Friday, February 7, 2020

Information Transparency: Do We Deserve Privacy?


“Consent forms for the treatment of personal information clarify the extent to which privacy and anonymity will be granted” This quote is taken from “The ethics of information transparency”, written by Matteo Turilli and Luciano Floridi. Does this quote hold true in the modern and technological age that we live in or do many of the tech companies that we’ve come to depend on stray away from this? 

When considering the ethics of information transparency and its relation to current events, it’s most important to consider social media platforms, most specifically, Facebook. Recently it was discovered that Facebook had been sharing members data with other companies without the consent of the people. To quote Turilli and Floridi, “Privacy, anonymity and copyright are typical examples of ethical principles that regulate the flow of information.” With this it becomes clear that Facebook has been acting as an unethical organization and lacks the proper transparency of information of their actions. How are we supposed to trust a company that doesn’t follow the simple ethical principle of privacy? 


Answering the question above, I believe that we cannot trust such an organization. While Turilli and Floridi both mention that there are ethical reasons for an organization to both keep information confidential and release information, they do make it clear that privacy is at utmost importance. When I turn on my computer to use any type of social media, I expect my interests to remain private. Moving forward this issue should be the greatest concern for lawmakers and the regulation of tech companies. If anything is certain these organizations must be most transparent about where personal information is going being that privacy is the most important to a large majority of the users on these social media platforms.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Jack, I like the way you take the reading and relate it to a relevant recent event. You do a great job of referencing the reading throughout your post and you stick to the central topic. One suggestion for improvement would be that I’d like to hear more of your thoughts. You made a lot of connections from the reading to this event, but now I’m interested in what you think; what should be done to make sure Facebook follows privacy rules? You also forgot a period after your first sentence.

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