To me, software engineering ethics means producing robust quality code that you won’t regret writing.
What constitutes harrassment online can be diffcult to define and exponentially more difficult to prevent.
Twitch is a website on which people stream, live broadcast, themselves to audiences thousands to millions strong. Viewers can subscribe to channels for a fee or donate money. This income can be enough for steamers to live off and in some cases thrive off.
Over a number of years a teenager from Canada harrassed dozens of female streamers on Twitch. The harassment ranged from spamming them with messages and pizza deliveries to “SWATTING” their houses, issuing fake statements to the police that deployed fully armed SWAT teams, and doxing them, releasing private information without consent.
His harassment was known about for over a year to law enforcement and yet he couldn’t be touched because of his residence in antoher country. In the meantime he continued his torrent and his victims were scared to sleep after experiencing multiple “SWATTINGS”. In some cases they loss income because they were scared to stream on Twitch in fear of enciting another attack, dropped out of college from the stress, and loss the enjoyment they peviously found in playing video games.
In the fight to stop the harasser many of his victims banded together to gather evidence. B.A. Finely a Gerogian officer committed over 1,000 hours of work and documented over 40 cases of “SWATTINGS” and called the FBI until someone took the case.
One night the harrasser streamed himself, not on Twitch, for close to 9 hours. In that time he made two “SWATTING” calls. A number of his victims watched the stream live and informed the authorites who relayed the information to Canadian officials. He was arrested four days later. He was sentenced to 16 months in youth jail and will be realsed when 18.
The ethical implications of this situation are vast, from the lack of legislature about “SWATTING” to the way companies and police prioritize harassment claims. We shall focus on the software engineering based ethical issues.
-Should software engineers set stricter chat/post rules and should they be harsher with violaters?
(i.e. Permanetly block any user who uses, even once, regardless of intent certain key words)
-Should software engineers design alorithms based on the premise of 'innocent until proven guilt' or its reverse?
(i.e. Take action then review the case, or review the case before taking action.)
The ACM’s guidelines call for software engineers to “act consistently with public interest,” “maintain integrity and independence in their professional judgement”, and “ensure that their products and related modifications meet the highest professional standards possible.”
In this situation I believe that the ethical course of action to take as a software engineer would be similarr to police “respond high” tactic. Enable protocol that protects the victims first and assume all reports are true.
Any system can be warped and used for malicious intent. So why make it easier by giving power to abusers and harrassers?