Ethics Questions Dog Google, Apple, and Internet Advertisers

May 18th, 2009 • Posted in: News

Privacy and propriety, along with new wrinkles on old fraud techniques, make headlines in technology coverage

NEW YORK and SAN FRANCISCO
Accelerating technology collided head-on with several ethical dilemmas last week. Among the stories:

• Google, facing continuing privacy objections over its Street View service, has agreed to reshoot images in Japan. Locals complained that Street View, which provides 360-degree photos as surfers click on a street map, contained intrusive images, according to trade journal E-Week. Google has promised to change the camera angles used on the car-mounted cameras. Last month Google was prevented from photographing an English village by residents who formed a human chain to block the Google camera-car.
• The avalanche of new programs for Apple’s iPhone has put the company in the uncomfortable role of censor, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Apple’s problems started when it approved, then banned, a game called “Baby Shaker.” Last week, Apple denied a request to approve an application that lets users take a photo of themselves and morph their faces onto a photo of a religious icon, including Jesus. Also banned from the “App Store” was a program that Apple said could be used to pirate copyrighted material.
• There’s a new wrinkle in online fraud: people gaming the “pay-per-click” advertising system by hiring workers in impoverished nations to relentlessly click on websites. In pay-per-click, advertisers pay every time a surfer clicks on their link. But as the New York Times reports, some organized fraudsters click on the links to make money for the sites that carry the links or to damage a competitor by clicking on the competitor’s ad and running up big bills. The Times notes that the phenomenon has given birth to a new industry: click fraud detection businesses that use mathematical formulae to determine if the clicks are for real.

Sources: E-Week, May 13 — New York Times, May 14 — Christian Science Monitor, May 12.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Oct. 20, 2008 — Related Newsline story, July 7, 2008 — Related Newsline story, May 19, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 10, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 13, 2006.

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One Response »

1. Ethics Newsline® » News » Media Ethics Featured in World-Press Reports on May 25th, 2009 at 10:56 pm:

   [...] more information, see: Related Newsline story, May 18 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 27 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 20 [...]

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