A blogger's moral dilemma
So, let me pose a moral dilemma. As you may know, I use Sitemeter for my blog. This feature-rich webcounter allows me to keep track of all sorts of things. For one, it reports where visitors are coming from (their IP addresses, ISPs, and location) and what brought them here (links from other locations, web searches--what's called referrals). I like taking a peek at this information, especially the referrals, since it lets me see who's linking to me and what web searches bring people here. Probably the most interesting category are the web searches. Some people, after coming here for a web search, find exactly the right thing. If you're looking for information on Ezekiel's vision or the difference between evangelicalism and fundamentalism, I've got you covered. Sometimes, though, the weirdest searches lead people here for things that I've never talked about before. For example, "Did Jesus ride a unicorn to Babylon?" I'd never addressed that question before someone's search led them here. The only reason they ended up on my page at all is because I had the terms Jesus, unicorn, and Babylon on the same archive page at one point.
And then, there are the searches that are frankly disturbing. Some time ago, I noticed someone coming to my blog via a search of something like "How do I kill my roommate?" Now, obviously I don't have any instructions on roommate killing on my blog. The question, though, is what should I do with a search like this? On the one hand, I could just respect my visitor's privacy and ignore it. People do crazy searches all the time. As a writer of suspense stories, I do more than most: I once spent several hours doing web searches on stabbing people in the lungs. It's possible that the visitor was doing something similar, or academic research on the availability of such information on the internet. Do I really wish to impugn someone's reputation, or land him [generic masculine pronoun here--it could have been a woman] in serious legal trouble, based on a web search? On the other hand, if he's really looking for a way to kill someone, wouldn't I be morally responsible if I had the ability to prevent it and failed to do so? I did have that means, after all. Sitemeter tells me when he made the search, the IP address of the computer he made it from, and his ISP, in this case a university in another country. All I have to do is inform the university, and they can probably tell who it was via who was logged into that computer at that time. So what do I do?
As I said, this happened some time ago, so I made the decision within a few hours of noticing the search:
So, did I do the right thing? I'm pretty sure I did, but I'd be curious what others think.
And then, there are the searches that are frankly disturbing. Some time ago, I noticed someone coming to my blog via a search of something like "How do I kill my roommate?" Now, obviously I don't have any instructions on roommate killing on my blog. The question, though, is what should I do with a search like this? On the one hand, I could just respect my visitor's privacy and ignore it. People do crazy searches all the time. As a writer of suspense stories, I do more than most: I once spent several hours doing web searches on stabbing people in the lungs. It's possible that the visitor was doing something similar, or academic research on the availability of such information on the internet. Do I really wish to impugn someone's reputation, or land him [generic masculine pronoun here--it could have been a woman] in serious legal trouble, based on a web search? On the other hand, if he's really looking for a way to kill someone, wouldn't I be morally responsible if I had the ability to prevent it and failed to do so? I did have that means, after all. Sitemeter tells me when he made the search, the IP address of the computer he made it from, and his ISP, in this case a university in another country. All I have to do is inform the university, and they can probably tell who it was via who was logged into that computer at that time. So what do I do?
As I said, this happened some time ago, so I made the decision within a few hours of noticing the search:
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So, did I do the right thing? I'm pretty sure I did, but I'd be curious what others think.
