Ethical Quandary for Social Sites

Built as a platform for amateur and professional photographers to share their work, Flickr is among the social media networks, like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, that are increasingly being used by activists and pro-democracy forces especially in the Middle East and North Africa. That new role for social media has put these companies in a difficult position: how to accommodate the growing use for political purposes while appearing neutral and maintaining the practices and policies that made these services popular in the first place.