The Internet Ethics program explores topics like online privacy, cybersecurity, social media, data ethics, the digital divide, internet access, and more.
In collaboration with the Technology Ethics program, it also addresses AI ethics, corporate tech ethics development, and software engineering ethics—developing teaching and training materials related to each of those subjects.
- Resources for Addressing a Key Topic in Internet Ethics
Recordings and related readings about dignity online
- Real friends understand each other, even if imperfectly...
The urgent issue, for now, is to avoid distorting our ideas of friendship and human happiness.
- An upcoming lecture by Shannon Vallor, author of The AI Mirror
Join us on April 29 for this year’s Regan Lecture, addressing AI ethics.
What is Internet Ethics?
By Irina Raicu, director of Internet Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.
What do we talk about when we talk about "Internet ethics"?
We talk about the role that the Internet plays in what philosophers describe as the good life.
We talk about justice, rights, consequences, the balancing of good and harm, virtue, and the common good-as they manifest themselves in the digital part of our world.
We talk about old questions (Does anonymous communication hurt or help society?), new questions (Is Internet access a human right?), and old questions applied to new contexts (Is it wrong to use a neighbor's unprotected wi-fi without permission?).
We talk about privacy, big data, bots, social media, net neutrality, surveillance (both mass and not), search engines, energy use, cyberbullying, the "right to be forgotten," sexuality, online comments, cybersecurity, democracy, community, apps, gender, commerce, hacking, encryption, selfies, databases, law, law enforcement, civics, smart cities, spam, accountability, "slacktivism," the cloud, emoji, gamification, sentiment analysis, crowdfunding, hashtags, APIs, crowdsourcing, research, culture, code, recycling, MOOCs, and cookies.
We talk about decisions made about the building, maintenance, and governance of the Internet.
We ask, "Yes, you can, but should you?"
We ask, "It may not be illegal, but is it the right thing to do?"
We ask how we should figure out what the right thing to do is, and we look for ways to make better decisions.
We ask, "Will this produce the most good and the least harm?" "Does this respect the rights of all of the relevant stakeholders?" "Does this treat people fairly?" "Does this serve the community as a whole, not just some of its members?" "Does this lead me to act as the sort of person I want to be?"-and we apply all of those questions to Internet-related matters.
Follow us on Twitter at @IEthics.
