Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Acceptable use of "cat-fishing?"

After recently watching the documentary, I gained insight on the topic in general and the original story. I, like most others, agree that it is a very strange and immoral because, the person in question is essentially lying for one reason. However, what if you used it for good? Say, to catch someone doing this to other people or just criminals in general? I do believe we had a similar discussion about lying earlier in the semester and that this is basically the same issue, but say the government used this method to track terrorists, or criminals, or whoever they might be looking for (for whatever reasons, that's another issue). I guess depending on the philosopher you might agree with, might determine whether or not you think this could be moral.

3 comments:

  1. The problem with people doing this on a basis to catch people from doing bad things, is that the person being the catfish is being immoral. their is no telling what a person with a fake profile as seen in the documentary can or cannot do. As the person who is contacting the unknown immoral person doesn't really know the truth about them. I do agree with you that the federal; agencies might put this strategy to good use but it can work both ways terrorist might do the same to find a target.

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  2. I dont necessarily agree with the idea of catfishing in the sense of fake profiles romantically talking with a real person. It is playing with peoples feelings and will ultimately end badly for at least one person if not both. Now when we look at it in the sense of crime as in for example prostitution, sexual predators, or drugs I do believe that it would be acceptable, but would it be classified as cat fishing for these examples?

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  3. I do agree with "catfishing" to catch criminals. I have seen a short piece from a film where they actually create a profile of a young girl with pictures, videos and voice clips to catch sexual predators that prey on young children. The girl is not real but they actually create a "virtual" girl. It was very interesting and if I remember correctly, this process actually is very useful.

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