Please add context on ethical school(s) of thought

[j9t]

First, the principles are great—if the majority of actors in the ecosystem followed them, the Web would provide a different experience with a more positive impact on everyone. It’s useful to have them.

I suggest and would like to ask to add more context on the ethical school(s) of thought underpinning them.

It seems utilitarianism has the biggest influence, but it may not be the only one, and even if, it would be helpful to call this out.

This would be helpful 1) to enable more tailored feedback on the points made, and 2) to make it easier to improve and augment the principles, given that it would speed up looking at them from other ethical standpoints.

For example, ethics of responsibility could play a much stronger role (the principles talk about responsibility only once, in the context of making it possible to verify information). And yet this ethical approach could well make for a separate principle, like “People on the Web take responsibility for what they do” (quick example, needs tweaking).

Having this information about the ethical school(s) of thought could thus help the principles right away, but also make it easier to adjust and add to them over time.

(If of interest though pure coincidence, I recently wrote a little more about this need and use for clarity about our ethical standpoints. I believe the EWP are a good example of how that clarity can help.)