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Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

Internet Ethics: Views From Silicon Valley

Should You Watch?

On the Responsibility of Content Consumers

Internet users have been able to view videos of beheadings and domestic violence, and naked images from hacked celebrity accounts.

This fall, Internet users have had the opportunity to view naked photographs of celebrities (which were obtained without approval, from private iCloud accounts, and then—again without consent—distributed widely).  They were also able to watch journalists and an aid worker being beheaded by a member of a terrorist organization that then uploaded the videos of the killings to various social media channels.  And they were also invited to watch a woman being rendered unconscious by a punch from a football player who was her fiancé at the time; the video of that incident was obtained from a surveillance camera inside a hotel elevator.

These cases have been accompanied by heated debates around the issues of journalism ethics and the responsibilities of social media platforms. Increasingly, though, a question is arising about the responsibility of the Internet users themselves—the consumers of online content. The question is, should they watch?
 
Would You Watch [the beheading videos]?” ask CNN and ABC News. “Should You Watch the Ray Rice Assault Video?” asks Shape magazine. “Should We Look—Or Look Away?” asks Canada’s National Post. And, in a broader article about the “consequences and import of ubiquitous, Internet-connected photography” (and video), The Atlantic’s Robinson Mayer reflects on all three of the cases noted above; his piece is titled “Pics or It Didn’t Happen.”
 
Many commentators have argued that to watch those videos or look at those pictures is a violation of the privacy of the victims depicted in them; that not watching is a sign of respect; or that the act of watching might cause new harm to the victims or to people associated with them (friends, family members, etc.). Others have argued that watching the beheading videos is necessary “if the depravity of war is to be understood and, hopefully, dealt with,” or that watching the videos of Ray Rice hitting his fiancé will help change people’s attitudes toward domestic violence.
 
What do you think?
 
Would it be unethical to watch the videos discussed above? Why?
 
Would it be unethical to look at the photos discussed above? Why?
 
Are the three cases addressed above so distinct from each other that one can’t give a single answer about them all?  If so, which of them would you watch, or refuse to watch, and why?
 
Photo by Matthew Montgomery, used without modification under a Creative Commons license.
Ethics
internet,blog,case,social

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