When trying to define ethics in software engineering, the immediate idea that comes to mind is to not create software that intentionally harms people. This definition obviously covers malware and any malicious code which can be used to take over another system, steal information, spy on people, etc. However, ethics in software engineering is a little more broad and obscure than that. For example, ethics in software engineering also covers the idea that developers of any software or service used by the public must ensure that whatever they are working on is as technically sound and secure to the best of their abilities. On the extreme end of security, when software is written for dangerous things in the real world like weapons systems, the people programming this software must enforce an incredibly high standard of development and code review. Due to the higher stakes that comes along with this type of development, the developers in question must follow strict standards and policies. One final aspect of ethics I want to talk about is how developers are responsible for creating and enforcing rules on the behavior of their users. Online harassment and bullying is unfortunately a very real thing on the internet, whether it be through online games or social media, and the developers of these services must do everything in their power to create as friendly an environment that is possible.
Online harassment and cyber bullying is a very real thing in today’s world, and I am of the belief that the developers of services used as vectors for harassment are responsible for dealing with it. A very public incident of online harassment was Gamergate, which was a movement where several women who worked in different parts of the video game industry were subjected to various forms of harassment, including doxing, rape threats, and death threats. One woman, video game developer Zoe Quinn, was falsely accused by a bitter ex-boyfriend with no evidence of colluding and having relations with a video game journalist. Due to the post of this former boyfriend, Quinn was harassed online in pretty much every way possible. Gamergate spiraled into other topics like ethics in game journalism, and certain supporters of the movement said it had nothing to do with misogyny and harassment and was only about those ethics, but they failed to comprehend how the movement had its roots in this misogyny and harassment and was tainted from the start.
A large portion of this harassment came through Twitter, and Twitter has taken a lot of public flak from not punishing individuals and not creating the tools necessary to report these individuals. While Gamergate was a very public incident, this type of harassment happens in every social circle on Twitter, big or small. While it certainly isn’t easy to try and rectify these problems, especially for a service as large as Twitter, I believe that they’ve very slow in responding and doing what they can to reduce harassment. I’m not a crazy idealist and know that online harassment can never be eliminated completely, but the sluggishness of their response and implementation of solutions has been very frustrating. To conclude, I believe that they must be more transparent and forthcoming in how they plan to deal with these problems, and put mechanisms in place that allow users to easily report problem accounts. While it is certainly a difficult job, the onus is on developers to protect their users.