Section 1: Ethical problem !

One of the major ethical situation that the company is facing recently is the privacy issues that arise after some big scandals disclosed like a data breach, selling personal information, influencing voting decisions of the voters, retention of personal info of users, addictive nature of the website/app, workplace privacy(monitoring). The most notable and popular the scandal took place is the “Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal” political scandal of early 2018, where the company named Cambridge Analytica stole personal information of the people or Facebook users without their knowledge and use for tailoring customized & targeted political ads during Trump presidential election to alter voters’ decisions. Before proceeding further into the controversy we need to know who is Cambridge Analytica. It is a British political consultancy firm/company which provides wide array of services like data mining, data brokerage, data analysis & interpretation, psycho graphic and consumer based segmentation for political campaigns , electoral campaigns and political parties or candidates. with the help of their services they try to provide insights about the behavior, attitude, lifestyle and preferences of the voters which further help the candidates during the elections to craft targeted messages and ads over various mediums starting from social media to traditional channels like newspapers, radio and television. They stole data from 87 million users. The scandal was exposed by a whistle blower of Cambridge Analytica “Christopher Wylie” who shared confidential stakeholder’s names and behind the scenes of the scandals with UK newspaper – “The Guardian”. The scandal is a perfect example big data and ethical issues related to big data like loss of anonymity, self-protection and discrimination based customer segmentation. Cambridge Analytica received the majority of the data via the psychology quiz app created by a professor named Aleksandr Kogan at Cambridge University. The controversy become more intense when it was exposed that Robert Mercer a wealthy republican donor and Stephen K Bannon , a former president adviser became the board members in the consultancy firm.

Section 2 : Facebook – Company Background

Facebook is an American social networking service and technology company located in Menlo Park, California. It was founded by a Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg who is currently CEO of the company along with Chris Hughes, Eduardo Savarin, Dustin Moskovitz and Andrew McCallum. Before creating Facebook Zuckerberg Created an app called Face mash, through which students judge the attractiveness of each other to create a ranking. In 2004 Zuckerberg launched “the Facebook” websites where users can upload a photo, share interests/hobbies and contact other people. This website was renamed as Facebook in February 2004. In December 2009 Facebook achieved 350 million users & 132 million unique monthly users and by 2010 it reached $41 billion market capitalization making it the 3^rd largest web company. The company had many acquisitions since then like Oculus, WhatsApp, Instagram, Calibra, etc. As of 2019 Facebook has:   a)    1.59 daily active users on Facebook on average.b)      2.41 billion monthly users as of June 30, 2019.c)      More than 2.1 billion people use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger daily on average.d)      “2.7 billion people use at least one of our family of services each month”- Facebook newsletter room.Facebook do not or earn money from its users directly via app & website charges and purchases rather it makes money through digital advertising. In 2017 Facebook reported earnings of $39.9 billion from advertising revenues alone. In its various platforms, Facebook has allowed companies, celebrities or other business & individuals to promote their brands, products & services through self-serve advertising, targeted ads, Facebook messenger ads, video ads, Facebook ads, and Geo-targeting. Companies gets to extract the personal information of the users to create targeted consumer profiles based on lifestyle, geography, preferences, behaviors, demographics (segmentation), which helps the marketers to persuade and change the purchase decisions of the people.

Sources:

a) Company Info. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/.

b) Phillips, S. (2007, July 25). A brief history of Facebook. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia.

c) The History of Facebook: From BASIC to global giant. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/history-of-facebook/.

Section 3: Facebook’s response to scandal

Facebook’s response plan seemed to me like following some steps of ethical decision making mentioned by Joseph Desjardins like understanding the facts,identifying the issue , analyzing how much the key stakeholders are affected in this case the Facebook users whose data was stolen without their consent . After the scandal was exposed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and COO along with other executives hold press conferences and news interviews to discuss major activities that the company was taking to handle the issue.Mark zuckerberg also publicly apologize for the scandal by stating ,”we have a responsibility of protecting users data , if we can’t deliver our promise we don’t deserve them”. They also share the facts that how many victims were there, what data were stolen how much was used. Facebook further stated that it provides the academic researchers to develop apps and survey to gather consumer or users information for academic purposes only and strictly prohibits selling of these data to any form of data brokerage, ad networks or ad firm for monetary gains. the company also added that it was the american data scientist Aleksandr Kogan who sold these users information to Cambridge Analytica without Facebook’s consent. On March 16, 2018, Facebook suspended the account of the “Cambridge Analytica” and hired a digital forensics company “Stroz Friedberg” to conduct an audit on Cambridge Analytica. Facebook also banned “Christopher Wylie’s account.On march 25, 2018 Facebook published a full page ad apologizing for the scandal in US newspapers.Facebook also promised to launch a new feature through which people can see which apps have access to their personal data at the top of their news feed and can revoke the permission Mark Zuckerberg publicly apologizes for the scandal and promise to take necessary action to resolve. Zuckerberg also stated that users will have a new additional feature in their privacy settings which is “clear history” via which they can erase the trail of apps and sites they have frequently visited via Facebook pages. Facebook also banned the account of Cambridge Analytica CEO-Alexander Nix’s Facebook page and also forced the company to suspend him due to the involvement in the scandal. In order to protect the company policies and users privacy Facebook took 3 immediate actions:

a)  Conducting a full audit of any 3^rd party apps and company accounts with suspicious advertising like subliminal ads and data extraction for segmentation without users’ consent.

b)      Reduce the amount of information accessed by companies to the only name, email and profile pictures, and the companies have to take permission from Facebook and used it to access more detail information.

c)      Facebook updated its privacy settings like users can manage their account information visibility based on their preferences and can also completely lock down their personal details if they want to.

Sources: a) Shieber, J., & Hatmaker, T. (2018, March 17). Facebook suspends Cambridge Analytica, the data analysis firm that worked on the Trump campaign. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/16/facebook-suspends-cambridge-analytica-the-data-analysis-firm-that-worked-for-the-trump-campaign/.

b) Segarra, L. M. (2018, March 21). Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook Response to Cambridge Analytica. Retrieved from https://time.com/5209729/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-cambridge-analytica/.

c) Shaban, H. (2019, March 8). Facebook says it will dramatically improve privacy. But it hasn’t fully delivered on past promises. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/03/07/can-facebook-make-privacy-profitable/.

d) Granville, K. (2018, March 19). Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: What You Need to Know as Fallout Widens. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-cambridge-analytica-explained.html.

Section 4: Public reactions after scandal’s exposed

According to the pew research Center, people primarily took 3 actions in response to the scandal when it was disclosed in public:

a)      Adjusting their privacy settings on Facebook.

b)      Checked their data like personal information, picture and which third-party app developers they allowed access to their profile and sending notifications.

c)      Deleting Facebook accounts.

As per the pew research center’s statistics from May 29- June 11, 2018, 54% of the Facebook users changed their privacy setting and 26% deleted app. 44% of users between age 18-29 deleted the app out of trust breach. 50 million users were scared of data being stolen. After the new privacy updates only 14%, users believe they have control over their data & privacy which 28% feel the loss of anonymity, privacy and no control over the app. According to SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission), Facebook officials tried to hide the evidence which would prove the company’s involvement in users’ data leak. with the outbreak of the scandal people were very skeptical regarding their own safety on not just Facebook but also all other social networking sites. they were concerned that if the social media platforms are monitoring all their life activities and also more importantly sensitive information like purchasing patterns, screen timing, financial records and hobbies/interests. the users were too much scared that they were thinking are they among the 80 million users whose information were stolen by Cambridge. for example NPR shared a phone interview with some Facebook users which showed how they were scared and stressed out : https://www.npr.org/2018/03/26/597100707/how-facebook-users-are-responding-to-the-cambridge-analytica-scandal

sources: Cohen, D. (2018, September 5). Younger People Were More Likely to React to Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica Scandal. Retrieved from https://www.adweek.com/digital/younger-people-were-more-likely-to-react-to-facebooks-cambridge-analytica-scandal/.

b) How Facebook Users Are Responding To The Cambridge Analytica Scandal. (2018, March 26). Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2018/03/26/597100707/how-facebook-users-are-responding-to-the-cambridge-analytica-scandal.

c) Wong, J. C. (2019, March 18). The Cambridge Analytica scandal changed the world – but it didn’t change Facebook. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/17/the-cambridge-analytica-scandal-changed-the-world-but-it-didnt-change-facebook.

d) Perrin, A. (2018, September 5). Americans are changing their relationship with Facebook. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/05/americans-are-changing-their-relationship-with-facebook/.

e) How Facebook Users Are Responding To The Cambridge Analytica Scandal. (2018, March 26). Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2018/03/26/597100707/how-facebook-users-are-responding-to-the-cambridge-analytica-scandal.

Section 5: Thoughts & Opinions

In my opinion, Facebook should have adopted a deontological ethical approach, which focuses on duties & obligations, non-consequential and more importantly based on universal values like don’t steal, lie or cheat. The framework also focuses on respecting the fundamental rights of individuals. Facebook should aware their users about how the company uses their data and to what extent they retain or sell their data to companies and 3^rd party app developers. Facebook should provide more autonomy to its users in terms of protection of their personal information and conduct background check of the companies who participate in the advertising on Facebook, to know their motives is just to promote & create awareness or harming by stealing data & unauthorized access to user accounts. I think Facebook can also offer a premium version of the app along with the normal free version where the users or subscribers can opt for no ads options and also have better privacy setting/features. Facebook should try to implement ethical AI framework devised by World Economic Forum i.e. :

a)      AI should be for the common good & beneficial for society.

b)      AI should be intelligible and fair in its operation i.e. they should understand which information is safe to share of user and which may harm their life activities and privacy rights.

c)      Data protection, companies who collect data or sell data of their users (Facebook/Google) for advertisements need to be audited by the government to check whether they are over-controlling the privacy rights and monopolizing data for revenues without the consent of users/consumers.

d)      The company should educate their customers/users regarding how they use their data and for what purposes as well as how long they retain their data.

e)      Autonomous powers and psychological concepts should not be used to find out things like heat maps, consumer preferences, persuading to change buying behaviors & decisions.

Government should pass federal privacy legislation lobbied by some of the big tech companies and CEO like Apple’s Tim Cook which would restrict and monitor how the data brokers are using the personal information of the people. Federal Trade Commission should establish “data broker clearinghouse” which will mandate all the data brokers to register with the social media and other tech companies officially which will further enable the consumers to see their activities over social platforms and websites like where they are selling their data or what data they are extracting and can provide power to delete their information on demand. Furthermore Facebook and other internet and online networking companies need to provide more security features to their customers to maintain the privacy but it is also dilemma for them to do so as their core revenue source is to sell the data they gather from their users. In my opinion right to privacy and right to censorship or expression are the two sides of the same coin, there is a constant class between these two to determine where to draw the ethical boundaries i.e. how can businesses use their freedom to operate and express their opinions even though sometimes they are not in the public favor and in order to do so they sometimes try to extract data or information from consumers without their consent via surveillance & monitoring over online channels. It case also seems similar to the fact or manner in which FTC (Federal Trade Commission) operates i.e. enhancing business growths and protecting consumers rights and provide them more decisive power.

In addition to this i also feel that being users we need to be more cautious while using social media and social networking sites in terms of sharing our private details , photos, sharing our opinions, preferences, hobbies& interests over online networking sites. we should use more privacy features that is available in these sites wisely for instance, removing more sensitive personal details like our real photos as profile picture, our date of birth, hometown location and allowing the GPS access while using the app or networking sites online. we should try to mask our email address for using Facebook or online networking platforms, use more strong password for which we can also use some third party password sites. In Facebook we should check our friends list to make sure their that all the contacts are known or not suspicious along with we can also click near the profile picture in our account a feature -“view as” which will show us a preview of how our profile looks to those who are not in our contacts.

sources: a) Floridi, L. (2019, March 20). The five principles key to any ethical framework for AI. Retrieved from https://tech.newstatesman.com/policy/ai-ethics-framework.

b) (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-17/apple-ceo-calls-for-data-broker-clearinghouse-in-privacy-push.

c) 8 Steps to Secure Your Facebook Privacy Settings. (2019, January 18). Retrieved from https://www.abine.com/blog/2019/8-steps-to-secure-your-facebook-privacy-settings/.

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