Ethical Issues Concerning Online Social Networks

Abstract

The unprecedented development of online social networks raises a series of questions regarding the users’ ethical behaviour and also the moral responsibility of the social network sites administrators. The purpose of this paper is to make a philosophical analysis of three ethical themes treated both from the perspective of the online user as well as that of the social network sites (S.N.S) administrators. The themes are: privacy, anonymity and trust. Privacy is analysed from the point of view of philosophy of rights and from the point of view of the ethical responsibility of the site owners to protect internet user personal data. Anonymity and trust are treated together and the paper stands to demonstrate that trust can be built between online anonyms as a duty regarding respect and moral behaviour between two human beings, even if they don’t know each other. The paper offers answers to these questions and describes the existent theories that deal with these three ethical themes.