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The web should be a platform that helps people and provides a net positive social benefit. As we continue to evolve the web platform, we must therefore consider the ethical consequences of our work. The following document sets out ethical principles that will drive the TAG's continuing work in this direction.
This document is a draft Technical Architecture Group (TAG) Finding. It does not contain any normative content.
This document reflects the consensus of the TAG at the time of publication. It will continue to evolve and the TAG will issue updates as often as needed.
The web should empower an equitable, informed and interconnected society. It has been, and should continue to be designed to enable communication and knowledge-sharing for everyone. In the 30 years since development of the web began, it has become clear that the web platform can often be used in ways that subvert that mission. Furthermore, web technologies can be used to cause harm, which is not in keeping with the spirit of this social mission. The web should be a platform that helps people and provides a net positive social benefit. As we continue to evolve the web platform, we must therefore consider the ethical implications of our work. The web must be for good.
In order for the web to continue to be beneficial to society, we need to include more ethical thinking when we build web technologies, applications and sites. The web is made up of a number of technologies and technical standards. HTML, CSS and JavaScript are often thought of as the web's core set of technologies but there are a raft of other technologies, standards, languages and APIs that come together to form the "web platform." One of the web platform's differentiators has always been a strong ethical framework; for example an emphasis on internationalization accessibility privacy security
Web technologies are also offered royalty free to enable open source implementation, arguably an ethical choice that has been a factor in its success as a platform. These are often cited as some of the strengths of the web.
The architecture of the web is designed with the important notion of different classes of application that retrieve and process content, and represent the needs of the application's users. This includes web browsers, web-hosted applications such as search engines, and software that acts on web resources. This lends itself well towards this more ethical approach by allowing the person using the web to choose a browser, search engine or other application that best meets their needs (for example, with strong privacy protections).
The web should also support human rights, dignity and personal agency. We need to put internationally recognized human rights at the core of the web platform. And we need to promote ethical thinking across the web industry to reinforce this approach.
The purpose of this document is to inform TAG review of new specifications and to inform other documents such as the Web Platform Design Principles, Self-Review Questionnaire: Security and Privacy or other similar checklists and sets of principles used by specification authors and editors. It also serves to raise awareness of the ethical responsibilities of web makers.