Facebook Data Privacy Scandal: Impact on Stakeholders and Business

Accounting in society

Table of Contents
Table of Contents........................................................................................................................................2
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
Main Context...............................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................5
References...................................................................................................................................................6

Introduction
More than 50 million Facebook users’ data had been misused by Cambridge Analytica for
manipulating the outcome of the presidential election of America in 2016. In 2015, Facebook
grant permission to a psychology professor at Cambridge University named Aleksan dr Kogan
for harvesting information from Facebook (Healey, 2012). He had been asked to harvest the
details of those Facebook users who had completed the personality quiz using a third party app
“this is your digital life”. Kogan claimed that the data was being used for academic purpose but
later it was found that the data was sold to Cambridge Analytica and Eunoia Technologies.
Cambridge Analytica used these data illegally in swaying voters for the election of 2016. It was a
violation of personal information of those Facebook users who just participated in a quiz online.
It is really terrible to know that these companies are not only stealing the information but also
using this data against us.
Main Context
Company overview
Facebook is an American company that offers online social networking service. It was founded
by Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Hughes; they have been a
student of Harvard University. As per the survey, Facebook has become a giant of social
networking as it has more than one billion users throughout the world. It operates from
California and all of its headquarters are based in Menlo Park. Facebook provides free service to
the users and earns most of its profit from advertisements. Facebook allows its users to discover
and learn about the things which going on around them. It also allows users to share their ideas,
opinions, videos and photos that help them to stay connected. Facebook recently occupied other
big brands like Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus. It has more than 35,587
employees which operate from all over the world. There was a survey conducted in 2018 and
according to it somewhat around 1.52 billion people come online on Facebook on daily basis and
2.32 billion on monthly basis (Hall, 2019).
Ethical issue