Draft:Digital Ethics in the Reddit Age

Digital ethics is about changing rules and ideas that help us decide what's right and wrong when we use the internet, share data, and create knowledge online. As social media sites like Reddit grow quickly, these ethical questions are getting more complicated and important. Reddit, which lets users remain mostly anonymous and connects people through specific topics, is a great place to look at the balance between being open to the public and keeping individual privacy safe. Even though a lot of what’s shared on Reddit is public, using this information, especially research, brings up big questions about whether people know their data is being used, how to keep it safe, and if it might cause any harm. Researchers studying digital spaces need to think hard about whether it’s okay to collect, analyze, and share public data without asking first. Plus, things like being anonymous, the rules of different communities, and how the site shows content can change how people act, making traditional ethics harder to apply.^[1]

Digital ethics became its own special topic in the late 20th century when computers and the internet started growing fast. At first, people talked about things like Computer Ethics, which looked at issues like ownership of ideas, privacy, and how digital systems affect society. As more people began using these technologies, experts started to talk more about what we now call digital ethics.

Important books like The History of Digital Ethics and The Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics have helped shape this area. They show how our thoughts about ethics have changed from early worries about computers to more complicated questions about artificial intelligence, how we manage data, and global digital networks.^[2] These works also highlight how digital ethics pulls ideas from different fields like philosophy, law, media studies, and information science. The growth of social media, especially platforms like Reddit in the early 2000s, was a big moment for digital ethics. As millions of people started sharing content instantly, new ethical issues popped around things like user consent, anonymity, surveillance, and how personal data is used for profit. These platforms made it harder to tell what is public and what is private, leading to new discussions about how to apply ethical rules in digital spaces.

Over the years, digital ethics has changed from mainly being a set of ideas to focusing more on real-world applications and policies. Nowadays, people are more concerned about how to regulate what platforms do, protect user rights, and set ethical standards for researchers and tech companies. As technology keeps changing, the questions we ask about ethics also grow, showing the ongoing balance between innovation, access, and responsibility.

Ethics in online spaces can't just stick to strict rules because the internet makes it hard to tell what's public and what's private. The idea of situated ethics means that decisions should be based on the situation, not just whether information is out there for everyone to see.^[3]   Even if data is available, researchers need to think about what users expect, why they share it, and how vulnerable they might be.

There are some important ideas like privacy, consent, harm reduction, and contextual integrity that help guide these choices. Online privacy depends on how users see their audience, not just the settings on a platform. Getting consent can be tricky, so ethical practices often involve keeping data anonymous and using good judgment. It's super important to reduce harm because if digital data is misused, it can have serious effects, especially on marginalized groups. Contextual integrity reminds us that information shared in one place shouldn't be taken out of context and used somewhere else without thinking about why it was shared in the first place.^[4]  

These concepts tie into Netnography: The Essential Guide to Qualitative Social Media Research, where Kozinets talks about how important it is to be respectful and reflexive when looking at online communities, even if the data is public. Similarly, Algorithms of Oppression show that ethical problems go beyond individuals and touch on systems of bias and power, making it clear that we need to focus on reducing harm and being aware of the bigger social picture. In the end, digital ethics is all about making thoughtful decisions that consider the context and balance access with responsibility.

People are talking a lot about whether it's okay to use data that's available to everyone, especially online. Some folks think that if something is public, it's free for anyone to use it. But the article "I Didn’t Sign Up for Your Research Study" points out that just because something is out there doesn’t mean people want it to be collected or used for research (Fiesler & Proferes, 2018).

This relates to the idea of situated ethics, which means we should think about the situation instead of just following simple rules (Markham & Buchanan, 2012). When people share stuff, they might think they're in a small, friendly space, even if it’s public. Taking that information and using it somewhere else can break the trust and privacy that people expect,^[4]  especially if it puts them in a bad spot or misrepresents them. Things like data scraping make this even trickier. Often, data is collected on a big scale without people knowing or agreeing to it, which raises worries about privacy, ownership, and possible harm. The book "Netnography: The Essential Guide to Qualitative Social Media Research" says that ethical research needs to respect online communities and be mindful, even if the data is easy to get.^[5] Similarly, "Algorithms of Oppression" shows that reusing digital data can make problems like inequality even worse, making it super important to think about ethics.^[6]

The big question isn't just if the data is public, but if using it matches what people expect, keeps them safe, and respects their context. Using digital data ethically means we need to think carefully, not just grab what’s available.

Reddit is a social media platform widely known by researchers and is often used as data source due to its structure and features, such as subreddit organization, anonymous participation and voting ranking system. Subreddits are specialized communities where users can discuss and focus on specific topics that are discussed within threads, which allows for more relevant and content rich data collection than other social media platforms. Another Reddit feature that contributes to its popularity amongst academic studies is the anonymity and pseudonymity of users, which ensures individual privacy and a more secure data analysis that is compliant with data protection regulations. Even though it is hard to target demographic if participants are anonymous, this still enables open discussions on sensitive themes that otherwise would most likely not be shared online. Lastly, posts and comments can be upvoted and downvoted based on helpfulness, relevance, or own opinion. This voting system controls visibility and discourse dynamics, that is, data is filtered based on how it is ranked by the community. A systematic review that analyzed 727 papers containing data from Reddit published between 2010 and 2020 shows an increase in the use of the platform as a data source across disciplines, especially computer science, medicine and social sciences, where different computational methods are employed for data cleaning and analysis.^[7]

In addition to the advantages that make Reddit practical for research, the ethical considerations of using publicly available user-generated data are still a topic of debate, given that public access does not completely remove the risks to users. One main issue is the lack of proper informed consent. Data collection can occur without direct user permission, which bypasses the users’ unawareness of how their data is being collected and analyzed, even under anonymous circumstances.^[8] Anonymity also does not guarantee non-traceability, which can be problematic when anonymization techniques are not followed.^[8] Regardless, even when these precautions are taken, they are not always completely effective, so there is a constant risk of user re-identification.^[8] Since many users share their personal thoughts on what sometimes also encompasses sensitive topics, ethical concerns become even more important to be addressed. On Reddit, vulnerable communities' discussions on subjects such as mental health, immigration, discrimination and many others, can include stigmatized experiences, and the exposure or wrong use of this type of data can be harmful to the people who once produced them. Furthermore, another questionable aspect of Reddit research is the loss of contextual integrity, which can be referred to as context collapse. Content can be removed from its original community and used in other contexts where the audience might have different beliefs and regulations than its primary environment, which affects how the information is interpreted and the unintended exposure of data can be an even higher risk.^[8]

A lot of research that uses Reddit data focuses on online interaction and discourse analysis of specific communities to understand how users express themselves and engage with different types of content. A study used a language classifier to investigate moral judgement in the r/AmItheAsshole subreddit, a widely known subreddit where users discuss personal situations and assign labels that were standardized within the community for the purpose of evaluating people in the narratives based on their actions and context, such as “Not the Asshole” (NTA) and “You’re the Asshole” (YTA).^[9] Another study used similar computational approaches for text analysis to examine patterns in harmful and extreme language from 65 communities on Reddit, including hate speech and ideological polarization.^[10] Even though publicly available, data used for investigating these topics can be sensitive and subjective, such as personal narratives or controversial opinions, and thus requiring ethical precautions that avoids user re-identification and keeps contextual integrity during analysis.

In addition to data usage precautions, literature reveals that ethical concerns in social media research go beyond user privacy, it also encompasses how platform infrastructures display and shape communication itself. In websites like Reddit, where content is ranked, filtered, and amplified based on engagement metrics, users might unconsciously start to adapt their discourse to achieve more reach, turning the algorithm the main audience they are writing for.^[11] Therefore, if the platform system gives visibility to exaggeration, moral framing, and extreme language, this can potentially drive users to adopt such strategies to gain visibility. This raises ethical questions about pandering to a non-human audience (algorithm) and the extent to which the discussions that seem to reflect community values obtained from social media data are neutral when the environment is driven by engagement.^[11] Consequently, research studies on Reddit must consider both human discourse and non-human factors that influence how content is produced and interpreted, complicating the traditional concept of what an audience is. These circumstances point to broader issues in digital ethics, such as how design and algorithmic administration of online spaces shapes user behavior.

Digital design is present in a wide variety of formats across the internet, including the look and functionality of websites, applications, and advertisements. Gray, Colin M., et al. research the ethical concerns in digital design with a focus on “dark patterns” and “asshole designs” through findings on the Reddit subreddit "/r/assholedesign."^[12] This research highlights how these tactics are used by large corporations and organizations and target users through aggressive, deceptive, and coercive design choices that manipulate and influence to the user’s disadvantage. Dark patterns include nagging, obstruction, sneaking, interface interference, and forced action.^[12]    Nagging includes the constant interruption that distracts and disrupts what a user is originally trying to do. Obstruction is intended to stop a user from doing a task or making doing the task very difficult. Obstruction can be paired with forced action, which again prohibits or obstructs a user from access unless performing the required action. Sneaking is the deliberate action of not informing the user the true intentions of the design. Interface interference is purposefully altering the design of a website or application that influences the user to choose certain actions.  

When defining ethics in general, factors such as culture, religion, and location are used to determine an individual's morals and ethical code. Similarly, laws and policies are determined by a nation or state government. There is not a standard, global set of rules, policies, or laws for digital rights and ethics. Instead, various regions and cultures have determined their own stance on digital ethics through policy. Guenduez, Walker, and Demicioglu (2025) published “Digital Ethics: Global Trends and Divergent Paths” which analyzes policies concerning digital ethics from all around the globe.^[13]  In their 2025 studies, Guenduez, Walker, and Demiciogli found that many policies shared concern for the same values at risk in digital ethics such as privacy, human rights, censorship, fairness and the use of generative artificial intelligence to name a few.^[13] Depending on the region, however, some values are considered to be at a greater risk than others and the policies created reflect this. The reason a policy prioritizes different values in digital ethics can be interpreted through a nation’s government and structure. One nation may prioritize privacy and data collection, while a different nation with a different government structure may want their constituents’ data to be unrestricted access.  

Broader ethical issues to consider would be harassment, misinformation, fake news, fraud, scams, and stolen data. Without policies or regulations in place, these ethical issues can impact social media and internet users globally. These different ethical issues can present themselves in a variety of ways. Harassment can be recognized as hate speech toward any person or a marginalized group of people, an overwhelming influx in derogatory comments on a person’s social media, or intrusive and unwanted private messages from social media users. Misinformation and fake news has also spread rapidly on the internet in the last decade. Grigorescu and Baiasu’s research in their article “Digital Ethics in Social Media” shows that 95.5% of social media users who answered their questionnaire have noticed fake news on social media, while 4.5% have not.^[14] Misinformation, while harmful, is typically spread by those who do not know it is untrue. In the scope of digital ethics, there is a need to encourage social media users to research, or fact check before they post potential misinformation. Internet fraud and scams are common in the digital world and those that commit these acts are looking to access personal information. Deceptive practices of fraud and scams would be advertising a product to sell that never comes or is not as advertised, impersonating websites or emails a person is familiar with, or fake job postings. These can all be attempts to collect your personal data under the disillusion that the user would be gaining something in return. The stolen data is then used in a harmful way which can include identity theft or financial fraud.^[15]

With the advancement of technology, navigating ethical areas has become increasingly more important to be aware of as a user. This includes on social media websites as well as ecommerce and business websites where a user’s data is likely to be collected. As new tools and platforms emerge, especially with the advancement of artificial intelligence, users are forced to deal with the repercussions of unethical digital spaces after the fact instead of having policies in place to protect users from these concerns.  

Future directions in digital ethics, particularly in relation to social media platforms such as Reddit, are shaped by ongoing concerns about public data, data tracking, and digital surveillance.^[16] Although content on these platforms is often publicly accessible, researchers have questioned whether such accessibility permits unrestricted use of user-generated data.^[16] Studies in writing and digital research ethics emphasize that users may not anticipate their posts being collected or analyzed for research purposes, especially when content is shared within specific social or contextual boundaries.^[16]

Scholars have increasingly challenged the binary distinction between “public” and “private” data, arguing instead for more context-sensitive approaches that account for user expectations, vulnerability, and potential harm.^[16] In response, there have been calls for updated research practices, including greater attention to transparency, ethical data handling, and, where feasible, informed consent.^[16]

At the same time, broader theoretical work in digital ethics suggests that ethical frameworks themselves need to be rethought in response to digital transformation.^[17] These developments have contributed to a shift toward more interdisciplinary and reflexive ethical frameworks that emphasize user-centered and context-dependent approaches to digital research.^[17]

• Reddit

• Digital privacy

• Internet privacy

• Algorithmic bias

• Content moderation

• Online anonymity

• Data protection

• Ethics of artificial intelligence

• Surveillance capitalism

• Misinformation

• User-generated content

• Reddit – Official website of the platform

• Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Ethics Guidelines – Ethical guidelines for internet research

• Nature Machine Intelligence: Global AI Ethics Guidelines – Overview of AI ethics frameworks

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Computer and Information Ethics – Academic resource on digital ethics

• Oxford Internet Institute – Research on internet and digital society

• Data Ethics (European Commission) – Policy discussions on data ethics and governance