M2- Legal and or Ethical Issues / Budget
When designing my social media website, I was required to consider the possible legal and/or ethical issues which may be raised when users are on my site. For instance, I have designed features for my website such as for users to 'comment' on each others profile. An ethical issue which may be raised through this feature is cyberbullying or online harassment. In order to avoid these issues, users are able to 'block' other users through their settings menu, which will prevent such users from being able to contact or interact with them again.
A second ethical issue to be considered is that users may potentially be offended by some of the content they see online which is posted by other users. The option of blocking the user is available to prevent this issue, along with reporting the post or filtering the content they view. If a user was to 'report' something they view as offensive material on the website, the issue is discovered immediately, although the post is most likely only to be taken down if considered illegal or offensive to a large number of users and has therefore been reported before. The use of filtering includes the ability to 'filter' the content in which the user wishes to be shown on their page. For instance, if a user wished to only view a selection of particular profiles, they can choose this option through their settings provided on their profile.
Security is noted as an important issue to consider within apps as it is clearly the developers priority to ensure that each user's data is kept safe to prevent issues being raised such as hacking during the app. Users are required to design a username and password when initially creating a profile for the social media site, for obvious security reasons. This provides the user with the ability to keep their own content such as posts safe from others to edit and manipulate. If another user attempts to hack a users profile via the username and password, 5 failed attempts will inform the hacker that an email will be sent to the original account to verify their personal details before they can have access to the account. This therefor prevents any hacking from occurring whilst also allowing the company to keep data in a secure server room which complies with the Data Protection Act 1998.
The budget I have designed for my Social Media Website is $60,000 for the overall creation/production process. I designed this budget as I concluded that it allows flexibility when designing certain features for my app, although at the same time it is not too extreme as to be too costly as a result. However when deciding to publish my app, a separate budget is provided as it depends on factors such as how much each company will charge for it to be published; i.e. Microsoft and Apple. As this is clearly unknown before publishing, an estimated budget is created at a further $25,000.
