Translating Principles into Practices of Digital Ethics: Five Risks of Being Unethical | SpringerLink

Ethics shirking, like ethics dumping, has historical roots and often follows geopolitical outlines. Actors are more likely to engage in ethics dumping and shirking in contexts where disadvantage populations, weaker institutions, legal uncertainties, corrupted regimes, unfair power distributions, and other economic, legal, political, or social ills prevail. It is not unusual to map, correctly, both malpractices along the divide between Global North and Global South, or to see both as affecting above all Low- and Middle-Income Countries. The colonial past still exerts a disgraceful role. It is also important to recall that, in digital contexts, these malpractices can affect segments of a population within the Global North. The Gig Economy may be seen as a case of ethics shirking within developed countries. And the development of self-driving cars may be interpreted as an instance of research dumping in some states of the USA. In this case, the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic, which establishes international principles to govern traffic laws, requires that a driver is always fully in control and responsible for the behaviour of a vehicle in traffic. However, the USA is not a signatory country and the requirement does not apply, meaning state vehicle codes do not prohibit automated vehicles, and several states have enacted laws for automated vehicles. This is also why research on self-driving cars happens mostly in the USA—as well as the related incidents and human suffering.