Discuss about the Search Engines and Ethics.
Different computer organizations including search engines are playing vital role in providing the information to the people. Search engine giants such as Google , Yahoo have become one stop destination for accessing all the information about anything. It can be said the innovations from the different computer organizations are making a virtual library for the access of information in almost free of cost (Roberts, 2015). Computer organizations also includes social media like Facebook. Nowadays almost everyone has a Facebook account which makes the population of the Facebook equivalent to the population of any country. The vast use of social media by the users raises the question about maintaining the ethical responsibilities and obligations of the computer organizations. The responsibilities are bigger for the search engines and the social media as the have the privilege to maintain the world wide web.
The advancement of technology has help to develop the information technology in a larger scale. The result of the growth of the information technology are innovation of advanced search engines , which can provide any relevant information about anything. The use of social media is also significant as it is not only used for connecting the people around the world but also it is helping to make the opinion of the people and a platform for expression thoughts of any users. In this context, it can be assumed that these search engines and the social medias should have some ethical obligations so that they can deliver the purpose of their innovation properly.
Recently, few of the incidents indicate that there should be some regulations and rules which should be followed by all the search engines and the social media.
The digital footprint is one of the most discussed subjects in this context. Most of the search engines store the individual user data, so that they can deliver more customized service to the users. This activity leads to track the user activity through the search engine. The question rises about whether it is ethical to track the activity of the users as the searching done by the user in the internet is subject to privacy. The monitoring on the user activity may not be ethical as it violates the privacy of the users.
Another major ethical concern rises regarding the computer organization is related to the use of social media. The main objective of social media is to develop the well managed communication between the people from different parts of the world. The user’s account in the social, media has the information about the user. The main responsibility of these social media sites and organizations is to protect that information. These websites help to create public opinion, so the websites should promote sustainability in the society (Harris & Robinson Kurpius, 2014). However, recently the news of information breaching form Facebook has come into the lime light. The private and confidential information about many facebook users have been disclosed , which is not a desirable news from this social media giant. Many of the experts also said that the spreading of wrong information is generated through the facebook which is constraining to build the right opinion about any vital issue.
The ethical implications regarding search engine can be categorized into six different clusters: Problem of non-transparency, privacy consent, monitoring and surveillance, moral accountability issues of the search engine companies, censorship, cyber security issues.
The users can assume that the search engines are neutral in nature. However, some experts argues that the due to the some in built features, the search engines are biased at a certain level (Lukaszewski & Johnson, 2017). Some of the experts worried that some of these values are ‘morally opaque’
Manipulation of the search result is another issue regarding the transparency of the search engines. The search engines shows the rating of different services based on the user reviews (Baker & Tang,2015). The technical experts of the organizations can manipulate those ratings, and that may cause the users not getting the right review about the particular service.
The search engines sometimes store personal data of users from different sources like online surveys. The main objective of this kind of activity is to provide better services to the users. However, sometimes the confidential data stored by the search engines are misused.
In 2005 the users came to know that the search engines keep track of all the information regarding the search activities of the users (Reyes, 2015). Tracking of the information may not seem harmful at initial stage. However, the information about the monitoring activity of the users can be used against them by the information merchants (Voshel & Wesala,2015). The mining of the large amount of data regarding searching information can enable the access of the detailed personal information about the users and those information can be used in a wrong way without their knowing.
Some of the experts referred search engines as the gatekeeper of the cyber space. It is expected that the search engines will provide the right information about every and to the every users (Koene et al.,2017). However, it has been found out that the search engines do not provide all the links available to all the users.
The search engines are the gate keepers of the internet. Many of the students and the learners are using the search engine for retrieving the right information (Garfinkel, 2018). The search engines should not be biased in providing the information and should not give priority in making profit (Wienberg & Gordon,2015). The major concern regarding this, is that most of the search engine giants are owned by the private organizations and they are eventually target at making profit.
Significant steps can be taken in order to mitigate the ethical concerns about the search engines and the social media-
The digital foot print should be avoided by the search engine giants. The users are getting aware about the monitoring of their activity in the search engines (Swirsky et al.,2018). In this case, they may not be interested about using a search engine that will detect the user activity in the internet. In this context, some search are created which claim that they do not track the user activities.
The search engines should not be biased to something or some organizations. They should be aware of the manipulation of the information by some organization provided by search engines.
Search engines should be neutral in nature nad they should provide all the links of relevant information to all the users.
Social media should take effective role to stop the spreading of the violence and rumors.
Conclusion
The computer organizations have improved some of the essential services. The main objective of these services is to deliver sustainability and improved way of communication and learning. The aim of this technology is morally rich. It is expected from the technologies like search engines and social media that they will work neutrally and will not be biased to something. Moreover, they will keep making of the profit as a secondary thing. It can be concluded from the discussion that the search engines have achieved most of its objectives, however , there are some ethical issues regarding the way of their working. The elimination of these ethical issues will those search engines truly sustainable features of the advanced technology.
References
Roberts, L. D. (2015). Ethical issues in conducting qualitative research in online communities. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 12(3), 314-325.
Baker, J. S., & Tang, L. (2015). Exploring dialectical tensions for institutional maintenance: A case of Google and its censored Chinese search engine. International Journal of Communication, 9, 20.
Reyes, R. (2015). Legal Obligations of Search Engine Optimization Firms. Ariz. L. Rev., 57, 1115.
Garfinkel, S. L. (2018). Privacy and security concerns when social scientists work with administrative and operational data. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 675(1), 83-101.
Harris, S. E., & Robinson Kurpius, S. E. (2014). Social networking and professional ethics: Client searches, informed consent, and disclosure. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 45(1), 11.
Koene, A., Vallejos, E. P., Webb, H., Patel, M., Ceppi, S., Jirotka, M., & McAuley, D. (2017). Editorial responsibilities arising from personalization algorithms.
Lukaszewski, K. M., & Johnson, A. F. (2017). Social Networking Sites, Search Engines, and the Employment Process. The Wiley Blackwell handbook of the psychology of the internet at work, 231-256.
Swirsky, E. S., Michaels, C., Stuefen, S., & Halasz, M. (2018). Hanging the digital shingle: Dental ethics and search engine optimization. The Journal of the American Dental Association, 149(2), 81-85.
Voshel, E. H., & Wesala, A. (2015). Social media & social work ethics: Determining best practices in an ambiguous reality. Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics, 12(1), 67-76.
Wienberg, C., & Gordon, A. S. (2015, June). Insights on privacy and ethics from the web’s most prolific storytellers. In Proceedings of the ACM Web Science Conference (p. 22). ACM
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