information, which can serve to assist users in the formation of new ethical norms on which to base new social contracts. We believe it is our responsibility as researchers to use the gifts of information and technology to, as Mason (1986, p. 12) wrote some 23 years ago, ‘‘create the kind of world in which we would like to live’’. Acknowledgments Thanks to Prof. James Courtney and Assoc. Prof. Janet Bailey for reviewing and providing input on earlier draft versions of this paper.
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