Who Regulates Ethics in the Virtual World?

2015

Abstract. Some kinds of technological change not only trigger new ethical problems, but also give rise to questions about those very approaches to addressing ethical problems that have been relied upon in the past. Writing in the aftermath of World War II, Hans Jonas called for a new “ethics of responsibility, ” based on the reasoning that modern technology dramatically divorces our moral condition from the assumptions under which standard ethical theories were first conceived. Can a similar claim be made about the technologies of cyberspace? Do online information technologies so alter our moral condition that standard ethical theories become ineffective in helping us address the moral problems they create? I approach this question from two angles. First, I look at the impact of online information technologies on our powers of causal efficacy. I then go on to consider their impact on self-identity. We have good reasons, I suggest, to be skeptical of any claim that there is a need fo...

2000

Some kinds of technological change not only trigger new ethical problems, but also give rise to questions about those very approaches to addressing ethical problems that have been relied upon in the past. Writing in the aftermath of World War II, Hans Jonas called for a new "ethics of responsibility," based on the reasoning that modern technology dramatically divorces our moral condition from the assumptions under which standard ethical theories were first conceived. Can a similar claim be made about the technologies of cyberspace? Do online information technologies so alter our moral condition that standard ethical theories become ineffective in helping us address the moral problems they create? I approach this question from two angles. First, I look at the impact of online information technologies on our powers of causal efficacy. I then go on to consider their impact on self-identity. We have good reasons, I suggest, to be skeptical of any claim that there is a need for a new, cyberspace ethics to address the moral dilemmas arising from these technologies. I conclude by giving a brief sketch of why this suggestion does not imply there is nothing philosophically interesting about the ethical challenges associated with cyberspace.

2013

Recent research in information ethics shows that the notion and practices of privacy vary in different cultural settings, thus also having an impact on digitally mediated whoness and freedom. This intercultural discussion is still in its initial stages, particularly with regard to the ‘Far East’ and also African and Latin American cultures, just as it is in comparative studies between, for instance, Europe and the United States as addressed, for instance, by Helen Nissenbaum and Beate Rössler. How and as whom we reveal and conceal ourselves is not just an abstract conceptual matter, but also always concretized and rooted in cultural traditions. What is common and what is different shines forth from different perspectives that in some cases appear to be incompatible, although not necessarily contradictory. But even in these cases, as we shall see in the following analyses, various options for common practices and regulations are possible. The emphasis on the latter should not, howeve...

Public History Weekly, 2020

In order to understand the status of ethical norms in cyberspace, the author outlines a pluralistic conception of spaces of human life. It assumes that human activity in cyberspace has a moral status strictly analogous to activities in other spaces. The author argues that the ability to feel shame, responsible for the emergence of moral norms, is partially suspended in cyberspace. The suspension is encouraged by its structure which requires the employment of interfaces as tools of human interaction, and the adoption of an artificial cyberidentity. The strength of moral norms in cyberspace is also undermined by the anonymity of the cyberspatial interaction and by the phenomenon of interpassivity.

MELINTAS, 2016

Ethics, and its articulation in moral conducts, is not existed in a vacuum, sterile or fixed human world, but a subject of 'reformulation' or even 'redefinition', as the result of a certain socio-cultural transformation. The development of a global information-digital culture has in a certain intensity affected the perception, understanding and practice of ethics itself as a moral standard. One of the main character of this culture is its 'artificiality', through which human communication and interaction is no longer performed on a 'face-to-face basis, but on a technological mediated one. The consequence is a 'cultural distanciation', in which perception is separated from experience, body is separated from message. Another consequence is the 'transparency' at an ethical level, in which several ethical boundaries are deconstructed: good/bad, proper/ improper. A community ethics is one of today's ethical problem, in which a 'commonality' is no longer constructed based on conventional social bonds, but on more artificial bonds: solitude, rejection, helplessness. Friendship in the digital world is another 'strange' development of moral conduct, in which a great numbers of friends is just an affirmation of one's solitude. As the result, connection-as main pilar in the architecture of our contemporary life-has taken us along a cultural contradiction: it mediates, but at the same time dissociates our cultural experience.

Ethics is a branch of philosophy that deals with what is considered to be right or wrong. As information in cyberspace can be accessed globally, a research field of "computer ethics" is needed to examine what is right and wrong for Internet users can do, and what are the social impacts of Information Technology (IT) in general. Such research will underpin action that must be taken not only to harness the power of the IT itself, but also to survive its revolution.

Social informatics journal

This paper will address basic ethical issues in virtual space determined by global multidirectional networking through different space and time. Numerous ethical issues will be stressed which, as a result of the complex reflections of ubiquitous media convergence, determine each individual topic, from issues of personal data protection and information security, to strengthening credibility and building trust in the virtual community. In relation to the objectives and established development guidelines, different ethical dimensions, in their complexity and multi-layeredness in a digitally empowered future, should not be viewed in isolation but exclusively through their complementarity and a quality foundation for further in-depth research.

The impact of the Internet on our moral lives, 2005

Draft, 2023

Ethically, what happens when our social, political, and commercial activities transfer to the virtual environment? In such an environment self-presentations and interpersonal engagement are subject to digital filters, new forms of anonymity are enabled, and the nature of accountability and trust must be re-imagined. The internet presents us with a dual use problem-in which the same technology can be used for harm and for good-as well as a problem in which online and offline practices intersect, thereby creating novel ethical difficulties. The incremental evolution of the new online normativity means that agents online easily lose sight of what is morally at stake in how they act there, as well as how they may be targeted. These considerations provide the framework used here for analyzing many of the most recent ethical problems and issues. These include: (1) persuasive technologies, such as micro-targeting, e-nudges, digital choice architecture, and gamification; (2) cyberhate, including such categories as trolling, or flaming; (3) online scams, including phishing, lottery scams, or romance scams; (4) virtuality, which raises a dilemma for deciding what is harmful, as well as questions concerning the genuineness of online relationships and identity; (5) information control and flow, with issues for internet freedom versus censorship, surveillance, cybersecurity, and cyberwar; and (6) digital attacks on democracy, especially algorithmic manipulation of data feeds.

IKF Research, 2022

This paper presents digital ethics based on the assumption that digital technologies are ushering in a new form of social order, a global network society, that breaks with and transforms the values and traditions of modern Western industrial society. In the light of this assumption, digital ethics is not to be considered an "applied" ethics which simply takes over the normative assumptions of Western modernity and applies them to new technologies. Although all agree that the disruption caused by new technologies is unprecedented, none of the current treatises on digital ethics and the many guidelines for ethical or good AI, robotics, etc. question the values of Western modernity or seek new ethical principles. Based on a theory of information and the idea of networked social order, we propose new fundamental values: connectivity, flow, participation, transparency, authenticity, and flexibility. From these values of a global network society, we derive governance principles: taking account of, producing stakeholders, prioritizing, instituting, excluding, localizing and globalizing, and separating powers. When we speak of digital ethics in this paper, we are addressing the normative foundations of the global network society and are calling for a revolution in ethics comparable to the revolution in science and technology ushered in by the digital transformation.