Why Web Professionals Should Unfriend Facebook & Why all ‘True Professions’ demand a Code of Ethics
Saturday, May 8th, 2010
This article is a very long comment reply to Matt Robin from yesterday’s article about Why Web Professionals Should Unfriend Facebook. I thought that reply deserved its own momentum… it’s about why web professionals should have a Code of Ethics like any other profession.
Matt, its an individual and personal decision and I don’t really expect others to follow… nor should they really. I expect others to think about it though – Zeldman, Holzschlag, across the continuum to everyone like us. And I’m far from the only person saying this… only that I’m saying this in the context of web professionals only.
Here is another reason to fear Facebook – on behalf of the battered wives who are hiding, the people who slip in witness protection programs, for undercover government officials… for people with enemies who can use simple bits of information to locate who you love, are friends with and what time you (or your children) come and go. That’s a dangerous facet of other people’s private information.
Personally, I’ve got a few people – not not the junkies who might make a pestering phone call, but I mean a couple of solid enemies who have done many years for violent crimes – who could utilise the opportunity. So its definately not for me the moment they give free access to 3rd party applications without my permission… I’ve lost control of what tenuous privacy there is.
If my safety is compromised – how fares the battered wife, the stalked, or societies vulnerable?
However, the facet I chose to write about was simply the ‘condoning of bad ethics’ by apparent web professionals… because one of the problems with labeling ourselves that is to say yes we have an ethical obligation somewhere implicit in the word professional. We aren’t the police – I can’t force anyone to leave FB or even dent their armour ha ha… but I recognise that professionalism without that ethical integrity is a hollow word.
Most professions by the way have a ‘code of ethics’ that they choose to support. Where is ours?
