1. IntroductionInnovation and research infuture technologies can have great possible benefits for us but they can alsoraise social and ethical privacy concerns. Emerging technologies have alwaysdrawn a very fine line boundary between what we class as our humanity andprivacy. These forms of technologies that push these boundaries come in theform of either wearable devices or platforms to enhance or better connect withthe internet.
Yet the main focus of this report will be on the Internet-basedphoto-sharing application Instagram. An app based service that lets registeredusers upload photos or videos to a platform page. Since its launch in October2010, it has attracted more than 150 million active users, with an average of55 million photos uploaded by users per day, and more than 16 billion photosshared (Hu et al, 2014………………….), the apps popular use today might come in theform of taking a picture of food, but it5 has undergone a transformation in itshistory since it started that has provided both benefits and controversies forthe user.
In order to realistically understand and address possible ethical andsocial issues, people need to have an understanding of what such privacy issuesmight be. This report will begin byclarifying its concepts of emerging technologies and principles ofinvestigating the ethical consequences. It will explore the privacy and ethicalissues related to the field of emerging information and communicationtechnologies (ICTs)……………… Finally, in conclusion, this report will recommendhow Instagram could be made more privacy friendly for the future. 2. Ethical Issues Social networking websitessuch as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have become the established normalityfor communication and maintaining relationships.
While these websites areuseful tools for exchanging information, Ethical implications still gnaw at theusers of this ICT. Instagram inparticular focuses more on attention to details in its picture contents andties this in with human emotion, examples include the introduction to hearts tolike a picture or when someone on the app has posted a picture in a while itwill notify other followers. As Waterloo explains “Many social media platformsencourage emotional self-expression, inviting users to regularly update ontheir thoughts, feelings, and experiences to their larger network” (Waterloo etal, 2017, p.3). This activity on the platform is all to generate revenue forthe company through advertising that gets collected through big data on whatyou’ve liked in the past but more on that later.
As with most emergingtechnologies and social media platforms, Instagram has its share ofcontroversies that has helped shape what the app is today. The breachingprivacy topics mentioned in this section will be the terms of service policychange, Allegations of censorship and contact information hacking. These are afew implications that will be mentioned throughout this section, just to pointout that Instagram is but one example of how different issues can havedifferent meanings for different technologies or in different applicationscenarios. However, there are many similarities and there is important overlapbetween these technologies. This section therefore offers a brief outline ofthe main themes and some of the key sub-themes of this report.
2.1 Policy changeOn December 17, 2012, Instagramannounced several changes to its Terms of Service. The new Terms of Servicesuggested Instagram would be allowed to use pictures in advertisements withoutnotifying or compensating users, and would be able to disclose user data toFacebook and to advertisers. Instagram also proposed that the parents of minorsimplicitly consent to the use of their children’s’ images for advertisingpurposes. Fiesler and Bruckman point out that “This situation served asa reminder that those sharing creative works online may not always be aware ofhow their work can be used.” (Fiesler& Bruckman, 2014, p.2552) This caused a big outcry for the company and made othersocial media platforms such as Facebook look very untrustworthy, yet on the contrarypeople only started to only realise the policy changes when it became frontpagenews.
(Taken from the BBC news website: http://www.bbc.co.
uk/news/technology-20810344)This prompted the question that Instagramcould change the legal binding conditions at any time without the knowledge of theuser, as Fiesler and Bruckman said “Considering that reading only theprivacy policy of every site visited would take the average Internet user over200 hours per year, it is not surprising that many do not take the time to readoften complicated terms, conditions, and policies” (Fiesler & Bruckman, 2014, p.2552). As a result, afew days later, Instagram again revised the Terms of Service announcing that itwould withdraw some of the proposed changes. Instagram backed off a plan to usethe names, images, and photos of users for advertising purposes by deletinglanguage about displaying photos without compensation.
