Crowdsourcing and ethics: The employment of crowdsourcing workers for tasks that violate privacy and ethics

Abstract

Crowdsourcing has received considerable attention for its ability to provide researchers and task requesters with an inexpensive, quick, and easy method to complete repetitive tasks and utilize human intellect. Most studies have expressed the merits of crowdsourcing; however, little discussion has been reported on the potential to use the crowd to accomplish unethical tasks. In this chapter, we start with a survey on crowdsourcing ethics that illustrates the crowd's reluctance to perform unethical tasks. We then conduct an experiment with crowdsourcing workers to explore selected influential factors that might encourage them to knowingly violate ethical norms of privacy.