Reviewing the Ethics & Philosophy behind Social Media’s Crowdsourced Panopticon

Abstract

Philosopher Jeremy Weissman theorizes a new approach to social media surveillance by utilizing a familiar theoretical model: the Panopticon. In effect, Weissman argues that social media has transformed ordinary people into prison guards within the Panopticon’s public watchtower and endowed ordinary individuals with the power to track, survey, and discipline elite officials, once shielded from public scrutiny. This new power, however, comes with a catch. Social media subsumes individuals within an anonymous, de-individualized public which erases individual difference while simultaneously and paradoxically promising to amplify that very difference. This review critically examines this paradoxical tension and the ethical concerns and challenges raised by social media’s propensity to elicit anonymity.