Digital Ethics Beyond Informational Flow

Nissembaum’s theory of contextual integrity (Nissenbaum in Privacy in context: technology, policy, and the integrity of social life, Stanford University Press, 2010) guided Sorell and Li (Digit Soc 2:1–19, 2023) on their ethical evaluation of the use of digitised images for pathological analysis. In a concrete and reproducible framework they concluded that safeguards for digital security are insufficient in the analysed workflows. In the commentary, I argue that there is more to an ethical evaluation than the informational flow. Aspects such historical context of contemporary ethical norms and epistemic aspects of data-driven healthcare should be considered. Analyzing predictive technologies is an opportunity, not to relativize jeopardized privacy rights, but to prevent the risk of reinforcing historical inequalities.