Data Collection: “Harvesting” Personalities Online

IT Ethics

IT Ethics 1
Data Collection: “Harvesting” Personalities Online
Assignment 3
(Source: By Author, 2019)
Introduction
Social Media is a computer mediated technology that offers the facility of creating and
sharing the information, new ideas, career interest and the other forms with others. The users
can easily communicate with each other through electronic devices. It provides the large
number of facilities that makes the life easy for users. They can share the pictures,
documents, videos and links as per their requirement. Entrepreneurs use this platform to
establish their business. There are many companies promote their services by using the
platform in order to communicate with the users. The people share their ideas, important
documents, pictures, thoughts. It is necessary for the social media companies to secure the
personal data of users (Allcott, & Gentzkow, 2017). Privacy is the main factor for users but
there are many social media applications are fraud and leak the personal information of users.
Like in the case of Cambridge Analytica, Facebook is a popular application in the social

IT Ethics 2
media platform but it is founded in the case of leakage of personal information. It helps the
Cambridge Analytica to predict the voter’s preferences for government (Raicu, 2018). The
case study of Cambridge Analytica will be discussed in order to analyse the issues of cyber
technology. In this report, issue will be analysed as per the ethical theories.
Ethical theories
Utilitarianism theory
This theory states the action that provides maximum happiness to the large number of people
in the society. The terms utility defines the unit of happiness of people. In real life, it is the
responsibility of an organisation to provide the services to consumers with the purpose of
providing the happiness. It is observed that the organisation provides the services to
consumers to earn the high profit.
In the case of Cambridge Analytica, it is observed that the Facebook provides the personal
information to Cambridge. Cambridge Analytica is a consultancy company that helps the
government to take decision. In this case, the organisation helps the Donald trump in election
of America by predicting the voters preferences through their personal information in the
return of money (CNBC, 2018). As per this theory, Donald trump and Cambridge Analytica
gained the advantage and happiness. But the users faced the issues due to leakage of their
personal information. As per Utilitarianism theory, the step taken by Facebook is unethical
against the society.
It is the responsibility of the social media application to keep the data secure of the users. It is
recommended that the company has to develop the strict rules and regulation so that the
employees do not leak the data to others. The company has to adopt the ethical values in
order to teach the employees.