A big issue with ethics in computer science is that the definition changes depending on who you ask. What is the difference between a white-hat hacker verses a black-hat hacker? If a white-hat hacker is working for the US government and is attempting to gain access to another country’s computer network, where is the ethical line in the sand preventing them from being called a black-hat hacker? The line does not exist, so how can one be considered ethical and one not? I think of ethics like morals, it is greatly influenced by an individual’s perspective on the matter, which makes it a very complicated topic.
With such a huge number of active users, 2.32 billion in December 2018, Facebook has undoubtedly become an integral part of our society. The issue is that all these users are influenced by the platform that Facebook provides, but Facebook is a company with the sole intention of producing a profit.
It is incredibly simple to create an account on Facebook, before you know it, you’ve skipped right over the tiny links to their terms of use and privacy policies, having no idea what you’ve just authorized Facebook to do with your data once you press the “Sign Up” button. If you’re a billion-dollar company trying to add to your revenue, I’m sure you would find this ethical, but I do not. Unfortunately, this is just one example of many where Facebook is operating in what many consider to be an unethical manner.
Although there are many code of ethics guidelines released from various organizations, the organizations do a poor job of communicating with the public, leading to a lack of understanding regarding ethics. Ultimately this has led to huge ethical dilemmas in our digitally dependent world; should Facebook and others start changing their platforms to be more ethically conscious, or would these changes be considered unethical due to disrupting the platforms for their existing user bases? Ethics in computer science can be summed up to one word, complicated.