Apps and Privacy- An Ethics Case Study

IT Ethics

ETHICS 1
“Apps and Privacy- An Ethics Case Study”
Social Media is an attractive computer-mediated technology that offers the creation and
sharing the information, ideas, interest and the other forms of expression. Social media is an
online platform which is designed to entertain the society by providing the facility to share the
information with each other. Social media platform not only entertain the people but also helps to
make the work easy. People can easily share their ideas and the other information with each
other’s in terms of documents, pictures, pdfs and the others (Boulianne, 2015). Nowadays,
people establish their business on the social media platform to provide the services in all over the
world. But it has been found that the social media applications use the personal data of users
without their permission like in the Path Case (Fuchs, 2017). In this case, Path is social website
that helps to share the life with the special ones. Path uses the personal data of operators to
provide them for the facilities (Raicu, 2018). In this paper, the case study of Apps and Privacy
will be analyzed by using the ethical theories. In this paper, there are four theories that have been
used to analyze the case such as Virtue theory, Contract theory, Utilitarianism theory, and
Deontology theory.
Utilitarianism theory is a theory of normative ethics that brings the happiness by
implementing any actions or policies. It is the responsibility of social media applications to
provide the facilities to users to share the information with each other (Mill, 2016). But in the
case of Apps and Privacy, it has been analyzed that the Path application provides the facilities to
users to share their information with their friends and relatives. The facility provided by the
application brings the happiness in the life of users as they can easily share their information
with their friends those are connected with them. But as per the new practices of the application,
the information about the users and their personal contacts have been used by the engineers of

ETHICS 2
application to offers the more facilities to users to make the connection with the people who are
in their contact list. The information used by the Path application brings the fear among the users
instead of happiness. According to the Utilitarianism theory, the Path application takes the wrong
step as it does not brings the happiness in the life of users. Path application is failed to perform
their duties as per the Utilitarianism ethical theory (Raicu, 2018).
Virtue theory defines the responsibility of the leader towards the society whether it is
wrong or right. The main duty of social media is to provide the different services to users for
their entertainment or make their work easy (Ahrens, & Cloutier, 2019). According to the
obligation, Dave Morin has the duty to deliver the entertainment facility to users. It also has the
responsibility to protect the personal data of users so that they can freely use the application
without any fear. As per the case study, it is observed that the Dave Morin use the personal
information of users without their permission for innovating new services for them. The step
taken by the founder of Path application for the benefit of the society but using their information
without their permission is the wrong step which is against the responsibilities of Dave Morin.
As per the roles and responsibility of the leader of social media, Dave Morin is failed to meet the
responsibilities as they does not secure the personal information of users (Hooft, 2014).
Contract theory refers the mutual contract between the public who lives in similar place.
As per the contract theory, social media leader has the mutual agreement with the society to
secure their personal data (Fried, 2015). As per the theory, Dave Morin has the responsibility to
protected the personal data of users. According to the case study, Dave Morin uses their personal
info to invent the new service for the users which is against the agreement as they does not take
the permission of users while using their personal data. Path applications ignore the guidelines of
Apple apps such as IOS app while using the personal info of operators. According to IOS apps,