Cambridge Analytica Scandal

Running head: CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA SCANDAL
CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA SCANDAL
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Cambridge Analytica is a commercial data analytics company, which has been the
source of one of the biggest privacy scandals that have occurred last year. The company has
used private data that they have derived from more than 50 million Facebook profiles, which
they have planned to use it on the voters of the United States in the Presidential election in
the year 2016 (Persily 2017). The article in The Guardian states that Christopher Wylie, who
was a former contractor of Cambridge Analytica, was the one who helped in building the
algorithm. The scandal started when Alexander Nix, former CEO of the company and several
other employees were filmed boasting about the possibility of using unethical measures to
swing the votes in the election. Facebook has also been a target of the scandal as their weak
data security policy was the reason that Cambridge Analytica was able to extract the private
information of the users without their permission. There was a severe reaction to the scandal,
and also an emergence of a #DeleteFacebook movement. A link to Brexit was also derived as
written by the reporter of The Guardian (Cadwalladr 2017). The article also suggests the
involvement of the Electoral Commission in the whole scandal. This essay will elucidate on
various information on the scandal and discuss the ethical concerns that were observed in the
article. Furthermore, the essay will evaluate if the ethical concerns adopted were appropriate
or not. The further paragraphs will discuss if the ethical decision-making process aligns with
moral philosophies.
The scandal of Cambridge Analytica was the use of data of 50 million users derived
through Facebook. The data was collected through an app that was called
“thisisyourdigitallife”, which was developed by Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, who was a psychology
lecturer in the University of Cambridge (Cadwalladr 2016). This app was available to the
online users since 2014 and urged them to take a survey for a minimal amount of $1 or $2.
The app sent request to the users to access the information of the user’s profile and also that
of their friends for academic research. In this way they were able to trick the users into giving

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their profile information. By sharing the information derived from Facebook, with Cambridge
Analytica, Kogan had breached the contract that he had made with Facebook, of only using
the data for research purpose. When Facebook found about about this breach they deleted the
app in the year 2015 and demanded that all data given to Cambridge Analytica by Kogan be
deleted as a priority (Albright 2016). Cambridge Analytica claimed that they had deleted all
the derived data from GSR when it was found out that they have derived the data by tricking
the users. They also refuted any claims that had been made against them about the obtaining
of those data. However, Christopher Wylie, a former employee of the company, provided
evidence that the data had not yet been deleted and that is was used in the influencing of
votes in the US presidential election (Cadwalladr and Graham-Harrison 2018). There was
also a statement made by Facebook, which said that there might have been a count of 80
million users whose profile information have been shared as opposed to the count of 50
million, that was derived earlier. Despite of such a huge scandal and the breach of privacy for
50 million users, there have been no legal actions that have been taken on Cambridge
Analytica. Kogan had violated the agreement he had with Facebook on sharing of user data,
however no legal steps had been taken by Facebook against him, other than deleting the app.
There was yet to be any kind of legal or sanction application against the company or its
member on the scandal.
Ethics in business are the moral principles that show the way that a business should
behave and operate. Having business ethics is mandatory so that the organization can
differentiate the right from the wrong. In the article concerning the scandal of Cambridge
Analytica, there are many ethical issues that have been violated. Firstly, the company has
broken the most fundamental ethics of a business which is trust and integrity (Crane and
Matten 2016). The article emphasizes the use of false means to derive information about the
users. In doing so Cambridge Analytica have also brought down the image of Facebook in

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safeguarding the information of its users. Secondly, the corporate governance and compliance
issues have not been followed as is evident from the article (Weiss 2014). Every business is
supposed to follow certain rules and regulations and abide by the federal and state laws.
However, Cambridge Analytica have broken the ethics for corporate governance by taking
information about individuals without their permission. They have further used this
information to manipulate the individuals into voting their desired candidate during the US
presidential elections. This is a breach if may laws such as unlawful derivation of information
without the consent of the individual and trying to manipulate the audience during an
election. They have also worsened the relation between their company and Facebook by
taking data from them with the help of Kogan. Thirdly, a company should be able to make
ethical decisions which is beneficial for the company but do not harm the people outside it
(Hoffman, Frederick and Schwartz 2014). Cambridge Analytica has not been able to follow
this ethical consideration of a business and have made decisions which were only beneficial
for the company itself. They did not keep in the mind the harm that they might be doing to
the common people and the users by misusing their information. The article also states that
Facebook was also not able to make ethical decisions as their decision to give access to
Kogan ended up violating the privacy rights of the users. Lastly, the ethical issue of fraud
have been committed against all users and also to Facebook if that can be said from the
article (Jennings 2014). According to the article, Facebook did not know about the sale of
data from Kogan until later when various users started to complain. They said that user access
was given to every third party user on their word that this data would only be used for
research purposes and not misused under any condition. When this data was sold to
Cambridge Analytica for their own benefit, Kogan committed fraud towards Facebook and
also towards its users. On the other hand, Cambridge Analytica used this information to flow
the votes towards their preferred candidate for the US presidential elections. This was also a

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fraud towards the government and the society. Hence it can be said from the evaluation of the
article that several ethical considerations have been broken during this scandal.
After analysis the above paragraphs it can be said that the Cambridge Analytica
scandal have broken many ethical considerations if business which would hurt the public and
the users of Facebook. It was an unwise decision to break the trust and the privacy of the
users which ultimately led them to be subjected to being caught in the act of doing so. Even
though Cambridge Analytica had denied all the accusations against them, it can still be said
on the basis of the proof that were provided by a former employee, the company stands guilty
of all the accusations that have been made against them. They did not follow any ethical or
moral principle in their work and were breaking the law along with every ethical aspect that a
business should follow. This makes it evident that the company have made no ethical
decision in the given scenario. This was because they only focused on the profit that they
would receive when their desired candidate would win the election. They also received
funding from different powerful individuals to carry on the work that they were doing.
Hence, profit making for the company overrode any ethical or moral value that they might
have adopted in the past. There are various other cases concerning business ethics. Firstly, a
scandal was caused in Wells Fargo which was a bank. The scandal concerning Wells Fargo
was that there was immense pressure on the employees of the bank to complete their saes
target which led many of the employees to adopt unfair means to complete the target. When
the issue came to light the bank fired many of its employees who were engaged in such
practices. The company itself conducted an investigation concerning the scandal to
understand the root cause behind this issue. Secondly, Google had been the radar for a very
long time concerning the problem of gender discrimination in its company. There were also
accusations that there were continuous discriminations against women and existing gender
pay gap. In the year 2017 a male employee was fired when he posted an internal memo

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contained gender stereotype contents. After the leaking of the memo to the common public
there was a huge outcry which called the memo anti-diversity. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of
Google, explained the reason to fire the employee and also pointed out the criticism against
Google in the memo to establish a diverse culture in the organization. These were two huge
ethical cases that have come to a stable conclusion after desired actions have been taken.
Moral philosophies are mandatory to what brings an organisation to a good standard.
Organizations that are not able to conduct good ethical values are the ones who are unable to
make good decisions and follow good principles. This is where moral philosophy is important
as they provide moral perspectives to the organizations and guide them into committing good
and adapting good values. There are several moral philosophies that are used while making
business decisions. Firstly, the philosophy of teleology states that an act is morally right or
acceptable in the society only if it produces a good result (Bennett 2016). In the case of the
scandal there was no good result that was derived from the act hence this philosophy does not
align with the ethical consideration that should have been followed by the organization.
Secondly, egoism defines that acceptable actions are those that can maximize the self-interest
of a person (Spencer 2017). However, the self-interest of the users have been violated instead
of being maximized. Thirdly, utilitarianism defines those actions as acceptable that is done
for the greater good of a great number of people (Mill 2016). This philosophy like the above
two does not coincide with the scandal as they did not act for the greater good of a large
number of people. Fourthly, relativist evaluates the ethicalness based on the experiences of
the individual or group (Fromm 2013). In this context, the company had not followed any
ethical way in conducting the act that they had committed. Fifthly, virtue ethics states that
morality of a situation is not only what a traditional moral principle suggests but also the
good moral of an individual would certify as appropriate (Van Hooft 2014). The company
had no good moral as they did not think about the fraud that they were committing by taking

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the user data and also by manipulating the election. Sixthly, justice evaluates the ethics of a
business based on fairness of the actions taken by the company (Braswell, McCarthy and
McCarthy 2017). The company take lawful or fair actions and hence does not align to this
moral principle. Lastly, deontology focuses on safeguarding the rights of all individuals
(Crossan, Mazutis and Seijts 2013). This was the major breach of policy in the scandal as the
whole issue evolved around the inability of Facebook to safeguard its users’ rights and
information and also the use of unfair means by Cambridge Analytica into deriving that
information through Kogan. Hence, it can be said that none of the moral philosophies were
followed by the company at any time.
Therefore, it can be concluded from the above case study that the Cambridge
Analytica scandal was a major breach of all ethical and social principles that’s should be
conducted in a business. The company followed no moral philosophies and acted only for
their benefit.

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References:
Persily, N., 2017. Can democracy survive the Internet?. Journal of democracy, 28(2), pp.63-
76.
Cadwalladr, C., 2017. The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was
hijacked. The Guardian, 20.
Cadwalladr, C., 2016. Google, democracy and the truth about internet search. The
Guardian, 4(12), p.2016.
Cadwalladr, C. and Graham-Harrison, E., 2018. The Cambridge Analytica Files. I made
Steve Bannon’s psyhological warfare tool’: meet the data war whistleblower.
Albright, J., 2016. How Trump’s campaign used the new data-industrial complex to win the
election. USApp–American Politics and Policy Blog.
Crane, A. and Matten, D., 2016. Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and
sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.
Weiss, J.W., 2014. Business ethics: A stakeholder and issues management approach. Berrett-
Koehler Publishers.
Hoffman, W.M., Frederick, R.E. and Schwartz, M.S. eds., 2014. Business ethics: Readings
and cases in corporate morality. John Wiley & Sons.
Jennings, M.M., 2014. Business ethics: Case studies and selected readings. Cengage
Learning.
Bennett, J., 2016. The enchantment of modern life: Attachments, crossings, and ethics.
Princeton University Press.

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Braswell, M.C., McCarthy, B.R. and McCarthy, B.J., 2017. Justice, crime, and ethics. Taylor
& Francis.
Fromm, E., 2013. Man for himself: An inquiry into the psychology of ethics (Vol. 102).
Routledge.
Mill, J.S., 2016. Utilitarianism. In Seven Masterpieces of Philosophy (pp. 337-383).
Routledge.
Spencer, H., 2017. The data of ethics. Routledge.
Van Hooft, S., 2014. Understanding virtue ethics. Routledge.

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Appendix:

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