Editorial: Ethics online?
The internet has become a resource for practically anything you want to find. From recipes for your favorite dessert to recipes for making bombs, you can find almost anything online. Recently, a group of teenage girls from Florida decided to make their YouTube debut by taping an attack on a classmate and then posting it on the popular video Web site. While this may seem shocking to some people, it’s only one example of how extreme some people will go on the Internet.
Ethics on the Internet seem to be a slippery slope. Since this medium is always evolving and everyday there are new Web sites and issues to tackle, it’s difficult to regulate. Unlike newspapers and television, which can be monitored by the government, the Net makes information that could normally be secluded to a particular area of the world available for anyone, anywhere. With such an excess of information available to practically everyone, some Web sites are exploiting weaknesses, taking advantage of stereotypes and hatred and even glamorizing death.
Support groups for illnesses and weaknesses have been a commonality in America for decades. From AA groups to Weight Watchers, support groups are looked on as a positive part of the healing process. Yet the Net has fostered new groups for people with problems of their own. Blog sites such as, LiveJournal and Xanga feature web forums where people suffering from anorexia post comments in support of each other. Members share tips on crash dieting, compete over how much weight they’ve lost and contribute techniques for hiding weight loss from loved ones and doctors.
Another disturbing part of online forums is the pro-suicide sites that have popped up all over the web. Many of these sites offer advice on meeting death rather then embracing life and they have caused plenty of controversy over their mere existence. While most people would rather help a suicidal person find a reason to live, these sites point out reasons why life isn’t worth living and ways to end it all. A morbid representation of online blogging, these sites have taken the information world of the Internet to a new level.
A third and still troubling site online has reached popularity without any ethical question. MyDeathSpace.com is a Web site dedicated to remembering the deceased by providing links to their MySpace pages. Members post news stories, online obituaries and links to leave comments on the recently deceased’s personal page. The site asks members to be respectful when leaving comments and sells T-shirts for patrons to advertise their disturbing form of postmortem respect. While in theory this site may be a good way to remember those who have passed on, it seems more a way to exploit the deceased’s passing.
With the difficulty of regulating the Internet there’s no way to ban sites such as were mentioned above. Despite their moral and ethical implications, these sites survive and even flourish. The easiest way to combat these strange representations of online blogs is to use the internet for good. Perhaps we have stream lined these issues that were once hidden behind closed doors, but has discussing them so openly done any good?
