## 1. Introduction and Overview




It may be difficult to imagine today's world without search
engines. Which high school student has not used a Web search engine to query
about some topic or subject? Of course, it is quite possible that many
Internet users, both young and old, do not consciously distinguish
between the search engines they use and Web browsers that now also
typically include search engines as a feature within their user
interface. But virtually all Internet users have come to expect and
depend on the instantaneous results they receive in response to their
various search queries. While there is no shortage of definitions of
"search engine," none has been accepted as *the*
standard or universally agreed upon definition. For purposes of this
entry, however, the definition of a (Web) search engine, put forth by
Halavais (2009, 5-6), is "an information retrieval system
that allows for keyword searches of distributed digital text."
We note that this definition includes some important technical terms
and concepts that, in turn, need defining and further elucidation. Our
examination of key technical concepts underlying search engines is
intended to provide a useful context for our analysis of the ethical
implications. In this sense, Blanke (2005, 34) is correct that an
adequate analysis of the ethical aspects of search engines
"requires knowledge about the technology and its
functioning."




We begin with a brief sketch of the history and evolution of search
engines, from their conception in the pre-Internet era to the
development and implementation of contemporary ("Web 2.0"
era) search engines such as Google. Our examination of important
historical developments of this technology is intended to address our
first question, noted above: "What is a search engine?" It
also provides a backdrop for analyzing our second major question,
"Why are search engines problematic from an ethical
perspective?" where a cluster of ethical concerns involving
search engine technology is examined. These include issues ranging
from search engine bias and the problem of opacity/non-transparency,
to concerns affecting privacy and surveillance, to a set of issues
involving censorship and democracy. We also describe some emerging
ethical concerns affecting (cyber)security--at the data, system,
and (inter)national levels--generated by the use of
"discoverable search engines" in the context of the
Internet of Things. Additionally, we question whether search engine
companies have any special moral obligations, e.g., in light of their
"privileged" placed in society as "gatekeepers of
the Web" (Hinman, 2005, 21), for which they should be held
accountable. In analyzing this question, we also examine a key role
that trust now plays for users who have come to depend on search
engines, and the companies that develop them, for access to accurate
information.




Finally, in the concluding
section, we briefly mention some impacts that search engines have for
broader philosophical issues (especially in the area of epistemology)
that may not be solely or mainly ethical in nature. However, an
adequate analysis of these issues is beyond the scope of this
entry.


## 2. Search Engine Development and Evolution: A Short History




Because search engines provide Internet users with access to important
information by directing them to links to available online resources
on a plethora of topics, many are inclined to see search engine
technology in a positive light; some might also assume, as Noble
(2018) and others note, that this technology is
"value-neutral." However, search engines can raise a
number of ethical controversies. Before examining these controversies,
however, we first briefly discuss the history of search engine
technology via categories that, for our purposes, reflect four
distinct eras: (i) Pre-Internet, (ii) Internet (pre-Web), (iii) early
Web, and (iv) Web 2.0. We will see how technical developments in each
era have had some implications for the cluster of ethical issues
examined in
Section 3.


### 2.1 The Pre-Internet Era of Computing and Information Retrieval (1940s-1970s)




Today, we tend to associate search engines with computer technology,
and perhaps more specifically with Internet-based computing and
electronic devices. Yet, the early work in search/information
retrieval systems was carried out independently of developments in
electronic computing. Whereas the first (general purpose) electronic
computer--the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And
Computer)--was completed in November 1945 and announced in
February 1946 (Palfreman and Swade, 1991), several decades would pass
before Internet search engines became available. Because ENIAC and
other early computers were designed primarily to "crunch
numbers," relatively little thought had been given to the kinds
of information-retrieval systems that could be used to *search*
through the large amount of data that those non-networked (or
"stand-alone") computers were capable of storing. However,
some information-retrieval theorists, as we shall see, had already
begun to worry about the amount of information that was becoming
available during this period and that, in all likelihood, would
proliferate with the advent of computers. In particular, they were
concerned about how an ever-expanding repository of information could
be organized and retrieved in a practical way. Halavais (2009, 13)
notes that early computers "drew on the ideas of librarians and
filing clerks" for arranging the stored information that would
be retrieved. But some of the leading thinkers in the emerging field
of information retrieval (or IR), which Van Couvering (2008) describes
as a "hybrid" academic discipline combining elements of
information science and computer science, saw that traditional methods
for retrieving information would not be effective in the era of
electronic computer systems.




One visionary who saw the need for a new kind of organizing and
retrieval scheme to manage the expanding volume of information was
Vannevar Bush, perhaps the most important figure in the history of
information-retrieval/search-engine theory in the pre-Internet era. In
his classic article, "As We May Think" (*Atlantic
Monthly*, July 1945), published approximately six months before
ENIAC's official announcement, Bush remarked,



> 
> The summation of human experience is being expanded at a
> prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the
> consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was
> used in the days of square-rigged ships.
> 




However, Bush believed that a technological solution to this problem
was possible through a system he called *memex*, which he
described as a



> 
> device in which an individual stores all his
> books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it
> can be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.
> 



 Bush
envisioned the memex behaving like an "intricate web of
trails" similar to the function of the human mind, which he
believed works by a method of "association" and not via an
alphabetical index (of the kind typically used in libraries and other
cataloging schemes). According to Levy (2008, 508), the most
"innovative feature" of Bush's memex system was the
establishing of



> 
> associative indices between portions of
> microfilmed text--what we now call hypertext links--so
> that researchers could follow trails of useful information through
> masses of literature.
> 


 Via Bush's "associative
indexing" scheme, different pieces of information could be linked
or tied together, "as any single item may be caused at will to
select immediately and automatically another." Thus, Bush is
often credited with having anticipated the kinds of search engine
functions that would eventually be used on the Internet and the World
Wide Web.




Two other important figures in the history of search engine theory
who made significant contributions during the pre-Internet era
were Gerald Salton and Ted Nelson. Salton, who some consider the
"father of modern search technology," developed the SMART
(Salton's Magic Automatic Retriever of Text) information
retrieval system. And Nelson, who developed hypertext in 1963,
significantly influenced search engine theory through his Project
Xanadu (Wall 2011). Although several years passed before Salton's
and Nelson's contributions could be incorporated into modern
search engines, it is worth noting that some very
"primitive" search functions had been built into the
operating systems for some pre-Internet-era computers. For example,
Halavais points out that the UNIX operating system supported a search
utility called "Finger." Via the Finger command, a UNIX
user could search for one or more users who also had active accounts on
a particular UNIX system. To inquire about a UNIX user named
"Jones," for example, one could simply enter the command
"Finger Jones" at the user prompt on the command line.
However, this search function was very limited, since the only kind of
information that could be retrieved was information about whether one
or more users were currently logged into the system and about which
time those users logged in/out. But, as Halavais points out, this
rudimentary search facility also enabled UNIX users to arrange limited
social gatherings--e.g., users could "Finger" one
another to set up a time to play tennis after work (provided, of
course, that the users were logged into their UNIX accounts at that
time).




Some of the conceptual/technological breakthroughs that occurred
during the pre-Internet era of search engine development made possible
two kinds of ethical issues examined in Section 3. 
First,
Bush's "associative indexing" scheme for retrieving
information, as opposed to more traditional cataloging schemes based
on straight-forward inferential rules and techniques, enabled (even if
unintentionally) some of the kinds of "bias" and
objectivity-related concerns affecting users' search
results that we examine in Sections 3.1 and 4.1. 
Second, the kind of
search function made possible by the UNIX "Finger" utility,
enabling UNIX users to retrieve information about the availability of
fellow UNIX users and to acquire information about which times those
users logged into and logged out from the system, generated some
privacy-and-monitoring-related concerns that are included among the
ethical issues we examine in Sections 3.2 and 
3.3.


### 2.2 The Early Internet (pre-Web) Era (1980s)




By the 1960s, plans for developing a vast network of computer networks
(i.e., what was eventually to become the Internet) were well
underway. And by 1970, work had begun on the ARPANET (Advanced
Research Projects Agency Network), which is commonly viewed as the
predecessor of the Internet. This US-based project was funded by DARPA
(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) into the late 1980s, when
the National Science Foundation Network (NSFnet) took over the project
(Spinello 2011). Although multiple computer networks existed during
this period, they were not easily able to communicate and exchange
data with one another; a common protocol was needed for the various
networks to exchange data between systems. The Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) architecture was eventually
selected as the standard protocol for the newly emerging
Internet. With the implementation of this new standard, there was
considerable optimism (especially among many in the academic research
community) about the potential for sharing the data that resided in
the various computers systems comprising the fledgling
Internet. However, one very important challenge still remained: How
could Internet users locate the rich resources potentially available
to them? To do this, a sophisticated *search* program/utility,
with a robust indexing system, was needed to point to the available
computer databases that existed and to identify the content that
resided in those databases. The first indexes on the Internet were
fairly primitive, and as Halavais (2009) points out, "had to be
created by hand."




With TCP/IP now in place, privately owned computer
networks--including LANs (local area networks) and WANs (wide
area networks)--were able to communicate with one another and, in
principle at least, also able to exchange vast amounts of information
over the network. However, another protocol--one that would be
layered on top of TCP/IP--was needed to accomplish this
objective. So, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), a client/server-based
system, was developed and implemented in response to this need. To
exchange or share files with a fellow Internet user in this scheme,
one first had to set up an FTP
 server.[1]
 Users could then upload files to and
retrieve them from an FTP server, via an FTP client. Perhaps more
importantly, they could also now effectively
*search* for files with one of the newly developed search
engines, the first of which was called ARCHIE.




The ARCHIE search engine enabled users to enter queries based on a
limited set of features--mainly "file names."
ARCHIE's searchable database of file names was comprised of the
file directory listings of hundreds of systems available to public FTP
servers (and eventually to "anonymous" FTP servers as
well). In the early 1990s, two other search engines were also fairly
prominent: VERONICA (Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-Wide Index to
Computer Archives) and JUGHEAD (Jonzy's Universal Gopher
Hierarchy Excavation and Display). Both VERONICA and JUGHEAD had an
advantage over the ARCHIE search engine in that they were able to
search for plain-text files, in addition to searching for file names.
These two search engines also worked in connection with a system called
GOPHER. According to Halavais (2009, 22), GOPHER's
"menu-driven approach" to search helped to bring
"order to the Internet," since users "could now
navigate through menus that organized documents."




Some of the technological breakthroughs that occurred during the
early-Internet era of search engine development exacerbated a
privacy-related ethical issue examined in Section 3. 
Specifically,
Internet-wide search functions, enabled by compliance with the TCP/IP
and FTP protocols, dramatically increased the scope of the
privacy-and-monitoring concerns (initially generated in the
pre-Internet era via applications such as the UNIX "Finger"
utility) that we examine in Sections 3.2
 and
 3.3. Additionally,
"anonymous" FTP servers, also developed in this period,
made it possible for technically-savvy users to upload proprietary
files, such as copyrighted software applications, on to the Internet
(with anonymity). And the indexing schemes supported by the ARCHIE and
GOPHER search systems enabled users to search for and download/share
those proprietary files with relative anonymity. Although intellectual
property issues are not included among the ethical concerns examined in
Section 3, it is worth noting that the
development of some search-engine-related applications during this era
paved the way for the kinds of illegal file-sharing practices
involving copyrighted music that arose in connection with the Napster
site in the late 1990s. (The controversial Napster web site was one of
the first, as well as the most popular, sites used by many young
people at that time to exchange proprietary music online with their
friends).


### 2.3 The (Early) Web Era (1990s)




The first Web site was developed in 1991 (at the CERN European
laboratory for particle physics) by Tim Berners-Lee, who also founded
the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at MIT in 1994. The World Wide Web
was based on the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and used a format
called the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) for designing and
delivering documents; many non-technical users found navigating the
Web to be much more friendly and versatile than using GOPHER and FTP
to exchange files. For the (HTTP-based) Web to realize its full
potential and to become attractive to non-technical users, however, a
more intuitive user interface was needed. The Mosaic Web browser
(later called Netscape Navigator) became available in 1993 and was the
first Internet application to include a graphical user interface
(GUI); this interface, with its intuitive features that enabled users
to click on hyperlinks, made navigating the Web much easier for
non-technical users. Although Netscape Navigator was a Web browser,
and not a search engine, it provided a forum in which many specialized
Web search engine companies were able to flourish. A host of search
engines, most of which were dedicated to specific areas or specific
kinds of searches, soon became available. Some search engines that
were especially popular during this period were Excite (introduced in
1993) and Lycos and Infoseek (both of which were available in
1994). Others included Looksmart and Alta Vista, introduced in 1995,
and Ask.com (originally called AskJeeves) in 1997 (Wall 2011).




Although the internal structure of a search engine is fairly
complex--comprising, among other components, programs called
"spiders" that "crawl" the Web--the
user-interface portion of the search process is quite straightforward
and can be summarized in terms of two steps: (1) a user enters search
term/phrase or "keyword" in a "search box";
and (2) the search engine returns a list of relevant Web
"pages" that typically include hyperlinks to the pages
listed. Many of the early Web search engines were highly specialized
and thus could be viewed as "vertical" (i.e., in current
technical parlance regarding search engine technology) in terms of
their scope. For example, Ask.com was designed to accept queries in
the form of specific questions and thus could be viewed as a vertical
search engine. Halavais defines a vertical search engine as one that
limits itself "in terms of topic, medium, region, language, or
some other set of constraints, covering that area in greater
depth." (In this sense, vertical search engines are far more
capable of drilling down into particular topics than expanding out
into associated subjects.) A few of the popular search engines that
flourished during the early Web period, however, were more general, or
"horizontal," in nature. Alta Vista, for instance, was one
of the first search engines to fit into this category. Today, most of
the major search engines are horizontal, and Google is arguably the
best known horizontal search engine. We should note, however, that
vertical search engines still play an important role today. Consider
an example where one uses Google, or an alternative horizontal search
engine such as Yahoo! or (Microsoft's) Bing, to locate the Web site
for Bates College.
 Once the user has successfully accessed the main page on the Bates site 
she can then use Bates' local
search facility, a vertical search engine, to retrieve information
about faculty and staff who work at that college, or retrieve
information about various academic programs and co-curricular
activities sponsored by that college, and so forth. Within that
vertical search engine, however, the user cannot retrieve broader
information about faculty and academic programs at related colleges
and universities or about related topics in general (as they could
when using a horizontal search engine).




Another type of Web search engine is a *meta* *search
engine*, which, as its name suggests, draws from the results of
multiple (specialized) search engines and then combines and re-ranks
the results. One of the first, and perhaps most popular, meta search
engines in the mid-to-late 1990s was HotBot (Wall 2011). Meta search
engines had a much more important role to play during the early years
of the Web. As search engines improved and became more sophisticated,
the need for meta search dramatically declined. Today, most general
purpose (horizontal) search engines, such as Google and Bing, are able
to return the same level of ranked results (as meta search engines once
did), via their aggregation schemes. In fact, the founders of Google
have described their search engine as an "aggregator of
information" (Brin and Page 1998).




Some of the technological breakthroughs that occurred during the
"early Web" era of search engine development helped to make
possible two kinds of privacy-related ethical issues examined in
Section 3. First, the vast amount of online 
information about ordinary
people that became accessible to Web-based search engines during this
era made it possible for those people to become the
"targets" of online searches conducted by anyone who had
access to the Internet; this concern is examined in
 Section 3.2.
Second, the practice of aggregating personal information, which was
being routinely collected by major search engine companies and their
advertisers, contributed significantly to the data-mining-related
privacy issues that are examined in Section 3.3.


### 2.4 The "Web 2.0" Era (2000-Present)




Although the expression "Web 2.0" is now commonly used
to differentiate the current Web environment from the early Web,
critics point out that this expression is somewhat vague or imprecise.
Whereas the early Web (sometimes referred to as "Web 1.0")
has been described as an online environment that was essentially
passive or static, in so far as one could simply view the contents of a
Web site that had been set up by an organization or an individual
(e.g., when one visited someone's "home page"), Web
2.0 is more dynamic in that it supports many interactive or
"participatory" features. In a Web 2.0 environment, for
example, users can interact and collaborate with others in ways that
were not previously possible. These collaborative features include
wikis (with Wikipedia being the best know example), as well as blogs
and social networking applications (such as Facebook and Twitter). Of
course, the relevant question for us to consider is whether the Web 2.0
environment itself either changes or significantly affects the
functions of search engines and, more importantly, the ethical issues
they generate.




It is not clear whether we can accurately label current search
engines as "Web 2.0 search engines," even though they
operate in a Web 2.0 environment. For example, many of the
participatory tools and functions that apply to applications such as
social networks, blogs, and wikis do not necessarily apply
to contemporary search engines. So, it may be more appropriate to use
Hinman's phrase "second-generation search engines."
However, O'Reilly (2005) suggests that Google's practice of
incorporating user-generated content to provide a "better"
Web search environment for users is compatible with interactive
dimensions and objectives of Web 2.0. But despite
O'Reilly's interpretation of Google's practices, 
one might still question whether the phrase "Web 2.0
search engines" is warranted; so, we will instead refer to
contemporary (or second-generation) search engines as "Web
2.0-*era* search engines."




What, exactly, distinguishes a Web 2.0-era search engine from the
earlier ones? Hinman notes that the traditional criteria Web search
engine companies used to rank sites was based on two factors: (1) the
number of visits to a page (i.e., "popularity"), and (2)
the "number of other pages that link to a given page." With
respect to the second criterion, Diaz (2008) and others point to an
analogy used in ranking the importance of academic papers. They note,
for example, that an academic paper is generally viewed to be important
if it is cited by many other papers. And that paper is perhaps viewed
as even more important if it is cited by highly cited works. Hinman
believes that the shift to (what we call) Web 2.0-era search engines
occurred when companies, such as Google, "looked more closely at
what users wanted to find" (which, as he also points out, is not
always the most popular site). He notes, for example, that
Google's formula employs the following strategy:
"Users' needs - Search terms - Desired
site" (Hinman 2005, 22). He also notes that in this scheme,




> 
> what the user wants becomes an integral part of the formula, as
> does the set of search terms commonly used to express what the user
> wants.
> 


 Hinman and others credit Google's success as the
premier contemporary Web search engine to the company's
proprietary algorithm, called PageRank.




Zimmer (2008, 77) believes that Google's ultimate goal is
to "create 'the perfect search engine' that will
provide only intuitive, personalized, and relevant results."
Halpern (2011) points out that the search process has already
"become personalized"--i.e., "instead of being
universal, it is idiosyncratic and oddly peremptory." And Pariser
(2011), who asserts that "there is no standard Google
anymore," also notes that with "personalized
search," the result(s) suggested by Google's
algorithm is probably the best match for the search query.
Some ethical implications affecting the personalization of search
algorithms are examined in Section 3.4.



Before concluding this section, we should briefly mention two
additional kinds of contemporary search
engines. First, DuckDuckGo (an
alternative to Google and Bing) which prides itself on not profiling
its users, claims that it does not personalize search results. So,
this search engine's users will typically get the same search results,
as well as the same ranking of results, for a given query. Second, a
new type of search engine, capable of "discovering" objects or
"things" on the Internet is now also available. Two examples of this
kind of "discoverable search engine," Shodan and Thingful, are
examined in the final section of this entry.


## 3. Ethical Implications and Core Ethical Issues




Most Internet users are well aware of the virtues of search engines.
As we noted earlier, many of us now depend on them to direct us to
information that affects nearly all facets of our day-to-day
lives--information about work, travel, recreation, entertainment,
finances, politics, news, sports, music, education, and so
forth. However, as we also noted earlier, the use of search engines
has generated a cluster of ethical concerns. In Section 3, we organize
these concerns into five broad categories: (i) search-engine bias and
the problem of opacity/non-transparency, (ii) personal privacy and
informed consent, (iii) monitoring and surveillance, (iv) censorship
and democracy, (v) (cyber)security issues, "discoverable search
engines," and the Internet of Things. A different, but also
related, cluster of ethical issues -- viz, questions concerning
moral accountability and social responsibilities for search engine
companies -- are examined in Section 4.


### 3.1 Search Engine Bias and the Problem of Opacity/Nontransparency




What is search-engine bias, and why is it controversial? In
reviewing the literature on this topic, it would seem that the phrase
"search-engine bias" has been used to describe at least
three distinct, albeit sometimes overlapping, concerns: (1)
search-engine technology is not neutral, but instead has embedded
features in its design that favor some values over others; (2) major
search engines systematically favor some sites (and some kinds of sites)
over others in the lists of results they return in response to user
search queries; and (3) search algorithms do not use objective criteria
in generating their lists of results for search queries.


#### 3.1.1 The Non-Neutrality of Search Engines




While some users may assume that search engines are
"neutral" or value-free, critics argue that search engine
technology, as well as computer technology in general, is value-laden
and thus biased because of the kinds of features typically included in
their design. For example, Brey (1998, 2004) and others (see, for
instance, Friedman and Nissenbaum 1996) have argued
that computer technology has certain built-in features that tend to
favor some values over others. Brey worries that some of these
technological features have embedded values that are "morally
opaque." Because the values embedded in these features are not
always apparent to the technical experts who develop computer systems,
Brey believes that a methodological framework, which expands upon what
he calls the "standard" applied-ethics model typically used
in "mainstream computer ethics," is needed to identify or
disclose the "hidden" values at the design stage. He refers
to this model as "disclosive computer ethics" (Brey 2004, 55-56).




Identifying the human values embedded in technological design and
development has been the main objective of a movement called *Value
Sensitive Design* or *VSD*, which Friedman, Kahn and Borning
(2008, 70) define as a



> 
> theoretically grounded approach to the
> design of technology that accounts for human values in a principled and
> comprehensive manner throughout the design process.
> 


 Friedman et al. illustrate their model using the example of
Internet cookies--i.e., small text files that a Web browser
places on a user's computer system for the purposes of tracking and
recording that user's activities on a Web site. In particular, they
examine the design of cookies in connection with the informed-consent
process vis-a-vis Web browsers. They further argue that embedded
features in the design of cookies challenge the value of informed
consent and that this value is important because it protects other
values such as privacy, autonomy, and trust.




Cookies technology is not only embedded in the design of contemporary
Web browsers, it is also used by major search engine companies to
acquire information about users. In so far as these companies place
cookies on users' computer systems, without first getting their
consent, they also seem to contribute to, and perhaps even exacerbate,
at least one kind of technology-related bias--i.e., one that
threatens values such as privacy and autonomy, while favoring values
associated with surveillance and monitoring. However, since this kind
of bias also applies to design issues affecting Web browsers, it is
not peculiar to search engines per se.


#### 3.1.2 The Manipulation of Search Results




Some critics, including Introna and Nissenbaum (2000), tend to view
the schemes used to manipulate search results as the paradigm case of
bias in the context of search engines. In their highly influential
paper on this topic, Introna and Nissenbaum argued that search
engines



> 
> systematically exclude certain sites
> and certain types of sites, in favor of others, systematically giving
> prominence to some at the expense of others.
> 


 There has been
considerable speculation as to why this is the case, but we briefly
examine two reasons that have been prominent in discussions in the
literature: (a) the interests of advertisers who sponsor search
engines; and (b) schemes used by technically-savvy individuals and
organizations to manipulate the ordered ranking of sites returned by
search engines. (A third reason that is also sometimes suggested has to
do with the nature of the algorithms used by major search engine
companies; that issue is examined in this Section 3.1.3).


##### 3.1.2.1 Online Advertising Strategies and Search Bias




Some critics, including Hinman (2005) and Noble (2018), point
out that search engine companies are "answerable" to the
paid advertisers who sponsor them. So, for many of these critics,
bias-related concerns affecting the inclusion/exclusion of certain
sites can be attributable mainly to the interests of paid advertisers.
Google founders Brin and Page (1998, 18), who initially opposed
the idea of paid advertisement on search engines, noted that it would
seem reasonable to 



> 
> expect that advertising funded search engines
> will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the
> needs of consumers... Since it is very difficult even for experts
> to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly
> insidious...[and] less blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by
> the market.
> 




It is worth noting that advertising schemes used by search engines
have evolved over time. For example, Diaz (2008, 21) points out that
banner ads, which were common on the Internet during the Web 1.0 era,
have been replaced by "paid placement of ads." He also
notes that "paid listings" (unlike the earlier banner ads)
do not always look very different from the normal results returned to
users. Elgesem (2008) points out that search engines such as GoTo,
whose lists of search results were based entirely on "paid
hits" from advertisers, allegedly failed because of user
dissatisfaction with the results they received. Eventually, however,
GoTo was taken over by Google, which continued to use GoTo's
method for generating paid-ad-based search results but physically
separated those results from the "organic" results that
appear on the center of its pages (Elgesem 2008); this scheme, which
contrasts the two different kinds of results, seems to have been
accepted by Google users.




Diaz describes two other kinds of bias-related concerns that affect
advertising schemes used by search engine companies: (i) the arbitrary
(and seemingly inconsistent) criteria used by these companies in
accepting advertisements, and (ii) the imprecise (and sometimes
confusing) criteria used to separate editorials (approved by a search
engine company) from their paid advertisements. (Although the kind of
discrimination with regard to the ads that Google accepts or rejects
may seem arbitrary in an innocuous sense, Diaz notes that Google has
also refused to accept ads from some organizations that have been
critical of corporations that were already sponsors for Google.)
Regarding (ii), Diaz explains how bias-related concerns affecting paid
advertisements can sometimes be confused with editorials that are also
displayed by search engine companies on their Web pages. Whereas
editorials and ads may look very different in newspapers, Diaz notes
that this is not always the case in search engines. (We also examine
some aspects of search engine bias in the context of online
advertisements in our analysis of moral-accountability issues for
search engine companies in Section 4.




Some critics assume that as conflicts affecting online
advertisements in the context of search engines are eventually resolved, the amount of
bias in search engine results will also decline or perhaps disappear
altogether. However, other schemes can also be used to influence the
privileging of some sites over others, in terms of both their inclusion
(vs. exclusion) and their ranking.


##### 3.1.2.2 Technological Schemes Used to Manipulate Search Results



We have already noted that some technically-savvy
individuals and organizations have figured out various strategies for
"gaming the system"--i.e., positioning their sites
higher in the schemes used by search engine companies to generate
results (see, for example, Goodwin 2018). These schemes are commonly referred to by
"insiders" as instances of SEO, or Search Engine
Optimization, and we briefly consider what can now be regarded as a
classic SEO ploy. Some organizations and individuals had effectively
used HTML meta tags and keywords (embedded in HTML source code) to
influence search engine companies to give their sites higher rankings
in the ordering schemes for their respective categories of search.
Eventually, however, search engine companies recognized the
manipulative aspects of these HTML features and began to disregard them
in their ranking algorithms (Goldman 2008).




Many organizations now use a different kind of strategy to achieve a
higher ranking for their sites--one that takes advantage of the
(general) formulas currently used by major search engine companies.
Blanke (2005, 34) notes that in Google's algorithm, Web pages
"achieve a better ranking if they optimize their relationship
within the system of hubs and authorities." Whereas
"authorities" are Web pages that are "linked by many
others," hubs "link themselves to many pages." Diaz
(2008) points out that highly referenced hubs will have the highest Page
Ranks. So Web site owners and designers who know how to exploit these
factors (as well as how to use various SEO-related schemes) to
manipulate ranking in search engine results will have the highest
ranked sites. Diaz also notes that these sites "tend to belong to
large, well-known technology companies such as Amazon and eBay,"
while "millions of typical pages...will have the lowest
ranking." Thus, it would seem that the kind of search engine bias
identified by Introna and Nissenbaum that, whereby certain Web sites
are systematically included/excluded in favor of others, will not
necessarily be eliminated simply by resolving conflicts related to paid
advertising in the context of search engine companies. In all
likelihood, organizations will continue to figure out ways to use
SEO-related techniques to achieve a higher ranking for their sites and
thus gain better exposure on search engines, especially on Google. As
Hinman (2005) puts it, "Esse est indicato in Google (to be is to be
indexed on Google)."


#### 3.1.3 The Problem of Objectivity




Concerns affecting search engine bias vis-a-vis questions
having to do with "objectivity" have two distinct aspects:
(A) objectivity regarding criteria used in search algorithms; and (B)
objectivity with respect to the results returned by a particular search
engine in its responses to multiple users entering the same search
query. With regard to (A), we saw that the traditional criteria used by Web search engine
companies to rank sites was based on two factors: the number of visits
to a page, and the number of other pages that link to a given page;
Hinman (2005) believes that this technique would seem to give the user
"some semblance of objective criteria." He points out, for
example, that even if search engines were to "get it wrong"
in returning the best results for a particular search query, there was
an "objective fact of the matter to be gotten wrong." And
even though the early search engines ranked their sites in terms of
"popularity," there was, as Hinman (2005, 22) puts it, a
"technical and objective meaning" of popularity. But we
also saw that this formula has changed dramatically in the case of Web
2.0-era search engines, where increasingly "personalized
algorithms" tend to tailor search results to fit the profile of
the user entering the query.




This trend toward the "personalizing" of algorithms feeds
directly into concerns affecting (B). Even though many sophisticated
users might suspect that the lists of returns for their search queries
are biased, for any number of possible reasons--e.g., paid
advertising, unfair influence by large corporations, editorial
control, and so forth--many search engine users still tend to
assume, perhaps naively, that when any two users enter the exact
same search query in a major search engine such as Google, they would
receive identical lists of responses. In other words, even if the
formula used is skewed, or biased in a way that favors some sites over
others, the search algorithm would nonetheless return results based on
a formula that is internally consistent, and thus standard or
"objective" in some sense. But, this is no longer the case
in an era where formulas based on "personalization"
generate search results tailored to a user's profile. For example, if
I enter the term "eagles" in a search box, the list and
the order of returns that I receive will likely depend on the profile
that the search engine company has constructed about me. If the
company determines that I am interested in biology, for instance, I
may be directed to a site sponsored by the Audubon Society. But, if
instead, it determines that I am a sports enthusiast living in the
Philadelphia area, I may be directed first to the Philadelphia Eagles
Web site. On the
contrary, if my profile suggests that I like rock/pop music, I may be
directed first to the site for the Eagles music group. So there would
not appear to be any overall "objective" formula used by
the search engine in question.




Some question whether a lack of objectivity with respect to the
results returned to users in response to their search queries is
necessarily a problem. For example, Blanke (2005, 34) believes that
we should "neither demand nor expect to receive information from
search engines that is objective" (i.e., information that is
either "neutral or complete"). So, he argues that any
critique of search engines as being biased "misses its
target," because one should not expect search engines to deliver
only neutral and objective results. His rationale for this claim,
however, seems to be based on the view that search engine technology
"was not designed to do this." But this analysis seems to
beg the question, unless, of course, Blanke means that search engine
technology could not, in principle, be designed to deliver neutral and
objective results.




Questions concerning objectivity in the context of search engines
are also examined by Goldman (2008), who seems to defend--and,
at times, perhaps even applaud--search engine bias in that
respect. First, he notes that search engine companies "make
editorial judgments about what data to collect and how to present that
data" (2008, 122). However, he also believes that search
engine bias is "necessary and desirable"--i.e., it
is "the unavoidable consequence of search engines exercising
editorial control over their databases" (p. 127). So he is
willing to concede that "search engine companies, like all other
media companies, skew results." But while many assume that search
engine bias is undesirable, Goldman sees it as a "beneficial
consequence of search engines optimizing content for their
users." He also believes that "the 'winner takes
all' effect caused by top placement in search results will be
mooted by emerging personalized search technology" (p. 121). He
further argues that "personalized ranking algorithms" will
"reduce the effect of search engine bias because there will
likely be multiple 'top' search results of a particular
search term instead of a single winner [and] personalized algorithms
will eliminate many of the current concerns about search engine
bias" (p. 130). Thus Goldman seems to suggest, paradoxically
perhaps, that any problems affecting objectivity will be solved by
increased *subjectivity* in the form of personalization of
results achieved by personalized search algorithms. However, this
direction in search engine evolution can have serious negative effects
for democracy and democratic ideals (discussed further in
 Section 3.4).




Concerns affecting objectivity and bias in the context of search
engines are also closely related to controversies pertaining to the
lack of "openness" or "transparency" (see,
for example, Noble 2018). Some critics point out that search engine
companies are not fully open, or transparent, both with respect
to *why* they (a) include some sites and not others (in their
lists of results for users' queries), and (b) rank some pages in
their list of search results higher than others. These kinds of
opacity/non-transparency-related concerns tend to fall under a
description that Hinman (2005) calls "the problem of
algorithm." Hinman notes that the algorithms that govern
searches are well-kept secrets, which he also believes is
appropriate. Because Google's PageRank algorithm is "a
patented and closely guarded piece of intellectual property"
(Halpern 2011, 4), we don't know the algorithm's
formulas. And this factor, of course, makes it difficult to comment on
an algorithm's objectivity or lack thereof.




Another set of worries affecting opacity/non-transparency arise
because search engine companies do not always disclose, either fully or
clearly, their practices with respect to two important points: (i)
whether (and to what extent) they collect information about users; and
(ii) what they do with that information once it has been collected.
These kinds of opacity/non-transparency concerns involving search
engine companies, which are also related to privacy issues affecting
monitoring and surveillance, are examined in detail in
 Section 3.3.


### 3.2 Privacy, Consent, and Non-voluntary Disclosure of Personal Information




At least two distinct kinds of privacy concerns arise in the context
of search engines. One set of privacy issues emerges because search
engine companies can collect personal information about search engine
users; in this scheme, the users are, in effect, "data
subjects" for the search engine companies and their advertisers.
However, search engine users themselves--whether acting on their
own behalf or on behalf of organizations that hire them--can use
the technology to conduct online searches about people. In this case,
the targeted people (some of whom may never have used or possibly have
never even heard of a search engine) are the subjects of search engine
users. In both cases, privacy concerns arise in connection with
questions about fairness for the data subjects involved. Consider that
many of those who become the subjects of the search queries have not
explicitly consented either to having certain kinds of personal
information about them collected or having personal information about
them (that has been collected in some other context) also being made
available on the Web, or both.




In this section, we examine search-engine-related privacy concerns
affecting people who have become the subjects, or
"targets," of queries by search engine users. This kind of
privacy concern is exacerbated by the ever expanding amount of personal
information about ordinary people that is currently discoverable by
search engines and thus accessible to Internet users. But why, exactly,
is this problematic from the vantage point of privacy? For one thing,
it is not clear that most people have voluntarily consented to having
information about them placed in databases or in online forums that are
accessible to search engines (and thus potentially available to any
Internet user). And we noted that search engine users, whether they are
acting simply on their own, or as representatives of business and
corporations, can and often do access a wealth of information about
many of us via search engines. Privacy advocates question whether this
practice is fair, especially to people who have not explicitly
consented to having personal information about them included in the
online forums and databases that are now so easily searchable because
of sophisticated search engine technology.




Privacy concerns that arise in contexts in which people are the subjects
of search queries can be further differentiated in terms of two
separate categories, i.e., where search engines are used to: (i) track
the location of individuals, sometimes for the purpose of harassing or
stalking them; and (ii) acquire personal information about people. We
briefly examine each practice.




Regarding (i), one might ask why using search engines to track and
locate persons is controversial from a privacy perspective. First,
consider that some organizations have developed specialized search
engines for questionable purposes, such as stalking people. For
example, one search facility (Gawker-Stalker Maps, introduced in 2006)
was designed specifically for the purpose of stalking famous people,
including celebrities. Imagine a case in which a celebrity has been
spotted while dining at an up-scale restaurant in San Francisco. The
person who spots the celebrity can send a "tip" via text
message or e-mail to Gawker-Stalker, informing the site's users
of her whereabouts. The Gawker site then provides its users, via
precise GPS software, with information about exactly where, and at
what time, she was last seen. Users interested in stalking that
celebrity can then follow her movements electronically, via the Gawker
site, or they can locate and follow her in physical space, if they
happen to be in the same geographical vicinity as the celebrity at
that time (Tavani 2016). Currently, Gawker-Stalker seems to be in a
state of transition. Although gawker.com, a subsidiary of Gawker
Media, ceased operations following a bankruptcy suit in 2016, the
controversial Gawker site was acquired by the Bustle Digital Group in
2018 (Kelly 2019).




Second, we note that it is not only celebrities and "high-profile"
public figures that are vulnerable to being stalked, as well as to
having personal information about them accessed, via search engines.
Consider the case of Amy Boyer, a twenty-year old resident of New
Hampshire, who was stalked online by a former "admirer"
named Liam Youens and who was eventually murdered by him in 1999. Using
standard Internet search facilities, Youens was able to get all of the
information about Boyer that he needed to stalk her--i.e.,
information about where she lived, worked, and so forth (see, for
example, Tavani and Gridzinsky, 2002). Incidents such as the Boyer case
invite us to question current policies--or, in lieu of clear and
explicit policies, our default positions and assumptions--with
regard to the amount and the kind of personal information about
ordinary persons that is currently accessible to search engine users.
It now appears likely that Amy Boyer had no idea that so much personal
information about her was so easily accessible online via search
engines.




We next examine (ii), the use of search engines to find information
about people--not about their location, but about their
activities, interests, and backgrounds. As in the Amy Boyer case, these
search-engine-related privacy issues also arise when ordinary people
become the subjects of search queries. Consider that, increasingly,
employers use online search techniques to acquire information about
prospective and current employees. It is well known that many employers
try to access information on the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts of job applicants
they are considering. This kind of information has, in certain
instances, been used by employers in determining whether or not to hire
particular applicants (and possibly also used in deciding whether or
not to promote current employees). So, for example, a college student
who posts on Facebook one or more pictures of himself drinking
alcoholic beverages, or perhaps behaving wildly at a party, can
potentially jeopardize his future employment opportunity with a company
that might otherwise hire him upon graduating from college. In defense
of this kind of "screening" practice used by companies in
hiring employees, one could argue that the company has merely elected
to use currently available tools to search for information about
persons who *voluntarily* posted material (e.g., in the form of
photos, etc.) about themselves on Facebook.




Our primary concern here is with personal information that has not
been voluntarily disclosed by persons, but is nonetheless accessible
online via search engines. This kind of concern involving access to
personal information in online forums is by no means new or recent.
Consider that in the decade preceding Facebook, employers had been
able to access information about job applicants via online search
tools--e.g., they could (and did) use search engines to
accomplish this task, simply by entering the name of the individual in
a search engine box. Imagine a hypothetical scenario in which a
person, Lee, applies for a full-time employment position at
Corporation *X*. Also, imagine that someone on the
corporation's search committee for this position decides to conduct an
online search about Lee, shortly after receiving her
application. Further imagine that in response to the query about Lee,
three results are returned by the search engine. One result includes
a link to a gay/lesbian organization in which Lee is identified as
someone who contributed to a recent event hosted by that
organization. Next, imagine that Lee is turned down for the job at
Corporation *X*. Further imagine that Lee becomes curious as to
why she might not have been selected for that job and she decides to
do an Internet search of her name for the first time. Lee then
discovers the search result linking her to the gay/lesbian
organization (Tavani 1998). Should Lee infer that she was denied the
job because of her apparent association with this organization? Is
that a reasonable inference? Maybe not. Nevertheless, an important
question arises: Is it fair that someone has posted this information
about Lee online, without her consent, to a source that is accessible
to one or more search engines? Is that information about Lee now
"fair game," and should it be viewed simply as information
that is "up for grabs" (Nissenbaum 2004) and thus
appropriate for use by prospective employers?




How is the scenario involving Lee different from a case in which an
employer uses information on a Facebook account to screen job
applicants? For one thing, Facebook users typically post information
about themselves that can be seen by others and thus have voluntarily
consented to have that information available for others to access
(assuming that they have not specified their Facebook privacy
settings). Furthermore, they are also aware that such information about
them exists on that online forum. But what about job applicants who do
not have accounts on Facebook, or on any other social networking site?
Are they less vulnerable to online scrutiny by potential employers?
Many people may have no idea about either the kind or amount of online
personal information about them that is accessible to an employer or to
anyone using a search engine.




Next consider a hypothetical scenario similar to Lee's, where
Phil, who recently earned a Ph.D., is applying for a faculty position
at University *X*. But suppose that a few disgruntled former students
have posted some highly critical and negative remarks about Phil on
RateMyProfessor.com. Next, suppose that a member of the faculty search
committee at University *X* conducts an online search on Phil and
discovers the disparaging remarks made by the students. Finally, Phil
is informed that he has not been selected for the faculty position.
Shortly after receiving his letter of rejection, Phil happens to
discover the comments about him made by the disgruntled students, by
conducting an online search of his name. Would it be unreasonable for
Phil to infer that the remarks by these students on RateMyProfessor.com
influenced the hiring committee's decision not to select him?




In one sense, Phil's predicament is very similar to
Lee's--viz., neither job applicant had any kind of control
over what people other than themselves had posted about them in online
forums accessible to search engines. However, the negative information
posted about Phil was directly related to the kind of criteria that
typically would be used in considering an applicant for a faculty
position. The information posted about Lee, while not directly related
to the job for which she was applying, could nonetheless also harm her
chances of gaining that position. In neither case, however, did Lee or
Phil have any say about the kind of information about them, or about
the accuracy of that information, that could be so easily retrieved
online and used by a prospective employer in making a decision about
whether or not to hire them.




On the one hand, we can ask what kind of recourse people like Phil
and Lee could expect to have in situations such as this--e.g.,
can they reasonably expect to have control over any kind of information
about them that is currently accessible to search engines? But, on the
other hand, it may not seem totally unreasonable for them to have some
expectation of limited control over their personal information, even if
only to be able to challenge the legitimacy of inaccurate information,
especially when they had not consented to having it included in online
forums and databases accessible to search
 engines.[2]
There is also an aspect of this kind of personal information that
overlaps with "public" information. So, perhaps the
tension that arises in these scenarios can be viewed as a contemporary
variation of the age-old debate about the private vs. public nature of
personal information. This tension is further complicated by the fact
that in the U.S. most people, as the subjects of online searches,
enjoy little, if any, normative protection regarding personal
information about them that is now available online--mainly
because of the presumed "public nature" of this personal
information involved (Tavani 2005). (As we will see in Section 4.2.1,
however, citizens in EU countries enjoy much more normative protection
of their personal data in online contexts than U.S. citizens.)




Some forms of personal information enjoy normative protection via
specific privacy policies and laws, because they qualify as
information about persons that is considered either sensitive or
intimate, or both. We can refer to this kind of personal information
as Non-Public Personal Information (or NPI). However, many privacy
analysts now worry about the ways in which a different kind of
personal information--Public Personal Information (or PPI), which
is non-confidential and non-intimate in character--is easily
collected and exchanged over the Internet. How can PPI and NPI be
distinguished? NPI, which as noted above, is viewed as information
about persons that is essentially confidential or sensitive in nature,
includes information about a person's finances and medical
history. PPI, although also understood as information that is personal
in nature, is different from NPI in at least one important respect: it
is neither sensitive nor confidential. For example, information about
where an individual works or attends school, as well as what kind of
automobile he or she owns, can be considered personal information in
the sense that it is information about *some individual as a
particular person*. However, this kind of personal information
typically does not enjoy the same kinds of privacy protection that has
been granted to NPI (Tavani 2016).




Initially, concerns about personal information that can be gathered
and exchanged electronically focused mainly on NPI. In response to
these concerns, some specific privacy laws and policies were
established to protect NPI. But many privacy advocates now also worry
about the ways in which PPI is routinely collected and analyzed via
digital technologies. They have argued that PPI deserves greater legal
and normative protection than it currently has. Nissenbaum (1997,
1998) has referred to the challenge that we face with regard to
protecting (the kind of information that we refer to as) PPI as the
"problem of protecting privacy in public." Some privacy
advocates argue that our earlier assumptions about what kinds of
publicly available information about us need explicit legal protection
(or perhaps some kind of less formal "normative"
protection, at the level of policies) are no longer adequate because
of the way much of that information can now be processed via digital
technologies, especially in the commercial sphere. For example,
seemingly innocuous information about persons, based on their
activities in the public sphere, can be "mined" to create
user profiles based on implicit patterns in the data and those
profiles (whether accurate or not) can be used to make important
decisions affecting people.


### 3.3 Monitoring and Surveillance




We next examine privacy concerns in which search engine users
themselves are the data subjects (i.e., for search engine companies).
Zimmer (2008, 83) notes that personal information about users is
"routinely collected" when they use search engines for
their "information-seeking activities." But why, exactly,
is this problematic from the perspective of privacy? For one thing,
search engine companies such as Google create a record of every search
made by users, and these records are also archived. The topic searched
for, as well as the date and time the specific search request is made
by a user, are included in the record. Until recently, many people had
been unaware that their search queries were being recorded and
tracked.




In January 2006, many Google users learned that the search engine
company had kept a log of all of their previous searches. At least
four major search engine companies had been subpoenaed by the Bush
Administration in 2005 for search records based on one week's of
searches during the summer of 2005 (see, for example, Nissenbaum
2010). They were Google, Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft (MSN). Google
refused to turn over the information. The other search engine
companies would not say how they responded; many assumed, however,
that those companies complied with the government's
subpoena. Google was requested to turn over two items: (1) the results
of search queries/requests it received during a one-week period, and
(2) a random list of approximately one million URLs searched. Google
argued that turning over this information would: (a) violate the
privacy of its users (and undermine their trust in the search engine
company), and (b) reveal information about the (proprietary) algorithm
and the processes that Google uses and that this would potentially
harm its competitive edge as a search service. A court ruled that
Google did not have to comply with (1), but it reached a compromise
regarding (2), ruling that Google turn over 50,000 URLs to the
government (Nissenbaum 2010, 29-30).




The information collected about a user's search queries might
seem relatively innocuous--after all, who would be interested in
knowing about the kinds of searches we conduct on the Internet, and who
would want to use this information against us? On the other hand,
however, seemingly innocuous personal information can be mined by
information merchants and used to construct personal profiles about us,
and that these profiles, in turn, can be based on information that is
not accurate and can be used to make decisions about us that are not
fair. For example, imagine a case in which a student happens to be
writing a paper on Internet pornography and uses a search engine to
acquire some references for her research. Records of this user's
search requests could reveal several queries that individual made about
pornographic Web sites, which in turn might suggest that this user is
interested in viewing pornography. So individual searches made by a
particular user could theoretically be analyzed in ways to construct a
profile of that user that is inaccurate. And, records of the searches
made by this and other users could later be subpoenaed in court
cases (Tavani 2016).




As already noted, information about a user's search queries is
collected by search engine companies as well as by many different kinds
of "information merchants" in the commercial sphere.
Halpern (2011, 8) notes that there are approximately 500 companies
that are able to track all of our online movements, thereby
"mining the raw material of the Web and selling it to...data
mining companies." Pariser (2011) points out that in tracking our
activities, Google's uses fifty-seven *signals*--



> 
> everything from where you were logged in, from what browser you
> were using, to what you had searched for before to make queries about,
> to who you were and what kinds of sites you'd like.
> 


 And
Zimmer (2008, 77) notes that Google integrates information gathered
from



> 
> Web cookies, detailed server logs, and user
> accounts... [from Google applications such as Gmail, Google +, and
> Google Chrome]... which provides a powerful infrastructure of
> dataveillance to monitor, record, and aggregate users' online
> activities.
> 


 Furthermore, Pariser notes that Google and other
major search engine companies use "prediction engines" to
construct and refine theories about who we are (and what we want to do
next). He also notes that many information merchants regard every
"click signal" a user creates as a "commodity"
that can be "auctioned off within microseconds to the highest
bidding consumer." Pariser points out that one information
merchant, a company called Acxiom, has



> 
>  accumulated an average of
> 1500 pieces of data on every person in its database--personal
> data that ranges from credit scores to medications used.
> 
> 
> 




Of course, some users might respond that they do not feel threatened
by this practice; for example, they might be inclined to feel safe
from a loss of personal privacy because they assume that the data
collected about them is anonymous in the sense that it is identifiable
only as an IP address, as opposed to a person's name. However, Zimmer
(2008, 83) notes that in 2005, one AOL user was able to be identified
by name "because the Web searches she performed on various
topics were recorded and later released by AOL." It turns out
that AOL Research had released over three months worth of personal
search data involving 650,000 users (Wall 2011, 18). Nissenbaum (2010,
30) points out that in this case, AOL used a process in which



> 
>  certain
> identities could be extracted from massive records of anonymized
> search-query data that AOL regularly posted on the Internet for use by
> the scientific research community.
> 
> 
> 


 Zimmer believes that the
incident involving AOL is not unique, but is instead one more use of
data surveillance or "dataveillance" (a term coined by
Roger Clarke in 1988)--i.e., one applied in the context of
search queries.




It is also important to consider whether a meaningful distinction
can be drawn between monitoring and surveillance in this context.
Noting that the two terms are often used interchangeably, Nissenbaum
(2010, 22) differentiates between them in the following way. Whereas
surveillance is a "form of monitoring 'from above' by
political regimes and those in authority," monitoring is used in
broader social and "socio-technical" contexts. In
Nissenbaum's scheme, both monitoring and surveillance are
examples of what she calls "socio-technical contexts," but
they are usually put to different uses. For example, Nissenbaum points
out that monitoring can be done by systems "whose explicit
purpose is to monitor" (e.g., CCTVs). But she also notes that
information itself can constitute a "modality of
monitoring." For example, she points out that Clarke's
notion of "dataveillance" includes monitoring practices
that involve both interactions and transactions. However, we can
generally regard the kinds of practices carried out by information
merchants in the consumer sphere as instances of monitoring (rather
than surveillance) in Nissenbaum's sense of that term.




We next shift our focus away from privacy concerns about monitoring
in the commercial sector to worries about *surveillance* by
government actors with respect to information acquired as a result of
users' search queries. Earlier in this section we noted that in
2005, the Bush Administration informed Google that it must turn over a
list of all users' queries entered into its search engine during
a one week period (the exact dates were not specified by Google). The
Bush Administration's decision to seek information about the
search requests of ordinary users triggered significant criticism from
many privacy advocates. Although the Bush Administration claimed that
it had the authority to seek electronic information in order to fight
the "war on terror" and to prevent another September
11-like attack, some critics worried that the government was trying to
use the subpoenaed information, not for national defense or
anti-terrorism purposes, but rather to gain data to support its stance
on the Child Online Protection Act, which had been challenged in a U.S.
District Court and was being revisited by Congress (Nissenbaum 2010, 29).
These critics also worried about the implications this has for privacy
(as an important human value) in the ongoing tension involving security
vs. privacy interests. And even if privacy is not an absolute value but
is sometimes outweighed by security concerns, as Himma (2007) argues,
some critics question the rationale used for obtaining records of
search requests made by ordinary citizens.




Hinman (2005) notes that the Patriot Act, passed in the aftermath of
9/11, allowed U.S. government officials to get information from
libraries about which books members had borrowed. He then shows how the
reasoning used in the case of libraries could easily be extended to
search engines--for example,



> 
>  if the government could see
> which books someone was taking out of a library, why couldn't it
> also see which searches we made on search engines?
> 
> 
> 


 Hinman also points out that there are several other ways in which
a user's search requests can be disclosed because of practices
used by major search engine companies such as Google. He also worries
that such practices could eventually lead to surveillance and to
suppressing political dissent (as is it has in China). Hinman
questions whether Google might have been under political pressure from
outside interests (e.g., the Bush Administration) to take down
photographs of tortured prisoners in the controversial Abu Ghraib
detention center (used by the U.S. during the Iraq War in 2004), which
were posted but then soon removed with no apparent explanation by that
search engine company. (Some related, as well as additional, questions
concerning moral-responsibility-related issues for search engine
companies are examined in detail in Section 4.)


### 3.4 Democracy, Censorship, and the Threat to Liberty and Freedom




In this section, we consider some implications that the surveillance
of users' queries by search-engine companies can have for a free
and open society. In the early days of the Internet, many people
assumed that search engine technology favored democracy and democratic
ideals. For example, Introna and Nissenbaum (2000, 169) note that
search engines were viewed as a technology that would



> 
> ...give voice to diverse social, economic, and cultural
> groups, to members of society not frequently heard in the public sphere
> [and] empower the traditionally disempowered, giving them access both
> to typically unreachable modes of power and to previously unavailable
> troves of information.
> 




However, Introna and Nissenbaum also describe what can be viewed as an
"anti-democratic" aspect of contemporary search technology
when they note that search engines "systematically
exclude" certain Web sites, as well as "certain types of
sites, " over others. And Diaz (2008, 11) echoes this concern
when he notes that that major search engine companies such as Google
direct "hundreds of millions of users towards some content and
not others, towards some sources and not others." So, following
Diaz (p. 15), we can ask whether the kinds of "independent
voices and diverse viewpoints" that are essential for a
democracy are capable of being "heard through the filter of
search engines."




Search engines have often been described as the "gatekeepers
of cyberspace," and some critics note that this has significant
implications for democracy. For example, Diaz (2008, 11) points out that



> 
>  if
> we believe in the principles of deliberative democracy--and
> especially if we believe that that the Web is an open
> 'democratic' medium--then we should expect our
> search engines to disseminate a broad spectrum of information on any
> given topic.
> 
> 
> 


 Hinman (2005, 25) makes a similar point, when he
notes that "the flourishing of deliberative democracy is
dependent on the free and undistorted access to information." And
because search engines are "increasingly the principal
gatekeepers of knowledge," Hinman argues that "we find
ourselves moving in a philosophically dangerous position." (We
briefly return to Hinman's point in the
 concluding section of this entry.)




Morozov (2011) also describes some concerns for democracy
vis-a-vis contemporary search engines by calling attention to
the filtering of information that search engines make possible. For one
thing, he agrees with Sunstein (2001) who worries that the kind of
selectivity made possible by Internet filtering can easily trap us
inside our "information cocoons." And Lessig (2000)
suggests that any kind of filtering on the Internet is equivalent to
censorship because it blocks out some forms of expression. Morozov
points out that whereas Sunstein worries that people *could* use
Internet technology to "overly customize what they read,"
the reality is that contemporary search engine companies have already
silently done this for them. Morozov's concerns about what search
engine companies are now doing through filtering and customization
schemes, and why this is problematic for a democracy, are echoed by
Pariser (2011, 13) who points out that "personalization
filters serve up a kind of invisible autopropaganda,
indoctrinating us with our own ideas, amplifying our desire for things
that are familiar and leaving us oblivious to the dangers lurking in
the dark territory of the unknown".




Pariser notes that while democracy "requires citizens to see
things from one another's point of view," we are instead
increasingly "more enclosed in our own bubbles." He goes
on to note that democracy also "requires a reliance on shared
facts," but instead we are being presented with "parallel
but separate universes." To illustrate how this trend away from
citizens having shared facts can be so dangerous for a democracy,
Pariser uses the example of the debate about climate change in the U.S
during the past decade. He points out that studies have shown that
between 2001 and 2010 many people's beliefs about whether the climate
was warming shifted significantly, based on one's affiliation with a
major political party. Pariser notes that a Web search for
"climate change" will yield very different results for a
person whom the search algorithm determines to be a Democrat than for
someone it determines to be a Republican. He also notes that the
search algorithm will generate different results for someone it
determines to be an oil company executive vs. an environmental
activist.




Along lines similar to Pariser's, Halpern (2011, 5-6) notes that
search engines like Google direct us to material that is most likely
to reinforce our own "worldview, ideology, and
assumptions" and thus "cut us off from dissenting opinion
and conflicting points of view." Pariser points out that with
Google, a user now gets the results that the search engine company
believes are best for that particular user. He describes a case where
two people entered in the keyword "BP" (for British
Petroleum) during the time period of the accident involving the Deep
Water Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. In response to one user's
query, investment information about BP was returned as the lead
result, while the other user received information about the oil
spill.




Not only do some practices by search engine companies pose a threat
for democracy and democratic ideals, other practices (in which search
engine companies are arguably complicit) reinforce censorship schemes
currently used by non-democratic nations. For example, it is well know
that China has succeeded in blocking access to political sites that it
regards as threatening. Consider that it blocks ordinary Chinese users
from access to sites such as "Tiananmen Square,"
"Free Tibet," and "Dalai Lama." Critics note
that Google agreed to comply with China's censorship laws when
the search engine company entered the Chinese market in 2006. Spinello
(2012) believes that this agreement violated Google's
"don't be evil" principle--a core principle of
the search engine company--because Google "facilitated and
supported" China's censorship regime. But some of
Google's defenders have argued that the search engine
company's entry into China made it possible for China's
residents to have greater access to information, overall (i.e., beyond
what would otherwise be accessible through Baidu (www.Baidu.com), a
Chinese-owned search engine service founded in 2000). Other defenders
of Google point out that the search engine giant did not act alone
because major U.S. companies, such as Yahoo and MSN, also complied
with China's censorship laws. And Hinman notes that the Chinese
government also received cooperation from other American companies,
such as Cisco Systems, in establishing the infrastructure or backbone
components of its Internet firewall.




In 2010, Google changed its policy for operating in China and directed
its Google.cn users to a site in Hong Kong that was then uncensored.
However, Hinman believes that we should still worry about
Google's willingness to comply with the Chinese
government's strict censorship laws when initially setting up
its business operations in China. He reasons that if this search
engine giant could be so easily influenced by a government that has a
relatively low economic impact on its business overall, it could be
much more influenced by the U.S. Government, where the political and
economic impact would be far more significant. Some worry that this
factor has also given Google considerable power over companies that
rely on it for their Internet traffic (Spinello 2012). They also worry
that Google, in an effort to retain that economic power in the U.S. in
the future, could conceivably cave into pressure to comply with
government policies (in the U.S. and possibly other democratic nations
as well) that might support censorship at some level.




While many initially believed that that the Internet would promote
democracy by weeding out totalitarian societies, because they are
"inefficient and wasteful" (Chorost 2011), Berners-Lee
(2010) believes that the Web "we have come to know" is now
threatened because both totalitarian and democratic governments alike
are "monitoring people's online habits, endangering important
human rights." Perhaps Hinman (2005, 25) best sums up this
worry, when he remarks,



> 
> 
> We risk having our access to information controlled by ever-powerful,
> increasingly opaque, and almost completely unregulated search engines
> that could shape and distort our future largely without our knowledge.
> For the sake of a free society, we must pursue the development of
> structures of accountability for search engines.




If Berners-Lee, Hinman, and others are correct, it would seem that we
have much to worry about indeed as we go forward trying to preserve
our basic freedoms in a democracy, while at the same time taking
advantage of many of the personalizing- and customizing-based features
that search engines such as Google now offer us. It would also seem
that increased transparency on the part of search engine companies
could would be an important step in helping us to alleviate some of
these concerns. But who, exactly, should be responsible for regulating
search engine companies and for holding them accountable? We examine
these and related questions in Section 4. First, however, we briefly
consider some ethical issues, particularly cyber-security related
concerns, that arise because of a relatively new kind of search engine
that is capable of "discovering" the location of "things" (objects)
via the Internet.


### 3.5 (Cyber)Security and the Internet of Things




In Sections 3.1 through 3.4, we examined a wide range of ethical
concerns affecting the use of search engines, focusing mainly on what
can be viewed as the "standard" or received ethical
concerns that have come to be associated with search engines during
the past three decades. One topic that arguably has been neglected, or
perhaps considered only indirectly (e.g., in our earlier discussion of
privacy-related issues in Sections 3.2 and 3.3), has to do with
ethical concerns affecting *(cyber)security*. In addition to
data security, which is closely related to data privacy (described
earlier), issues associated with system and network security, as well
as with national and international security, also now arise in light
of a specific kind of search search engine that is capable of locating
"things." In this section, we briefly consider some
emerging security-related challenges generated by the use of this type
of search engine in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT).




What is IoT, and how does it raise security-related ethical concerns
affecting search engines? IoT generally refers to the interconnection
of "objects" on the Internet; these (networked and
"intelligent") objects can include webcams, printers, and
other devices that are not easily identifiable, locatable, or
accessible to users via conventional search engines (see, for example,
Burgess 2018). So users might assume that since information about
these objects would not be accessible via typical Internet searches,
the objects would be fairly secure from network hackers. Many users
might also be enamored by the kinds of conveniences they could enjoy
if their "intelligent" objects were networked
together. Consider, for example, a "smart home" where
these objects could communicate with one another as well as with that
homeowner's mobile devices (and possibly also communicate
directly with networked devices and applications embedded in the
homeowner's automobile). On the one hand, we can imagine that
the owner of this home would be delighted if its
"intelligent" refrigerator communicated with her while
driving home to alert her that the refrigerator's supply of milk
is low. The refrigerator might also communicate directly with the
homeowner's smart phone to trigger an app designed to display
the lowest prices for milk at nearby grocery stores. So, ordinary
users could easily come to enjoy the kinds of conveniences made
possible via their interconnected "intelligent"
objects. On the downside, however, it is likely that these objects may
not have an appropriate level of network security. Thus users could be
vulnerable to having their objects hacked and also be subject to
having personal information about them (vis-a-vis their
interactions with these objects) acquired by unauthorized individuals
and organizations, if search engines were indeed capable of
discovering and locating their (non-sufficiently-secure) objects and
devices.




Whereas traditional search engines have assisted users in locating
online information pertaining to the names of people and places,
commercial/governmental/educational organizations and institutions,
etc. (via a standard protocol involving HTTP addresses and HTML
programming code), some search engines are now also capable of
searching the Internet for certain kinds of "things" (or
objects). Two of these search engines are *Thingful* and
*Shodan*. Thingful describes itself as a "discoverable
search engine" that provides users with "a unique
geographical index of connected objects around the world"
(https://thingful.net/). As such, Thingful boasts that it can index
across multiple IoT networks and infrastructures. Because this search
engine can locate the geographical position of objects and devices,
some critics worry that Thingful can also easily access personal data
regarding the ways in which users interact and communicate with their
connected devices and objects (as in the case of a homeowner
communicating with the "intelligent" objects in her smart
home).




Shodan, a controversial search engine created by John Matherly in
2009, enables users to find specific types of (Internet-connected)
computers, devices, and systems (including servers and routers), via
globally located servers that index the internet continuously. Shodan
has been described both as a "dark Google" and the
"scariest search engine ever" because it could be used to
locate components in a nation's critical infrastructure as well
as its military defense system, including the "command and
control systems for nuclear power plants and particle-accelerating
cyclotrons" (Goldman 2013). Some have even suggested that Shodan
was used to locate and monitor major components in Iran's
controversial nuclear program (Charette 2012). This has also led to
speculation that Shodan may have assisted the (then secret)
"Olympic Games Operation" allegedly carried out by the
U.S. and Israel to cause Iran's centrifuges--i.e.,
fast-spinning machines that enrich uranium--to spin out of
control (O'Harrow 2012). While some might be inclined to argue that nations
such as the U.S and Israel would have been justified in using whatever
cyber-related means they had at their disposal to disrupt the progress
of Iran's nuclear program, we can clearly see the downside of
such a practice; i.e., it could also be adopted by so-called
"rogue nations" and used against "legitimate"
nation states.



So it would seem that "discoverable search engines" like
Shodan and Thingful pose threats not only to our personal privacy and
security, but also to the security of a nation's critical
infrastructure and military defense systems as well. It will be
interesting to see whether this relatively new kind of search engine
will be used by nation states, and possibly even by terrorist groups
as well, in their future strategies and practices affecting
cyberwarfare, cyberterrorism, and cyberespionage. It will also be
interesting to see whether these search engines, and the companies and
organizations that develop them, will need to be closely regulated
because of the significant societal threats they now pose. We next
examine a related question as to whether search engine companies in
general have some special social/moral responsibilities, in light of
their important societal roles.


## 4. Moral Accountability and Social-Responsibility Issues for Search Engine Companies




Thus far, issues from the perspectives of business ethics and
professional responsibility have not been directly addressed in this
entry; our main focus in Section 3 has been on the kinds of moral
impacts that search engines have for ordinary users, especially with
respect to privacy, surveillance, and freedom. In Section 3.1, however,
we hinted that search engine companies (SECs) might be held morally
accountable for their practices involving bias in the ranking of search
results. And in concluding Section 3.4, we briefly entertained the
notion that major SECs might be held accountable for policies and
practices that either favor or directly support censorship. In this
section, we consider whether SECs have any special social
responsibilities and moral obligations because of their
"privileged place" in our society. We begin by briefly
describing a key societal role that search engines play in providing
access to information and knowledge.




Elgesem (2008, 241) notes that search engines have an important
societal role as "contributors to the public use of reason
", and Noble (2018, 148) argues that search results can actually
"structure knowledge" for the societies within which they
operate. As we already noted in Section 3, Hinman (2005, 2008) and
Diaz (2008) view search engines as "gatekeepers" of
knowledge on the Web. Taddeo and Floridi (2016, 1575), who also
describe the important "gatekeeping function" that SECs
like Google now have because of their "centrality" in
information societies, worry about the lack of consensus thus far with
regard to which "principles should shape...[an
SEC's]...moral responsibilities and practices." The
authors argue that we need an "ethical framework" both to
"define" an SEC's responsibilities and
"provide the fundamental sharable principles" necessary to
guide an SEC's conduct "within the multicultural and
international context in which they operate." But Taddeo and
Floridi also believe that this problem applies to other kinds of major
"online service providers," which the authors refer to as
"OSPs"; they include Facebook and Twitter as well as
Google under that category. However, we limit our focus on
moral-responsibility issues in this section to SECs per se.




Does the central role that major SECs like Google and Bing now play
as "gatekeepers" of knowledge in our information society
entail some special responsibilities for them? Hinman (2005, 21) lists
four reasons why these companies should shoulder significant social
responsibility. First, he notes that search engines "play an
absolutely crucial role" in accessing information and that
without them, the Web would "simply be inaccessible to us"
and thus "almost useless." Second, he points out that
access to information is "crucial for responsible
citizenship," also noting that "citizens in a democracy
cannot make informed decisions without access to accurate
information." Third, Hinman notes that search engines have become
"central to education," and he points out that students now
search on Google and other major search engines more frequently than
they visit libraries. Fourth, he points out that major search engines
are owned by private corporations - i.e., by businesses that are
mainly, and "quite properly," interested in making a
profit. Regarding Hinman's fourth point, it would seem that
conflicts can easily arise because of an SEC's mission to be
profitable and its broader societal role in providing access to
information in a manner that is fair, accurate, and unbiased.


### 4.1 Commerce-Related Conflicts for SECs




Consider one kind of conflict involving bias and profit
for SECs. Nicas (2011, 1) points out that while many SECs were
initially "content to simply produce search results," some
are now very much involved in diverse markets, "offering
everything from online music to local coupons to mobile phones."
Nicas also describes a bias-related concern affecting this trend by
noting that when Google entered into the online travel business, it
"began placing its new flight-search service atop general search
results" - i.e., above those of other major players in the
online travel business such as Orbitz and Expedia. Because Google also
engages in these kinds of practices in EU countries, where an estimated
85% of users select Google either as their main or sole search engine,
it has and continues to face charges of anti-trust violations. In
Europe, Google has been formally charged with "systematically
favoring its own comparison shopping product" by prominently
displaying that product/service in its search returns,
"irrespective of its merits" and at the expense of its
competitors (Chappell 2016). If the accounts provided by Nicas,
Chappell, and others are correct, it would seem that there are good
reasons to be concerned about commercial conflicts involving major SECs such as Google.




A relatively new bias-related conflict for SECs has recently surfaced
in connection with "voice search," which is becoming
increasingly popular with users of mobile devices. Barysevich (2016)
notes that voice search is the "fastest growing type of
search," pointing to statistics in the U.S.showing that 55% of
teenagers and approximately 40% of adults use this mode of search on a
daily basis. Why are users' searches trending in the direction
of voice versus ("traditional") text? Hawkins (2017, Other
Internet Resources) offers two reasons: (a) voice search is faster
than text, since most people also tend to speak much more quickly than
they type; and (b) voice search is hands-free, which is convenient for
people using mobile devices. Given Google's preeminence -
and some might even say its "dominance" - in the
online "search industry" to date, one might assume that
Google has also been the lead player in the emerging area of voice
search. But Hawkins points out that Bing has had an edge over Google
in the voice-search market thus far. He attributes this to the fact
that Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Amazon's
Alexa - three of the four major "virtual assistants"
on the market - use Bing for their searches. Of course, one
might well expect that Microsoft's voice-assistant applications
would direct its users' searches to Bing, and that
Google's voice assistants would do likewise in directing users
to its search engine. But one could also question whether voice-search
users, especially of products/services other than Microsoft's
and Google's, should be given an explicit option to set default
voice-search requests on their devices to a specific search engine of
their choice? Otherwise, companies like Amazon and Apple could be
perceived as biased because of their tilting, even if unintentionally,
the voice-search market toward Bing (and away from Google)? However,
since Google has already cornered so much of the existing search and
search-related markets, it might be difficult for us to view that SEC
as somehow itself a victim of (search) bias.




Some critics have pointed out that conflicts of interest involving
SECs are not limited to bias and unfair business practices in the
commercial sector, but can also affect the free flow of knowledge in
society. For example, Carr (2011, 163) worries that the commercial
control that Google and other major SECs now have over the
"distribution of digital information" could ultimately lead
to "restrictions on the flow of knowledge." And Hinman
(2008, 67) believes that the control of knowledge that SECs have is
"in a very fundamental sense, a public trust, yet it remains
firmly ensconced in private hands and behind a veil of corporate
secrecy." Much of this secrecy, as we have seen, is closely tied
to the proprietary search algorithms that major search engines use,
which also raises the question of whether aspects of these algorithms
should be more transparent to the general public. But Elgesem (p. 241)
believes that SECs should not be required to disclose information about
their proprietary search algorithms, arguing instead that they should
be required to (a) make their policies known to users and (b) follow
those policies as closely as possible.




We conclude this section by noting that SECs continue to face some
critical challenges with respect to fulfilling their "gatekeeper
role" in a socially responsible way, while simultaneously
protecting both their proprietary algorithms and the interests of their
shareholders to whom they also have legal and moral obligations. In the
remainder of Section 4, we focus our attention on two different kinds
of accountability-related ethical concerns affecting SECs: (i)
*moral responsibility*/*legal liability* issues arising
in cases where search engines have provided links to Web sites whose
content can be considered morally controversial; and (ii) questions
involving trust. We begin with an analysis of (i).


### 4.2 Legal Liability, a "Right to Erasure," and Fake News in the Digital Era




Should SECs be held accountable for directing users, even if
unintentionally, to some Web sites whose content is either illegal or
morally controversial, or both? We should note that American SECs,
including Google, claim that they provide only a *service*, and
thus are not "content providers." These companies believe
that it is not reasonable to hold them responsible/liable for the
content on sites that they merely identify or provide links to in their
lists of search returns. They also correctly point out that in the
U.S., providers of online services - including major ISPs like
Verizon and Comcast - are not held legally liable for the online
content accessible through their services, provided they comply with
official legal requests to remove content that explicitly violate U.S.
laws. Analogously, SECs believe that if they comply with official legal
requests to "de-index," or remove links to, sites that
willingly and intentionally violate U.S. laws - e.g., laws
violating copyright, child pornography, and so forth - they too
should not be held legally liable for any content that users happen to
access via their services. However, many American-owned SECs operate
internationally, where laws and regulatory schemes differ from those in
the U.S. (as we saw in the case of Google in China).




It is worth noting that in Europe, SECs are viewed as
"controllers of personal data," as opposed to mere
providers of a service (see, for example, Google Spain SL, Google
Inc. 2013); as such, these companies, as well as ISPs that operate in
EU countries, can be held responsible/liable for the content that is
accessible through their services. One major difference regarding how
SECs are viewed in the U.S. versus Europe came to the fore in the
relatively recent debate about whether users should have the
"Right to Be Forgotten," now commonly referred to as the
Right to Erasure.


#### 4.2.1 The Right to Erasure (RtE)




What is RtE, and why has it been controversial from the point of view
of moral accountability issues for SECs? We can trace the origin of
what eventually became the RtE debate to 2010, when Mario Costeja
Gonzalez requested that Google remove a link included in its
list of returns for online searches of his name (see, for example,
Google Spain SL, Google Inc. 2014). The link in question was to an
article in a Spanish newspaper (*La Vanguardia*) about a home
foreclosure that occurred 16 years earlier. Gonzalez, a Spanish
citizen, petitioned Spain's National Data Protection Agency, to
have the link removed. He argued that the information about his
foreclosure, which was still prominently displayed in Google's
list of search returns for "Mario Gonzalez," was no
longer "relevant." Although the Spanish court ruled in
Gonzalez's favor in 2010, many critics were unsure that
this court's ruling would also hold in other EU countries. So,
these critics were not surprised when Google appealed the Spanish
court's ruling.




As the debate in Europe escalated, many RtE advocates argued that
the (former) EU Directive on Data Protection (Directive 95/46/EC),
which protects the privacy rights citizens of all EU countries,
includes language that indirectly supported RtE. For example, they
noted that Article 12 ("Right of Access") of that directive
grants "the rectification, erasure, or blocking of data the
processing of which does not comply with the provisions of the
Directive because the information is...inaccurate" (see the
European Commission's "Fact Sheet on 'The Right to Be
Forgotten' Ruling"). So, citizens of EU countries already
had an explicit legal right to have *inaccurate* personal
information about them removed/erased from the Internet, or at least
de-linked or de-indexed from search engines. Some RtE supporters also
believed that Article 12 could be interpreted to imply a right to the
erasure/de-linking of online personal information that is no longer
deemed to be *relevant*.




SECs and other RtE opponents, including publishers and journalists,
have viewed RtE from a very different perspective. They argued that
RtE would censor information, thereby limiting freedom of expression,
and would degrade the overall quality of the Internet by limiting the
amount of online information available to users (see, for example,
Tavani 2018). Because of these and related concerns, they concluded
that the public would be
*harmed* by RtE. However, some RtE supporters, including Bottis
(2014, 2), suggested that RtE-related data protection was needed
precisely because it would help to eliminate harm - viz.,
"psychological harm" (and possibly even physical harm in
some cases) - that users might otherwise experience. Consider,
for example, that victims of "revenge porn" sites would
have explicit legal recourse regarding their requests to
remove/de-index links that associated their names with those
controversial sites (see the account of revenge porn vis-a-vis
the Right to Be Forgotten, now RtE, in Kritikos 2018).




In 2012, the European Commission (EC) proposed a revised
Data-Protection Regulation (Article 17) for the (former) EU Directive,
which included specific provisions for the removal (i.e., the
"rectification, erasure, or blocking") of personal data
that was *irrelevant* (as well as personal data that was
"inaccurate," "inadequate," or
"excessive"). The EU Parliament approved the EC's
recommendations in 2013, after making a few minor modifications to
Article 17 and renaming the "right" in question the
"Right to Erasure." Perhaps not surprisingly, the newly
revised RtE regulation was challenged by Google and other corporations
operating in Europe. However, in May 2014, the Court of Justice of the
European Union (CJEU) upheld the Spanish court's (2010) ruling in
the Gonzalez case, also confirming Article 17 of the updated EU
Directive on Data Protection. The high court's ruling confirmed
that citizens residing in all EU nations have the right, under certain
conditions, to request that search engine operators remove links to
some kinds of personal information about them that are "no longer
relevant." The CJEU also noted, however, that RtE is not an
absolute right; for example, this right would have to be balanced
against other rights, including "freedom of expression"
(see the EU's "Fact Sheet on the 'Right to Be
Forgotten' Ruling").




Although Google announced that it would comply with the CJEU's
ruling, it also worried that it would not be able to respond to all of
the users' requests that it would likely receive to
remove/de-index links; doing so, it suggested, would not only be an
onerous task but might also be a practical impossibility. Kelion (2019)
notes that in the time period between the CJEU's May 2014 ruling
and September 2019, Google had received "more than 845,000
requests to remove a total of 3.3 million web addresses," which
resulted in approximately "45% of the links ultimately getting
delisted." So it would seem that Google and its supporters indeed
have a reasonable concern, given the magnitude of removal requests it
has received. But one can still reasonably ask, as Bottis has, whether
the sheer volume of these requests constitutes sufficient grounds for
repealing RtE.




Bottis points out we do not cease to enact and to comply with laws
that apply in physical space simply because their enforcement could not
possibly eliminate crimes such as prostitution, drug dealing, etc. She
further notes that in the digital world, protecting privacy and
copyright has sometimes seemed impossible to achieve, but we still
propose, enact, and enforce laws to protect both as best we can. So on
this view, we could not justify "de-legislating" RtE solely
on the grounds that it is difficult to enforce. But it is also worth
noting that as in the case of Google's arguments for repealing
RtE, many of the arguments advanced by RtE's supporters also
include one or more logical fallacies; an analysis of some of those
fallacious arguments is included in Tavani (2018).




In one sense, the debate about RtE (formerly referred to as the RTBF
debate) would now seem moot, in Europe at least, following the
CJEU's 2014 ruling and its later approval of the General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was adopted by the EU in April 2016
and went into effect in May 2018. Yet, a new and different kind of
debate concerning RtE has since replaced the original - viz., a
dispute about (i) how RtE should be implemented in the EU, especially
in light of what some have criticized as the "vague"
guidelines given to SECs; and (ii) whether RtE needs to be universally
applied to be effective. With respect to (i), Google and other SECs
claimed that the CJEU did not provide sufficiently clear and precise
criteria for guiding them in determining which requests for
removal/deletion merit serious consideration and which do not. So,
Google and other SECs continue to examine RtE requests on a
case-by-case basis.




Regarding (ii), many privacy advocates argue that while RtE applies
in all EU countries, it cannot be an effective law without strong
international support; so, many members of the EC, as well as the
privacy regulators in the 28 EU nations (including the UK which will
soon exit the EU but will likely continue to support the principles
comprising RtE), have argued that RtE should apply beyond Europe. Even
though SECs operating in Europe are required to comply with GDPR (and
its RtE provisions) in all EU countries, RtE can be very easily
circumvented both within and outside Europe. For example, a European
user who enters the keyword "Mario Gonzalez" on
Google.com (or on non-local (European) versions of Bing, Yahoo,
DuckDuckGo, etc.) will still find the link to the story about that
person's home foreclosure prominently listed, even though users
of Google.es (in Spain), or Google users in other EU countries such as
Germany (Google.de), will not see that link in their list of search
returns. So RtE supporters have petitioned for broader application of
the new law, while Google and other SECs have challenged that view in
court. In September 2019, the EU's highest court ruled that
Google did not have to apply RtE globally (Kelion 2019). So, many
privacy advocates in Europe and elsewhere believe that a universal or
global version of RtE is still needed for it to be an effective
law (see, for example, Global Partners Digital 2018).


#### 4.2.2 The Challenge of Fake News in the Digital Era




Not only are SECs now required to comply with requests (from European
citizens living in EU countries) to de-index and remove links to
personal data that is deemed to be "irrelevant," they
currently face a somewhat similar challenge with respect to what to do
about indexing and providing links to false and/or misleading
information included in online forums. This is especially apparent in
the case of Fake News (FN). What is FN, and why is it a challenge for
SECs? Although there is no single, universally agreed upon definition
of FN, it is generally understood to mean "fabricated
news," "false news stories," and so forth. According
to the *Cambridge English Dictionary*, FN is defined as
"false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or
other media, usually created to influence political views" (see
the link in Other Internet Resources). The prevalence of FN in online
forums, and especially on social media sites and blogs, raises
questions about whether SECs are complicit in furthering the
dissemination of this false information.




In the U.S., concerns about FN received considerable media attention
following the 2016 presidential election, when it was reported that
actors in nations outside the US were deliberately posting false and
misleading information on social media sites such as Facebook to
influence the outcome of the election against then-candidate Hilary
Clinton. In one sense, it would seem that the specific details of this
controversy affect mainly, or possibly even solely, social media sites
such as Facebook and Twitter as well as blogs, but not necessarily
SECs. But we can also question whether SECs might share some
responsibility for exacerbating concerns about FN by providing users
with search results that - even if unintentionally - link
to various FN stories included on social media sites and elsewhere on
the Internet.




One might be inclined to argue that since FN deliberately promotes
erroneous and inaccurate information as truthful content, it should be
more closely regulated by governmental agencies. But as Lipinski
(2018, 69) points out, "while all Fake News possesses an element
of untruth, not all Fake News is defamatory." He goes on to note
that in the U.S., the purveyor of non-defamatory FN is protected by
the First Amendment; so there is no legal recourse against the
"speaker" of non-defamatory FN or against the media
outlets that post it. Thus, Lipinski's description of the law
could be interpreted to suggest that SECs, along with social media
sites, should be exonerated from any legal liability when it comes to
the dissemination of FN. Yet, even if social media sites continue to
permit the posting of FN on their platforms, we can still ask whether
SECs might be held to a higher standard, given their privileged role
as gatekeepers of knowledge on the Web to ensure that search engine
users users are directed to information that is
"accurate". 




Should SECs be responsible for de-indexing links that happen to direct
their users to some of the original sources of FN posts. An SEC, in
its defense, could argue that it would be unfair to be held
responsible for pointing users to information that is legal and that
is already freely available on the Internet. However, a critic might
respond that SECs operating in Europe have already agreed -
albeit under the threat of law - to remove links to information
that has been deemed "irrelevant," even though that
information's content is truthful. So, *a*
*fortiori*, the critic might ask: why shouldn't those
companies also be required to remove links to information that is
blatantly false and/or deliberately misleading? Perhaps the EU
countries - building on the rationale used in RtE (and also
included in the broader GDPR) for allowing the erasure of personal
information that is "inaccurate," as well as no longer
"relevant" - will take the lead in the future in
requiring SECs to respond to requests to remove links to at least some
kinds of FN.




It is also worth noting that some major SECs have codes of ethics or
codes of conduct containing specific principles that can be
interpreted as conflicting with practices that contribute to or
perpetuate the dissemination of FN, or any kind of information that
has been shown to be false or misleading. For example, Google's
Code of Conduct (see link in Other Internet Resources), Section I
(titled "Serve Our Users") states that because Google
delivers "great products and services," it holds itself to
"a higher standard." And in Section I.1 (titled
"Integrity"), the Google Code states:



> 
> Our reputation as a company that our users can trust is our most
> valuable asset, and it is up to all of us to make sure that we
> continually earn that trust. All of our communications and other
> interactions with our users should increase their trust in us.
> 




Does Google's commitment to hold itself to a higher standard
- i.e., to more than what is legally required of that corporation
in a minimalist sense - imply that it has an obligation to avoid
directing its users to sites that traffic in FN? And if Google is seen
as enabling increased access to false and misleading information, could
that lead to an erosion of the "trust" that this SEC now
seems to enjoy? In its code of conduct, Google claims that it strives
"continually" to "earn" the trust of its users.
But in an era of FN, we can wonder whether the sense of trust that
Google, or any other major SEC, seeks to increase might instead begin to erode.




In Section 4.3 we further examine the concept of trust in the
context of SECs. First, however, we conclude this section by noting
that as of this date, no clear and explicit policies have been adopted
by major SECs regarding FN. In fact, there is no evidence to suggest
that SECs even see themselves as bearing any level of responsibility
for the rapid spread of FN. Many SECs would likely argue that if any
entity ought to be held responsible for the widespread FN on the
Internet, it should be the social media sites and the blogs on which
most of that misinformation is originally posted. Unfortunately,
however, an adequate analysis of the role of social media sites and
their specific responsibility in the FN controversy is beyond the scope
of this entry; for more information about ethical issues affecting
social media sites per se, see Vallor (2016).


### 4.3 Some Questions Affecting Trust




In the preceding section, we saw how the rapid spread of Fake News
online raises one kind of trust-related concern for SECs: the accuracy
of the information on some sites to which search engine users are
directed. We next briefly examine the concept of trust in more general
terms, before considering whether and how it might be possible for
users to enter into trust relationships with SECs. As in the case of
other key ethical issues affecting SECs, it is not possible to discuss
here the many aspects of trust in the detail that they would otherwise
warrant. For an excellent overview of trust (in general), see McLeod
(2015). We limit our analysis to some current trust-related issues
involving SECs, and suggest that the way SECs respond to these issues
could affect the sense of trust that users will have in the future for
major SECs such as Google and Bing.




What is trust, and why is it so important in the context of SECs?
Following Baier (1986), many philosophers view trust as an
"attitude," while others see trust either in
"relational terms" (Robbins 2016) or as a kind of
"expectation" (Walker 2006). And as Govier (1997, 35)
notes, one reason why trust is important is because "attitudes of
trust and distrust affect the nature and quality of our social
reality." When discussing the topic of trust, it is important to
make some key distinctions at the outset. For example, we need to
differentiate trust from trustworthiness, which is often viewed either
as a *property* of the trustee (rather than as an attitude of
the trustor) or a *relation* between trustor and trustee.
Additionally, it is important to distinguish between *ethical*
trust and *epistemic* trust (both of which are described below),
in the context of SECs.




Are contemporary SECs trustworthy organizations? If so, why is it
that we claim to trust them? Is it because (a) we perceive them as a
*reliable* resource for directing us to the most relevant and
accurate online information, in response to our search queries (i.e.,
epistemic trust)? Or is it because (b) SEC's policies regarding
what they do with our personal information, once collected, are
perceived as transparent and *fair* (ethical trust)? Or is it
because of both (a) and (b)? We can also ask whether there might be
some alternative/additional reasons why one could claim to trust or
distrust an SEC.




Of course, one could reasonably question whether it is possible for
humans to enter into a trust relationship with an SEC, as a corporate
entity, or even with a non-human entity of any kind. For example, some might assume
that a genuine trust relationship can only exist between humans
(or perhaps more specifically, between "human agents"). Others,
however, believe that trust relationships can be extended to include
some non-human, or "artificial," agents--i.e., not
only corporations, which are sometimes viewed as aggregates of human
agents, but also artificial electronic agents such as
"bots." Because issues affecting trust and responsibility
for SECs are distributed over a vast and diffuse network, many diverse
kinds of agents can be involved--e.g., from corporate CEOs and
executives/boards, to customer-service representatives, to engineers
and software developers, to the many (non-human) artificial (AI) agents
or bots that can also "make some limited decisions" on
behalf of an SEC. So what, exactly, is it that we trust/distrust when
we say we trust/distrust an SEC? In claiming to trust Google, for
example, we may, in effect, be saying that we trust all of the
component elements comprising that SEC.




One model that can help us to think about trust in contexts as vast
and complex as major SECs is Margaret Urban Walker's framework of
"diffuse default trust" (Walker 2006). In Walker's
scheme, trust relationships occur in environments (i.e., "spaces
and circumstances") that she calls "zones of default
trust." Walker differentiates trust from mere reliance by noting
that in a trust relationship between A and B, A not only expects B to
do X, but A expects it of B (Walker, 79). And because trust
"links reliance to responsibility," Walker (p. 80) believes
that A has a "normative expectation" of B. But she also
notes that we are not always conscious of these normative expectations,
because they are typically "unreflective and often
nonspecific" expectations where "strangers or unknown
others may be relied upon to behave in acceptable ways." Our
reliance on the "good and tolerable behavior of others" is
at the core of Walker's notion of "default trust" (p.
85).




An important feature of Walker's framework is that it allows
for trust relations between individuals who have not met, and who will
possibly never meet, in person. And in her scheme, trust relationships
can occur not only between humans who are unknown to one another, but
also between humans and non-human entities such as corporations. Walker
illustrates the latter point in an example where someone encounters
particularly bad service on an airplane operated by a major commercial
airline. She points out that when we have such an experience of bad
service, it is appropriate to feel resentment, not necessarily toward
specific individuals who work for the airline, but toward the airline
itself. So the entities comprising a zone of trust need not be limited
to known (human) individuals.




Walker (p. 85) extends her notion of default trust to include zones
of "diffuse default trust," as also illustrated in her
example involving the major airline corporation. Consider the many ways
that responsibility can become "diffuse" when distributed
over a vast zone of trust such as a commercial airline (Walker), or a
major SEC like Google which also qualifies as a zone of diffuse-default
trust comprising a diverse range of agents (both human and non-human).
Among the non-human entities in that zone are artificial electronic
agents (bots) who "operate behind the scenes," both with
humans and other artificial agents. The latter kinds of entities also
include multi-agent systems that can "act" in limited ways
on behalf of an SEC. For a detailed description of how Walker's
model can be applied in digital contexts, including zones of diffuse
default trust comprising both humans and multi-agent systems, see the
analysis in Buechner and Tavani (2011).




As noted above, it is important to distinguish between epistemic
trust and ethical trust, both of which are essential for trusting SECs.
Whereas concerns regarding the former sense of trust overlap with
issues affecting an SEC's reliability, as well as with the
accuracy of information contained on the Web sites it indexes and links
to, ethical trust in the case of SECs can overlap with
questions/concerns pertaining to a search organization's user
policies and whether those policies are open, fair, and trustworthy.
Recognizing and complying with the requirements of both aspects of
trust is crucial for an SEC like Google to realize a key objective
stated in its code of conduct--viz., to "increase" and
"continually earn...trust" with its users (The Google
Code of Conduct, 2018).




We conclude this section by acknowledging that much more could be
said about the important role that trust plays in the context of SECs.
But we have at least identified some of the reasons why trust is very
important for SECs and also showed how those companies can qualify as
"zones of diffuse default trust" (Walker). Although we have
examined only one model of trust - Walker's framework
- in analyzing some of the many dimensions of trust affecting
SECs, we have not argued that Walker's is the only, or even the
best, theory for understanding trust issues affecting SECs. Nor have we
argued that Walker's theory is without internal problems.
Instead, we put aside those kinds of questions in favor of using a
specific model to analyze trust-related questions affecting SECs in a
systematic way.




We began Section 4 by asking whether SECs have any special moral
obligations because of their "privileged place" in society
(i.e., in light of their role as "gatekeepers" of knowledge
on the Web), and in Section 4.1 we examined Hinman's concern about 
the kind of control of knowledge that SECs currently have. In Section 4.2, we
identified a relatively recent trust-related challenge that SECs now
face because of the proliferation of Fake News on the Web. And based on
our further analysis of trust in Section 4.3, it would seem that an
SEC's ability to establish and maintain trust with its users
will be crucial for that organization to thrive in the future.


## 5. Conclusion




In this entry, we have seen how various ethical issues arose during
key developmental stages of search technology that eventually led to
contemporary "Web 2.0-era search engines." Search
technology itself has evolved over the past 75 years--i.e., from
pre-computer-based techniques (such as memex) intended to help
scientists and professional researchers locate and retrieve important
information in a timely manner, to an Internet-based technology that
assisted ordinary users in locating (and linking directly to) relevant
Web sites in response to their manifold search queries, to a highly
sophisticated technology that, in its current form, has become
increasingly commodified and personalized to the point that it might
now be regarded as a threat to some of our basic freedoms and
democratic ideals.




The ethical issues examined in this entry are
mainly from a deontological perspective, thus reflecting the published
work on this topic to date. However, in no way is our analysis of
ethical issues affecting search engines intended to be exhaustive;
rather it merely reflects the standard or "mainstream"
approach that applied ethicists and other scholars have taken thus far
in their analyses of search engine controversies. One could easily
imagine questions arising from other ethical perspectives as
well. From the vantage point of social justice, for example, one could
reasonably ask whether search engine companies in the U.S. and other
developed nations are morally obligated to help bridge the
"information divide" by providing easier and more
ubiquitous access (via search technologies) to users in developing
nations, especially to non-English speaking users. Also, from a
utilitarian or consequentialist perspective, one might ask whether the
overall social consequences would be more beneficial if search engine
users were legally permitted to retrieve some forms of proprietary
information (e.g. proprietary online information concerning health and
public-health studies that were made possible by tax-payer funding)
for personal use.



Additionally, some alternative ethical frameworks could also be used
in analyzing ethical issues affecting search engines. These include,
but are not limited to, Hans Jonas' "Imperative of
Responsibility" (Jonas 1984), Bernard Gert's "Common
Morality" (Gert 2007), and John Rawls' "justice as
fairness" (Rawls 1999). For a very brief description of how
ethical aspects of search engines might also be approached from the
perspectives of "rights," "fairness,"
"common good" and "virtue," see the Markkula
Center for Applied Ethics (in the Other Internet Resources).




Even though the primary focus has been on identifying and analyzing
*ethical* issues affecting search engines, in closing it is
worth reiterating a point made in the introductory section--viz.,
that search engine technology also has implications for some
other kinds of philosophical issues. This is especially apparent in the
area of epistemology, where some critics raise concerns related to our
received notions of the nature and justification of knowledge claims,
in an era of widespread use and dependence on search engines. For
example, Hinman (2008, 75) argues that search engines
"contribute significantly to the social construction of
knowledge"--i.e., not only do they provide access to
knowledge, but they also increasingly "play a crucial role in
the constitution of knowledge itself." An analysis of this claim, however, as well as
other epistemological and (broader) philosophical aspects of search engines, is beyond
the scope of the present entry.