Ethical Issues

Are users' privacy expectations met by your software?

User information, such as username, profile pictures, profile settings, pinned songs, playlists, followed artists, and friends will be protected such that the owner of the profile is the only entity with privileges to edit. Posts and comments will be protected such that the original poster is the only entity with privileges to create, edit, or delete. Notifications will be private such that the owner of the notifications is the only entity who can view their profile’s notifications. Direct messages will be private such that the participants in the conversation will be the only entities who can view and edit the conversation as well as add other users to the conversation.

Could the use of your software result in racial, gender, religious, or any other type of discrimination? How does your software try to mitigate this problem?

In the user feed any authorized Spotify users are able to type up and create custom posts. This could lead to racial, gender, religious, and other discriminatory comments to be made. In order to prevent this there will be filtering on certain keywords. There will also be a button above each post & comment that allows other users to be able to report the specific comment and posts. These comments or posts will be sent to a list of admins (us) that have been granted authority to remove the post.

Can your software be abused by some users to cause harm to other users? or to the public at large? How do you mitigate it?

Since this is a social media application, there is a risk that users could use it to cyberbully one another through posts. This could be mitigated through filtering of certain words that may be considered inappropriate or targeting in users’ posts, as well as implementing a report button. User may also spam other users thus there will be a feature to allow users to block specific users from making comments to their account.