The Ethics of Corporate Censorship of Information-Sharing Behavior: A Nonconsequentialist Perspective

Zhong, Hanfeng; Watters, Paul A.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/109268 Copy

Description

Title

The Ethics of Corporate Censorship of Information-Sharing Behavior: A Nonconsequentialist Perspective

Author(s)

• Zhong, Hanfeng
• Watters, Paul A.

Issue Date

2020

Keyword(s)

• corporate censorship
• personal data
• social media

Abstract

Recent research on information-seeking behavior (Watters and Ziegler 2016) has suggested a role for managing access to ensure consistency with local regulatory or policy requirements. However, sharing of self-generated, personal data—as facilitated by socialmedia companies—should be relatively free of information-sharing controls. While many studies have examined government censorship, the extent to which the private sector is complicit is often unclear. In this study, we examine whether censorship appears to occur on a number of social-media and related sites, including the transmission of sensitive keywords and URLs. The results indicate that some level of private-sector censorship is prevalent, often in breach of the technology companies' own terms and conditions. In some cases, apparently harmless information is overblocked. These companies need to be more transparent about their censorship mechanisms and subject their actual policies and procedures to scrutiny and public debate. Removing controls on information-sharing behavior is consistent with a nonconsequentialist perspective on privacy.

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press and the Illinois School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Series/Report Name or Number

Library Trends 68 (4). Spring 2020

ISSN

0024-2594

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/109268

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2020.0018

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2020 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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