Ethics and sustainability in websites

After reading scenariogirls' thought-provoking post on ethics in website development I was inspired by the considerations raised there to extend my own thinking about ethics, and also about sustainability, in the online world.

In the context of work on gambling sites scenariogirl asked the excellent question that online practitioners should ask themselves more often (and I paraphrase) - is the work I'm doing ethical?

In gambling sites it would seem to me the issues are fairly clearcut - online gambling is not an ethical business for a practitioner to be engaged in. It's a business that creates significant impoverishment in some sections of the community, and one built only on the precept of taking money from the community, but providing no valuable service or product in return. Online gambling sites can't even claim to make a cheap dinner for the oldies like the clubs do!

(As a side note - while even great projects such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Sydney Opera House and NSW state hospitals have been built on the proceeds of lotteries, I nonetheless think it's a terrible cost to the integrity of the NSW state government that it is so beholden to the proceeds of gambling.)

What though, I wondered, would be the questions worth asking where the case is not so clearcut. What are the ethics and sustainability issues around work for other organisations with more acceptable business models. What would make one client better to work for than another? Would it be ok for example to work at the more desirable employer Yahoo when its activities in China have seen the imprisonment of a dissident but the management has expressed contrition and a desire to do better, or what about building a website for a mining company or a bank?

Such questions are obviously complex and intriguing:

• What is an ethical online activity?
• What is a sustainable online activity?
• How can practitioners assess potential employers on these questions?
• What about an employer's offline activities?

Using a phrase 'online activity' sounds a little contorted I must admit, but I wanted to ensure the scope of my thinking is broad and includes all the inputs, processes and outputs of an organisation's online activity, and in each case ask this question: is it sustainable in all its facets, and is it ethical?

What are the ethical issues you face in your online work?

Comments

[Lisa]

You know this seems trivial in comparison to online gambling etc. But I do have an issue with businesses, particularly web agencies and the like, that demand crazy working hours from their staff.

When people are constantly required to work 10+ hours a day, it says to me that the business is not prepared to hire more staff and are happy to take money from the pockets of their employees. This effectively reduces the agreed salary of employees and fails to value their work appropriately.

I'm not talking about the occasional late night, we all do that. I'm talking about continual, expected, long hours.

[scott parsons]

Back when I was working for Patts we had a tobacco company for a client and people were able to opt out from working for that client if they found it objectionable. I don't know what they would have done if everybody had refused to work with them but...

The option was there, and I guess it would have been there for other types of sites, it never came up for me as nothing I considered objectionable crossed my desk.

I think it is very important that people consider the morality of what they do. During last years sony rootkit debacle some of the programmers who created the nasty DRM were outed and quizzed as to why they had done it... just a job they claimed. I wasn't satisfied with that. But then when you talk about gambling websites, well I have less of a problem with those than you do (as long as they are fair and not crooked, which might be asking a lot) it is peoples choice to gamble. I do understand issues with gambling addictions and don't like the gambling sites myself, but if I did I wouldn't want anyone to stop me using one.