Social Media Data-Our Ethical Conundrum

Our field is engaging more and more in the development of algorithms, models, and technologies to better understand human demographics, opinions, and behaviors. These data range from product and movie reviews to opinions about issues of the day. While we have begun to grapple with some ethical issues associated with using these data, we may still be ignoring, or at least underestimating, the ethical complexities related to the computational tasks we work on, the data we use, and the technologies we create. This paper focuses on the challenges associated with using social media data and the ethical considerations these challenges create. We frame the ethical dilemmas within the context of data privacy and algorithmic bias (fairness) and show how and when different ethical concerns arise. A recurrent theme throughout is the lack of transparency. Therefore, we conclude by suggesting a need exists to consider transparency throughout the software development lifecycle and develop mechanisms that incorporate ideas related to transparency as part of the foundation of human-computer systems. By cataloging these complexities and their ethical considerations, we hope that our field pauses and thinks through these issues as we continue to build algorithms and tools for social media.