Ethical Framework of Social Media Based on Text Analysis of Terms of Service of Six Major Platforms

Abstract

In the present digital world, people rely extensively on social media for networking and socializing. As a consequence, they face numerous ethical challenges which make it necessary to constantly reflect on new media ethics emerging from social media. The terms of service (ToS) of social media provide the opportunities for big tech companies’ guidelines to design the ecology and the ethical environment of social media. The existing studies conducted in this domain emphasize on specific ethical issues pertaining to ToS such as privacy, freedom of speech, and copyright protection. But all of these studies lack the exploration of its general ethical framework. Considering the theoretical framework of the Potter Box Model of Reasoning, Schwartz’s value scale, and Christians and Ess’ ethical principles, this paper examines the ToS of social media run by six major platforms across the globe. The result reveals 15 values, which are summarized into three pairs of ethical principles: egoism and altruism, monism and pluralism, and utilitarianism and deontology. The paper further analyzes the hidden conflicts and reveals the emergence of “relational” ethical principle.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

1. Preface

Media, central to the history of civilization, alter the social consciousness structure including the ethical structure with its formal changes [1]. The explosion of social media brought by the ubiquity of high-speed Internet in recent years has blurred the boundary between media texts and daily interactions and raised new ethical issues, making it imperative to deliberate on fast-evolving media ethics [2, 3]. In this context, social media ethics has been heatedly discussed in literature [4–8]. Terms of service (ToS), as the “scripts” of users’ relationship and behavior written by the platforms, reflect the platforms’ design ideas for the ecology of social media and, therefore, offer a crucial site for researchers to understand and examine the ethical environment of social media.

Previous literature has carried out exploratory studies on the ToS of social applications, with priority given to specific ethical issues such as privacy, freedom of speech, and copyright protection. However, it lacks a thorough and overall exploration of the ethical framework from the macro level, and most studies have dealt with the topic in the Western context rather than from a global perspective. Improvements are made to these two aspects in this paper. It selects ToS of social applications on a global scale, adopts the method of text analysis, and analyzes the implied ethical principles, based on the Potter Box Model of Reasoning, as well as the Schwartz value scale and Christians and Ess’ ethical principle framework, based on which puts forward suggestions for future development of social media ethics.

The unique contribution of the paper includes the following:

(i) Exploration of the theoretical framework of the Potter Box Model of Reasoning, Schwartz’s value scale, and Christians and Ess’ ethical principles

(ii) Examination of the ToS of social media run by six major platforms across the globe

(iii) Analysis of the hidden conflicts and reveals the emergence of “relational” ethical

2. Social Media Ethics and Terms of Service

Terms of service are service format contracts made by Internet service providers (ISPs) for users [9, 10], which were born as early as the rise of the Internet, and have come into the public view with the explosion and popularity of social applications in recent years. As the primary premise for users to get access to services from the platform and join the community of social media, ToS offer constraints and guidance for users’ social behaviors and regulate the rights and obligations between users, network platform providers, and third parties, as well as the distribution of rights and responsibilities [9]. In other words, ToS can be regarded as the platform’s design criteria for the environment of the social media, thus opening a window for researchers to understand the ethical ecology of social media.

In previous literature, some exploratory studies have been carried out on ToS of social applications, with priority given to such specific ethical issues as privacy, freedom of speech, and copyright protection. The balance of rights and responsibilities is the focus of most studies. Researchers have found that consensus between platforms and users is reached via the registration process with just a simple click [11], and the terms of the agreement are obviously serving the platforms’ own interests in the distribution of rights and obligations [12]. According to user surveys, most people hold the view that the choice of “take-it-or-leave-it” in the face of privacy settings such as tracking walls is neither acceptable nor fair [13]. In this regard, we should promote the reasonable protection of users’ rights and interests for the purpose of enhancing users’ interests [14].

In some studies, emphasis has also been placed on whether the consensus-reaching process of the agreement of ToS is user-friendly. As demonstrated by experiments and surveys, the vast majority of users choose to skip the careful reading of ToS when registering for social networking services, with the information overload a significant negative predictor of reading time [15]. The empirical investigation of the ToS and privacy policies revealed poor readability and availability [16], insignificant update hints, and obvious errors in the texts [17]. Other studies focus on the specific ethical issues involved in the ToS of social applications, most of which from the perspective of user rights protection. Common topics include privacy [18, 19], freedom of speech and democracy [20], copyright [21], and account inheritance [22].

Previous literature has provided a general description of the contents of ToS and exploratory conclusions on specific ethical issues based on the analysis of empirical data. However, it omits the exploration of ethical frameworks from the macro level, as ToS are crucial in platforms’ planning of the digital social ecology. Moreover, existing studies lack a global perspective due to data collection from within the same sociocultural background. In this paper, improvements will be made to those two aspects, so as to dig out the ethical framework contained in the text of the ToS of social media.

3. Choice of Social Platforms and Ethical Framework

The user registration agreements displayed on the user registration page of social applications are mostly ToS. Some ToS also include package agreements such as privacy agreements and copyright notices. These additional agreements are usually listed in the form of hyperlinks in ToS. As the main agreement, ToS also embody the ideas of the additional agreements, to which users can refer for details. Given that this paper is aimed at refining the ethical framework, only ToS are studied here. In addition, NVivo will be used as an auxiliary tool of text analysis to examine the user registration agreement of the social applications, so as to refine the ethical frameworks implied in it. NVivo is a software that helps in performing quantitative and mixed-method-based research work. The software is primarily used for performing analysis of unstructured text, audio, video, and image data which are collected from interviews, focus group meeting, surveys, social media, and journal articles.

Nonrandom purposive sampling was used to select key social media to conduct text analysis. Taking into account the popularity ranking and categories of social applications, as well as from a global perspective, ToS of six social applications, namely, WeChat, Weibo, TikTok, WhatsApp, Twitter, and YouTube, are selected as samples in this paper (Table 1). Among them, the popularity ranking is taken from the application ranking list provided by Mobile Observatory [23] and the global application popularity list provided by Qimai Data [24].

Table 1

Overview of six social applications and ToS.

Social application	Category	Country of service provider	Applicable areas	Length (words)	Number of clauses
WeChat	Instant messaging	China	China	9058	97
WhatsApp	Instant messaging	US	Global	3973	51
Sina Weibo	Microblog	China	China	7651	92
Twitter	Microblog	US	Europe/rest of world	2532/3127	10/11
TikTok	Video socialization	China	China	12947	74
YouTube	Video socialization	US	Global	4213	45

According to the Potter Box Model of Reasoning, a classic model of ethical reasoning, the code of conduct can be established in four dimensions: facts, values, principles, and loyalties [25]. To accurately refine the ethical principles adopted by the subject, the values should be deduced from the facts first, and then, the ethical principles can be deduced from the values. In this paper, the first three steps of this model will be employed to extract the overall ethical framework from the ToS text.

In the second step, the Schwartz value scale will be partially utilized [26], which summarizes the values that all people have through an extensive survey of the population in 20 countries. There are four high-order types of value: self-transcendence, self-enhancement, conservation, and openness to change, which are divided into 10 subtypes and 44 representative values (Table 2). Though thorough and comprehensive it is, the impact of changes in the media ecology in recent decades has not been embodied in the survey. To this end, in cases that the scale fails to cover in the process of coding, the values will be summarized according to the actual situations reflected in the materials, so that an ethical framework that fits the actual situation will emerge.

Table 2

Schwartz value scale (Schwartz [26]; redrawn by author).

Higher-value types	Value types	Representative values
Self-transcendence	Universalism	Being broadminded, wisdom, social justice, equality, a world at peace, a world of beauty, unity with nature, and protecting the environment
	Benevolence	Being helpful, honesty, forgivingness, loyalty, and responsibility
Self-enhancement	Power	Social power, authority, and wealth
	Achievement	Success, capability, ambition, and influence
Conservation	Conformity	Politeness, obedience, self-discipline, and honoring parents and elders
	Tradition	Humility, acceptance of my portion in life, devotion, respect for tradition, and being moderate
	Security	Family security, national security, social order, cleanliness, and reciprocation of favors
Openness to change	Self-direction	Creativity, freedom, independence, curiosity, and choosing one’s own goals
	Stimulation	Daringness, a varied life, and an exciting life
	Hedonism	Pleasure, enjoyment in life

Christians et al. [25] also put forward the five principles of metaethics, which have been frequently quoted by scholars for years as the criteria of media practice, namely, Aristotle’s Doctrine of Mean/Confucius’ Doctrine of Mean, Kant’s Absolute Law/Islamic Sacred Precepts, Mill’s Utility Principle, Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance, Judeo-Christian Fraternity, and Nordin’s/Feminist Care. With the development of digital media, Ess [27, 28] put forward seven ethical principles applicable to the digital era, namely, utilitarianism, deontology, ethical relativism/absolutism/pluralism, feminist ethics and caring ethics, virtue ethics, Confucian ethics, and African views, which can be regarded as the adaptation and development of mass media ethics theory proposed by Christians et al. Artificial intelligence has huge potential of identifying areas wherein digital vendors fail to adhere to legal obligations. Study has been conducted representing implementation of AI system for the automatic detection of unfair terms in business-to-consumer contracts as part of a project entitled as “CLAUDETTE.” The contract terms that were used in various digital consumer markets emphasized on five categories of clauses, namely, the limitations in liability, unilateral changes to the contract or services, unilateral termination of the contract, removal of contract, and arbitration [29]. Statistical analysis is used as a major criterion for classification considering the corporate analysis services, namely, economic, company, and investment aspects. The use of AI in developing statistical classification system has helped in the development of accurate and timely interactive statistical services [30, 31]. In this paper, the above-mentioned ethical principles are used as a toolbox to further analyze the value standards obtained in the second step.

To sum up, the research framework of this paper is as follows: by using the Potter Box Model of Reasoning, the first step is to collect the empirical data and analyze ToS text; the second step is to determine the values based on the Schwartz value scale; the third step is to analyze the ethics principles according to Christians and Ess’ ethical principles; the fourth step is to further analyze and refine an ethical framework of ToS of social media. Figure 1 shows the research framework.

[figure(s) omitted; refer to PDF]

4. Ethical Principles in Terms of Service

According to the coding results of the TOS text via NVivo, a total of 25 nodes are defined and then integrated into 15 values, comprising the original values listed by Schwartz values scale (honesty, being helpful, power (combined by social power and authority), wealth, politeness, conformity, security, order, freedom, and independence) and newly added values (sharing, cooperation, self-protection, and result-orientation) (Table 3).

Table 3

Values reflected in ToS of social media.

High-value types	Specific value	Corresponding nodes	Node occurrences
Self-transcendence	Honesty	Transparency	5
	Being helpful	Readability	2
	Sharing	Information sharing	2
	Cooperation	Seek user cooperation	2
		Seek advice	3
Self-enhancement	Power	Nonacceptance means giving up	7
		Consent by use	11
		Unlimited right to change	7
		Sent means delivered	2
		Check the right of user information	3
		Autonomous adjudication right	10
	Wealth	Claim ownership and property rights	27
		Suggest commercial use	6
		Protect copyright of user-generated content	5
	Self-protection	Exemption, limited liability	31
		Reserved unfinished rights	4
Conservation	Politeness	Politeness	2
	Conformity	Abide by laws and observe discipline	18
	Security	Security and privacy	12
	Order	Order	10
Openness to change	Freedom	Freedom and noninterference	3
	Independence	Take one’s own responsibility	19
Other types	Result-oriented	Deal with things with result-oriented approaches	6
	Respect for diversity	Respect for legal differences between countries	3

Combining those values with their opposites (some of which are default values), the following 10 pairs of values are formed: power and participation, wealth and equality/universal benefit, openness and security, self-protection and responsibility, independence and cooperation, honesty and black box, order and freedom, unity and difference, result-orientation, and intention-orientation. With the help of metaethical principles put forward by Christians and Ess, these pairs are further integrated into three ethical principles: egoistic principle and altruistic principle, ethical monism and pluralism, and utilitarianism and categorical imperative.

5. Egoism and Altruism

5.1. Power and Participation

The node of power and participation appears in the ToS text most frequently among all the nodes. Social media seeks to dominate the digital community, including the power to set rules, review contents, and identify the treatment of violations.

In terms of the negotiation of the contents of ToS, all six social applications show the attitudes of “nonacceptance means giving up,” “consent by use,” “sent means delivered,” and “unlimited right to change” of the platforms, which have become the universal criterion for social applications worldwide. In ToS, all platforms have established a bundle of rights for themselves, including the right to limit or exempt liability, the right to adjudicate disputes, the right to make rules, the right to enforce rules (unilaterally), the right to punish the breach of contract, and the right to choose applicable laws. All these rights reflect the unidirectional domination of the platform, which easily leads to the imbalance of rights and responsibilities between the platforms and users, as well as the disequilibrium between obligations and duties of the platforms.

In spite of the prevalence of the so-called “participatory” culture in the era of social media, the platforms enjoy absolute power to formulate rules in ToS, while users have no say in the formulation. As long as users accept the services of the platforms, they can only choose to agree or accept those terms in any case without making any change or consultations, let alone the formulation of the digital community rules through participation and autonomy of the user group.

5.2. Wealth and Inclusiveness

The occurrence of the node of wealth (ownership, property rights, etc.) ranks the second only to the node of power in the ToS text. All platforms attach great importance to the expression of interest demands.

Each platform has repeatedly declared the ownership of software and user-generated data, the right to profit from it, and the right to push business information. Platforms regard data as property and claim ownership and (exclusive) commercial benefits. Most platforms prohibit users and third parties from automatically crawling data on social media for whatever purpose, which also creates obstacles for academic research [32]. There is one exception, however, that Twitter allows crawlers “if done in accordance with the provisions of the robots.txt file.”

Meanwhile, values such as equality or universal benefit opposite to the accumulation of private wealth are missing in ToS text. Users, as owners of “small data,” have far less opportunity to profit than platforms which have access to “big data.” Despite acknowledging users’ ownership of self-generated information and promising to protect users’ copyright of self-made contents, platforms claim to have special permission to use personal information.

In the ToS text, platforms clearly define four roles of the users: digital workers who produce data for free or low pay, goods to be packaged and sold to advertisers, audience who receive advertising information, and customers who purchase platform services. These are also the relationship that the platforms presuppose to build with the users.

5.3. Self-Protection and Responsibility

Self-protection corresponds to the responsibility value in the Schwartz value scale. The Schwartz value scale uses an 8-point scale wherein 0 indicates that the value is against the selected principle, 1 indicates that the value is not of much importance, 4 indicates that the value is important, and 8 indicates that the value of optimal importance. The Schwartz value scale is also known as short value scale which includes 57 items that represent ten distinct motivational values. The former emphasizes avoidance of responsibility, while the latter emphasizes taking responsibility. As a common core value of commercial enterprises, the value of “responsibility” is not highlighted in the ToS text. On the contrary, “taking no responsibility” and “disclaimer” are among the high-frequency words used by the platforms.

The cases of exemption that platforms assert include technical failures, data storage, user behaviors, security of accounts, disputes between the users and the third party, etc. Although it is difficult for users to determine whether that assertion is reasonable, platforms are in advantageous positions, and they choose to protect its own rights and interests first while failing to give priority to the rights and interests of users in the case of disputes.

5.4. Independence and Cooperation

“Independence” is a value especially emphasized in the Western society. As emphasized in the ToS text, whether it is the platform, the user, or the third party, the individual should bear the responsibility independently. For example, “the losses and consequences arising therefrom (including but not limited to missed promotion opportunities, loss of marketing revenue, etc.) shall be borne by the users themselves” (Sina Weibo ToS 8.4) and “Tencent and the third party shall be responsible for possible disputes within the scope stipulated and agreed by law” (WeChat ToS 11.2). Users should choose by and be responsible for themselves, such as “Your access to and use of the Services or any Content are at your own risk” (Twitter ToS).

Cooperative value, although also common across countries, is not included in the Schwartz value scale, which is added in this paper. This value appears sporadically in a few ToS. It should be noted that, on the surface, platforms are inviting the user for jointly improving products, building rules, and jointly maintaining the health and safety of the community environment, but “cooperation” in ToS still emphasizes that individuals are independent of each other (for example, Twitter thanks people for giving feedback or other suggestions on its services but emphasizes that users are not obliged to provide suggestions and the platform is not obliged to adopt suggestions), or for self-protection (for example, WhatsApp seeks protection and cooperation from users in legal disputes).

5.5. Openness and Security

Openness to third parties is repeatedly mentioned in the ToS. In fact, openness is one of the core values that platforms have always advertised. The security aspect in a platform is highly related to privacy and is considered as the most concerned ethical issue by the general public who use the respective platform.

The two values belong to the conservative/aggressive quadrant of the Schwartz value scale. The reason why security is placed under the principle of self-interest and altruism here is that from the text of ToS, it is altruistic for the platform to protect users’ privacy, while it is profitable for the platform to make private data open (at least in the short term). For one thing, privacy protection requires a lot of manpower and material resources; for another, it is also crucial that the platforms need to open or share user data with third parties from time to time for commercial profits or cost reduction, which is also a weak link with privacy risks.

For this reason, the platforms repeatedly commit to user privacy protection when sharing data with third parties in ToS. However, it is difficult for users to know whether their privacy has been violated by a third party, by whom, and to whom they claim their rights. There is no mention of the relevant supervision mechanism in ToS, and platforms usually assert exemptions in a case in which the third party infringes the user’s privacy.

5.6. Honesty and Blackbox

Regarding the value of honesty, the ToS text is self-contradictory. On the one hand, most platforms show frankness in the text. The first is transparency. “The operator will try its best to avoid the inconvenience caused by the above entrustment or change to user’s use of Weibo services, and the Weibo operator will try its best to make a timely notification by means of the website, platform, private message, mail, etc.” (Weibo ToS). Secondly, platforms strengthen the readability of the ToS text. For example, they remind users of reading the key parts by using bold fonts, or specially mark the latest amendments to ToS “(We will provide you notice of amendments to our Terms, as appropriate, and update the “Last Modified” date at the top of our Terms)” (WhatsApp ToS).

At the same time, all platforms actually create obstacles for users to access and understand ToS, which makes honesty only a cosmetic rhetoric. All the ToS are accessible for the public, which, at first sight, is not the situation described by the term “black box,” originally referring to the invisible state. However, as shown in Table 1, the length of these ToS generally takes a quarter of an hour to half an hour to browse according to the reading speed prescribed by the US Ministry of Education for middle school students and the Chinese Ministry of Education. Apart from ToS, there are several additional agreements that users need to agree to. Not only that, users are less likely to interpret and evaluate the real impact of ToS on their interests, due to their lack of technological knowledge and limited access to data compared to platforms.

5.7. Summary

The ToS text reflects a distinct tendency of the platforms to dominate in their relationship with the user and third parties. First of all, emphasis is placed on self-interest, the pursuit of power and wealth, but hardly involves the universal sharing of interests. Second, the rights and responsibilities of the platforms and the users are out of balance, and there is disequilibrium between the obligations and responsibilities of the platform. Third, the relationship between the platform itself and the user is defined as a contractual relationship rather than an intimate relationship or partnership, even when it involves seeking cooperation, coordination, advice, and help. Fourth, emphasis is placed on independency. The platform, the user, and the third party are independent of each other, each of whom takes its own responsibility and only takes its own responsibility, thereby downplaying the platforms’ responsibility to society, and deny the rights and interests as a whole.

The above-mentioned values clearly highlight the principle of self-interest, as opposed to the ethical principle of altruism. The pair of ethical principles comes from the self-enhancement and self-transcendence of the high-value types of the Schwartz value scale. The conflict between the two principles corresponds to the debate between public and private, which has a long history in both Eastern and Western societies.

Neither the prevalence of the egoistic principle nor the decline of the altruistic principle can be simply attributed to the corruption of morality and the degeneration of human nature. Ratta [33] argues that this has to do with the control of production and distribution of communication by contemporary capitalism. Even the data protection regulations issued by the European Union, which are highly praised all over the world, are just minor repairs. They only protect the small territory of individual freedom from the infringement of platform capitalism, which echoes the emphasis on the rights and responsibilities of individuals, rather than the users as a political collective. They do not challenge the whole system but only seek to alleviate the worst influence of capitalism.

Ratta suggested borrowing the concept of “care” from ethics as the core ethics of social media, emphasizing relationships rather than rights, sociality rather than individuality, interdependence rather than independence, and particularity, connection and context rather than universality and abstraction of legal contract thinking. This phenomenon is also related to the influence of Western individualistic values on global society. Modern Western thoughts tend to assume that human beings are atomic individuals, and as individuals, human beings are the basic elements of society, isolated from others. Cultural resources from other regions of the world should be introduced. For example, the Confucian ethics that defines people as the existence of relationship should be used to resolve conflicts on social media and build harmonious relationships with humans and things, so as to achieve the freedom and satisfaction of all parties [28].

6. Ethical Monism and Pluralism

6.1. Unity and Difference

As for the scope of application (see Table 1), although all three platforms from China require the user to grant permission to use personal information on a global scale in ToS, they all state that the terms are only applicable to Chinese laws, shunning the differences between countries and regions. Also, no specific provision for certain country or region has been formulated. Among the platforms from the United States, apart from that of YouTube, the other two ToS are widely applicable to countries all over the world and pay attention to the differences in laws and regulations of various countries in the terms.

WhatsApp makes it clear at the beginning of the terms that this application provides services to users all over the world, and that the laws, regulations, and standards of the country where information is stored or processed may be different from those of the country where users are located. Its ToS have some provisions for the United States and Canada that are different from other parts of the world, such as waiving the right of litigation.

Twitter has a special version of ToS for the European Union. The general version of the terms is similar to the European version in structure, but each clause is different in specific content. The requirements of the European version on platform rights and user responsibilities are significantly less than those of the general version. Compared with clause 5 of the two versions, the general version is 434 words long, which specifies the exemption and limitation of liability of the platform in detail. The EU version deleted the exemption part, only indicating that the platform’s “responsibility is limited to the maximum scope allowed by the country where the user is located,” with a length of only 38 words.

However, the introduction of those clauses or agreements does not mean that the platform’s emphasis on differences in laws and regulations between countries is due to its genuine respect for social differences. In fact, Twitter has only issued a special agreement for the EU, and it has something to do with the EU’s stricter data protection regulatory policy; WhatsApp has drawn up special clauses only for the United States and Canada, and most of the text related to national differences are related to exemption or reserved rights. Therefore, it is questionable about the value of difference embodied in the text on the surface.

6.2. Conformity and Challenges

Each platform shows adherence to the laws (of various countries) in ToS. For example, WhatsApp stipulates that if its services violate the local laws of any country or will make the platform bound by the laws and regulations of other countries, it will stop its services in that country. Besides, the platform also strictly restricts users and requires them to abide by local laws. For example, “country” and “law” appear 17 times and 36 times, respectively, in TikTok ToS.

Social applications are frequently used in various riot scenes, giving people the impression that social media are active participants in social movements. However, judging from the ToS text, platforms have not challenged mainstream authority, nor are they subversive of state power and laws. Instead, they are defenders and staunch executors and show obedience and cooperation to the current power order.

6.3. Order and Freedom

Platforms, especially those from China, emphasize the “conservation” values in the Schwartz value scale, such as “politeness” and “tradition.” For example, “Users should speak politely in the process of using Weibo service ... to jointly establish a harmonious and polite online social environment (Weibo ToS 4.9)”; users should consciously abide by the requirements of “public order, social morality” (TikTok ToS 5.2.3); users are prohibited from posting information against “public order, good customs and social morality” (WeChat ToS 8.1.2.5).

The emphasis on these “conservation” values reflects the platforms’ avoidance of uncertainties such as conflicts and chaos, affirmation of stability and order, and the pursuit of “normative and orderly network environment” (WeChat ToS 8.1.2).

Platforms declare that they do “not monitor the user or control the content the users publish through services of the application,” which seems to be open to the value of diversity. However, ToS repeatedly emphasize the norms and order of maintaining the data environment and require the user to abide by the laws and social order. In essence, this kind of “freedom (or laissez-faire)” is only to exempt the platforms, which discourages the user group to make community rules through self-exploration.

6.4. Summary

On the whole, the ToS text shows that the platforms respect the political power of the host country, abide by the law, and maintain the social order and the stability of the social ecology, which indicates the platforms’ emphasis on the monistic value order and unwelcome of the pluralistic value order. On the one hand, this is to facilitate the management of the platform as a regional or even global organization; on the other hand, it also avoids the regulatory risks faced by the platform in different parts of the world.

This paper defines the ethical principle behind the values above as ethical monism, which is in contrast with pluralism. Ethical monism insists that there are universally valid norms, beliefs, practices, etc., in the world, which define truth, goodness, beauty, correctness, and goodness for all people at anytime and anywhere, while other norms, beliefs, and practices different from them are wrong. Ethical pluralism does not deny that there are some values, norms, practices, etc., that are valid for all human beings at any time and any place, but it is possible, inevitable, and desirable to explain, understand, and apply these norms in different ways in different environments. Based on this logic, on the one hand, the platform can abide by universal values, avoid slipping into relativism and thus tolerating all kinds of behaviors; on the other hand, it can simultaneously advocate tolerance of differences instead of directly rejecting them and truly respect the participatory culture, open culture, and multiculturalism in the era of social media.

7. Utilitarianism and Categorical Imperative

7.1. Result-Based and Intention-Based

In the TOS text, platforms declare to impose severe sanctions on some behaviors of the user mainly based on the results rather than the intention, which is different from the conventional practice of law or ethics. The latter usually considers first the motivation or intention of one’s behavior when examining and evaluating one’s behavior.

For example, “Any behavior that affects the operation of Weibo, damages Weibo’s business model, or harms Weibo’s ecology is prohibited” (Weibo ToS). Once the platform “discovers or receives reports or complaints from others about user violation”, the platform “has the right to delete and block relevant content at any time without notice, and to impose penalties including but not limited to warning, restricting or prohibiting the use of some or all functions, account blocking and even account cancel according to the circumstances” (WeChat ToS 8.5.1).

In accordance with the result-based principle, users shall be fully responsible for their actions that cause a negative impact, whether on purpose or not. The reason why the platforms adopt this principle is easy to catch. Innovations of digital technologies in the IT field have brought about the fragmentation of media channels, which in turn entail the multiplier effect of social media, with greater impacts on the society. In that case, it is not surprising that platforms adopt this principle to be exempted from liability.

7.2. Summary

This moral philosophy of consequentialism and its opposite principle based on intention correspond to a pair of motifs, utilitarianism and deontology, which are repeatedly discussed in Western ethics.

According to the ethical principle of utilitarianism, one may be able to reason in complicated ways, determine the potential consequences, and bring greater benefits to the majority [34]. Following utilitarianism, the consequence principle that also puts forward higher requirements and greater moral responsibility for users accordingly, who shall be familiar with the traps and dangers on social applications, be able to make a comprehensive judgment on all the risks caused by their own behavior in the complex digital world, accurately predict future results, and bear all risks for them.

However, from the perspective of Kant’s deontology, decision-makers cannot take actions based on potential consequences. Pure moral intentions are the basis of communication and the only motivation that is safe from corrosion [35]. According to deontology, the user should act based on rules, rather than focus on the consequence, and take moral responsibility to do the right thing according to Kant’s absolute command without consideration of the specific situation on social media.

According to Bowen [4], the requirements for the user in the utilitarian media environment are beyond the capabilities of all humans. Apart from the most complicated “utilitarian calculus,” he supports the ethical principles of Kant’s deontology to guide media practice. This correspondingly raises a problem: the highly idealized deontology requires a high level of rationality of the actor, which makes it difficult for ordinary users in practice. In reality, what often happens to the user is that people have neither intention to harm nor adequately estimate the potential impact on others. James [36] also mentioned similar cases, suggesting to adopt “the ethics of roles”; that is, the responsibility related to the larger background in which one’s role is located should be reflected, the influence of individual behavior on multiple and distant stakeholders should be considered, and decisions should be made in the interest of the larger community, the public, and the society, so as to build a better networked world of online communication.

8. Discussion and Conclusion

This paper analyzes with NVivo the ethical principle in the ToS from six major social applications across the globe, based on the theoretical framework of the Potter Box Model of Reasoning, Schwartz value scale, and Christians and Ess’ ethical principles. We define 15 values and integrate them into ten pairs of values and further analyze the implied conflicts with three pairs of ethical principles. The ToS text reflects the values of honesty, being helpful, power, wealth, politeness, conformity, security, order, freedom, independence, sharing, cooperation, self-protection, and result-orientation, which embody ten pairs of values, namely, power and participation, wealth and equality/universal benefit, openness and security, self-protection and responsibility, independence and cooperation, honesty and black box, order and freedom, unity and difference, result-orientation, and intention-orientation. Those pairs of values can be three pairs of ethical principles: egoistic principle and altruistic principle, ethical monism and pluralism, and utilitarianism and categorical imperative.

In the summary of the research findings, we point out that the conflict between the principle of egoism and the principle of altruism requires one to pursue one’s interests in the relationship with others; the conflict between ethical monism and pluralism requires one to understand values and norms in the context of others; the conflict between utilitarianism and categorical imperative requires one to consider the potential influence of one’s own behavior in a larger public background. It can be seen that the conflicts between the three pairs of ethical principles all require that platforms and users define themselves in “relationship” and in a wider range of relationships.

Paying attention to the principle of “relationship” does not indicate the need to invent new ethics to cope with the social media environment. In fact, whether the value of relationship that Ratta [33] derived from care ethics, Ess [28] from Confucianism, or James [36] from role ethics theory, those theoretical resources they cited are nothing new. However, the reaffirmation of relationship ethics does remind us that some old principles need to be reexamined and reexplored. On the other hand, we should draw on theoretical nutrients on a global scale, from non-Western traditions and noncapitalist ideologies, reflect on the prevailing ethical principles, and move towards a more inclusive and imaginative social media ethics.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the China Scholarship Council, Youth Foundation for Humanities and Social Science Research, China’s Ministry of Education (21YJC860022), and Independent Research Project of Tsinghua University (2019THZWJC57).

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