A methodology for internal Web ethics

M. Vafopoulos, P. Stefaneas, I. Anagnostopoulos, K. O'Hara

Philoweb, WWW2012WSSC: “webscience.org/2010/E.4.3 Ethics in the Web”

Research questions

what changes need to be incorporated in the Web to best serve humanity?

Can philosophy help in this direction? How?

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Outline

① Hypotheses ② Being, space & time in the Web③ Hayek’s freedom ④ 3-level analysis– The Technological Web– The Contextualized Web– The Economic Web

⑤ Results & discussion 3

Hypotheses

Web:• ethically-relevant social machine• magma of Users and code

start from the Web assume a self-contained Web orthe “manna from heaven” hypothesis(internal ethics analysis)

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“manna from heaven” hypothesis

• Web is the only existing system • human beings are communicating &

working solely through it • a compassionate ‘God’ provides the

necessary quantity of ‘manna’, fulfilling all human needs, with no cost & effort

• Web being, space & time

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Being, space & time in the Web

• A being exists if and only if there is a communication channel linking to it

• Web beings communicated through the Web

• Web space: the Web being’s URI, incoming & outgoing links

• Web time: visiting durations 6

URIminimal description of invariant elements

in communication through the Webborderline, interlocutor & fingerprint of

Web beingenables transformation from digital to Webdirectly connected to existence (birth,

access, navigate, edit & death of a Web being)

other characteristics of Web beings may change in time

a change in URI means the death of existing & birth of a new Web being 7

The Web space

• a division of position & place created by the links among Web beings

• each Web being occupies a specific locus in the Web network

• a 3d “geographic coordinate system” • heterogeneous• many “gravity” & relative “distance”

metrics• Pagerank initially build on Web space

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The Web time• a series of choices (visits) in the Web

space (Bergsonian durations)

• visiting selections attach semantic meaning

• casual relationships among Web beings

• counting: Log file as a generic common property & co-operation in the Web

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The Web time

Durations are becoming: Discoverable, Observable, Traceable Processable, Massive

increases material dimension of networks

enables reconstruction of consciousness & memory of Users

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How to analyze the Web as an ethical space?

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Freedom I

o the source of values o“freedom-coercion” tradeoff –more options to solve problems collectively & innovate, but –some of these options may be used in ways that cause coercion

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Freedom II• Theories:how to construct a system that selects, with minimum social cost which positive options to sacrifice in order to minimize coercion (or the dual problem) • start with Hayek’s approach

because confronts with most Web characteristics

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Hayek’s freedom I • State posses the monopoly to

enforce coercive power through General Rules

• Personal Sphere & Property counterweight state power

• General Rules are enforced equally & describe the borderlines between State & Personal Sphere

• Property is a basic realization of General Rules

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Hayek’s freedom II • Competition is possible by the

dispersion of Property• Mutually advantageous collaboration

is based on Competition in service provision

• effective anti-monopolistic policy: require from the monopolist (including the state) to treat all customers alike

• Individuals should be responsible & accountable for their actions

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3-level analysis

Apply theory of freedom according to Web’s evolution from plain s/w to ecosystem

• The Technological Web– Internet infrastructure & Web software

• The Contextualized Web– Sets of rules enforced through trust

• The Economic Web– Economic contexts

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The Web as a space of Freedom

Freedom free access & inter-connection of any compatible software/device

freely navigate, create and update Web Beings and links universality, openness & separation of layers in engineering, editing, searching & navigating

establish specific contexts in order to form beliefs that some Users/Web beings are trustworthy

no barriers to economize

Coercion badware applications (e.g. computer-zombies)

traffic censorship (e.g.“Snooping”)

inadequate quality of transmission

badware-infected Web Beings central control & censoring of traffic“walled gardens” in SN (privacy threats & fragmentation)

manipulation of indexing & searching (e.g. spamdexing)

un-trustworthy technologies, business & governments badware & malicious representations

concentration of power in a minority of Users inability of some people to benefit from the Web economy

Internet

Web software

Contextualized Web

Economic Web

Personal sphere

IP address: can only be processed for certain reasons oWeb: log file common ownership by

design (admin & navigator) o architectural element of co-operation

oAdmin: direct access oNavigator: not straightforward

o not proper practices for collecting traffic

oshould be further analyzed

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General rules

Treating all Internet Users, Web Navigators & Editors equally • profile customization • open technological standards• efficient business incentives

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The contextualized Web• Web 2.5: not only User-

Generated Content, but context • communication is central to

establishing trust (Habermas) • rich connectivity of the Web is

bound into its function • antitrust & coercion= the prices

for widespread & beneficial trust 20

The contextualized Web

internal Web ethics: • ensure not that antitrust

happens, but • that it is outweighed by

beneficial trust to as great a degree as possible consistent with Hayekian notions of freedom

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Challenges in the economic Web I

obtain the right balance between: • open access and processing of

online information (e.g. socially aware cloud storage, g-work)

& • provision of incentives to

produce content & to develop network infrastructure

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Challenges in the economic Web II

• accelerate socio-economic development by facilitating life-critical functions in the developing world (e.g. W3F)

• enable transparency & participation in the developed world (e.g. Open Data)

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Challenges in the economic Web III

o“Link economy” o“App economy” oexcessive market power in

Search Engine market

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Results I • centralization of traffic & data

control • rights on visiting log file • custom User profiles • interplay among function,

structure & moral values

are directly connected to the quality of freedom in the Web 25

Results II

issues about freedom in lower levels of the Web (i.e. technology) have crucial impact on the subsequent levels of higher complexity (i.e. context, economy)

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Next steps

o involve more theories & disciplineso relax assumptionso connect to engineering issues (e.g.

TAG)o Webizing humanity & humanizing Web

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Webizing humanity & humanizing Web

Web: • emerged not as a business project with

hierarchical structures but • as a creative & open space of volunteers

outside traditional market and pricing• markets would have never invested such

amounts in labor costs to develop it • temporal disconnection between effort &

rewards • symbiosis between non-financial and

financial incentives 28

Webizing humanity – humanizing web

In economyo incorporate in the entire economy, the best

of the symbiosis between virtues and economic incentives in the Web

o the Web has still many lessons to take from the long-living market mechanisms on how to best orchestrate effort and reward in society

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Role of philosophy

What society can learn from the Web?

What can teach it in order to become more useful?

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Thank you!

• More in vafopoulos.org

References• Being, space and time in the Web.

Metaphilosophy (forthcoming).• The Web economy: goods, users,

models and policies. Foundations and Trends in Web science (forthcoming).

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appendix

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The Web time

“time of social systems” is • indeterministic,• Heterogeneous • irreversible • built on the Einsteinian time of

physical systems.

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The case of Net Neutrality

• QoS issues• Technological approach (e.g.

Flow-Aware Networking) • generic freedom-coercion trade-

offs are useful in framing the feasibility space but incomplete in treating more specific cases in practice (like NN)

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Flow-Aware NetworkingFAN may ensure neutrality along with the awareness of QoS create an occurrence, upon which the implicit separation will be performed solely based on the current link status (e.g. dataflow congestion, traffic bottleneck etc.). Therefore, all datagrams are forwarded unconditionally in the pipeline, but they are also “equal”, subject to be separated or even dropped when the network tolerance demands it. The main advantage of FAN-based architectures is that they differentiate the data flow, taking into account only the traffic characteristics of the currently transmitted information. Hence, apart from data discrimination, it is not possible to comprehensively discriminate certain applications, services and end-Users.

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