On Net Wisdom and Net Ethics

Posted on December 14, 2008 in Internet Privacy Micro-blogging

Every day there is a cautionary article warning people that if they don’t want to invite certain kinds of attacks, then they shouldn’t post on the net. Suffice to call these examples of wisdom or good advice. But they are not enough, because wisdom gets confused with ethics which is a series of expectations about how we should act in this milieu.

Before I go into my argument, let me give you an example of the two of them in action based on my own behavior. Recently, I found myself getting repeatedly annoyed with a person on one of the micro-blogging sites. So I removed said person from my follow list. An incident followed in which that person threatened to (jokingly?) remove me on some trivial grounds. This was relayed to me. I simply laughed and said that I had already performed that very task myself twenty four hours before. The public announcement broke the spirit of the other person.

Out of wisdom, I had preserved my sanity by quietly removing the person. But then, I seized on an opportunity to hurt. My commitment to live by ethics — to avoid emotional harm to others — failed me. I did what the software allowed me to do, but it was not a courteous or kind thing.

The analogy is not direct, but the division is clear. Many people use Twitter. The site promises two things: that users can see who is following them and that they can block those they don’t want to follow them. This promise leads people to feel more secure with the so-called “micro-blogging” software.

There are those who are developing software solutions, however, that undermine these promises. Tweet stalking software is developed on the premise that the tweet stream is open to anyone to exploit. Therefore they can develop whatever applications they desire.

The response that some have is “you should watch what you say on Twitter”. That’s a point of wisdom, but it is wrong simply because it puts the burden entirely on the unaware user. As noted before, Twitter is offered with the promise that you have a modicum of control over who gets to read what you say. This conversely binds those who use the data stream to honoring the wishes of those who set such limits.

The slanted admonition to “watch what you say” is all about wisdom and to hell with ethics. Ethics calls upon users to respect the privacy of others as they demand it. It is not for me to say what your limits of privacy should be, but for you. Just because I am not a government agency does not mean that I have free reign to spy ((The Bush Administration has used private concerns to do its spying in the belief that being they aren’t government, they can place wiretaps where the FBI can’t. You can see where the distinction gets slippery)) . If I walk down a street and stop to listen in on your conversation, you can tell me to go away. If I refuse, I have shown myself to be a boor, unworthy of anyone’s respect. Putting a bug in your clothes or in a public place does not make it any better. It’s one thing to be present for a loud conversation in a restaurant, but another to be a data gatherer hunting for anything that fits her/his criteria.

I have not heard a single reasonable defense for net spying. Individuals who engage in it tell me that privacy rights are “vague”. So then is the right to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. These are not defined by our constitution, but they are accepted even with that lack of definition. Sure the opponent to fluoridation in the water makes a city council meeting tedious, but who knows what good can come of that or other protected opposition. And who knows what harm can come of privacy invasion? Emotional harm is enough and unless the person is a public figure making claims of a particular sort, we have no business hunting for details about privacy lives even in public places. It would seem weird and nosy if I picked a nondescript person that interested me and followed them around, asking the people they met about them. Just as we reject this in ordinary life, so too should we reject it on the net. Net stalking does that.

If we tell a friend to avoid a certain part of the city and that friend goes there and gets mugged, does our warning exonerate the mugger? The defenders of net stalking hold that the wisdom of “watch what you say” defends them from charges of wrong-doing. I hold that if the net is to become a place where a free exchange of ideas is possible, we have to honor the principle of freedom of assembly, namely that conversations in places such as Twitter be respected as belonging to the persons involved in them. The burden belongs on the listener (( Sometimes it is a matter of mercy. People say things on Twitter which, if taken out of context, can be perceived as quite harmful. Or things can just fall out of the mouth. The principle of mercy means that we hold back on our judgements.)) as well as the speaker.