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Data Collection: “Harvesting” Personalities Online

   

Added on  2022-11-30

6 Pages1785 Words320 Views
IT Ethics

SOCIAL MEDIA 1
Data Collection: “Harvesting” Personalities Online
Social Media is an online platform that is developed to entertain the people or reduce the
barriers of far distances among the people. It is an interactive platform that helps the society to
interact with each other and share their information. It is observed that the social media helps the
people to make their life easy as the people can share their ideas, information with each other due
to which they are not required to put their efforts to travel from one place to another to deliver
their information in the far distances. It also helps to entertain the people by uploading the
pictures and connecting with the new friends (Fuchs, 2017). Nowadays, people also establish
their business in order to provide the online services to consumers in the world. There are a lot of
people share their important information with each other with the help of social media platform.
Todays, sharing the information through internet is a biggest risk for operators as the information
has been leaked by the social media applications for particular purposes like in the case of
Cambridge Analytica. In this paper, the case study of Cambridge Analytica will be discussed on
the basis of four ethical theories and these are deontology, utilitarianism, virtue, and contract
theory. These four ethical theories are used to analyze the case whether the step taken by the
company is ethical or unethical.
In the case study of Cambridge Analytica, Facebook leaked the personal information of
operators to Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica uses the personal data of users to
predict their voting preferences for election. Cambridge Analytica is the government consulting
company that is why; it has the deal with the government party of America for giving them right
suggestion. As per the contract, Cambridge Analytica uses the information to help the
government of America to win the election by predicting the consumers voting right (Raicu,
2018).

SOCIAL MEDIA 2
Utilitarianism theory says that the action should be ethical that helps to bring the
happiness among the society. According to the theories, it is observed that the social media
application has the duty to bring the happiness among the society by providing the facility to
users (Mill, 2016). In the case of Facebook, Facebook has the responsibility to provide the
services to operators in order to bring the happiness among them. But in the case of Cambridge
Analytica, it is observed that the Facebook provides the services to users such as chatting,
sharing pictures and the other information as it helps to bring the happiness among the society. It
has been found that Facebook brings the happiness among the users but due to one immoral step
of the company, the users face the challenges (Raicu, 2018). Facebook leaked the personal info
of operators to Cambridge Analytica that brings the fear among the users instead of happiness.
Leaking the information of the users affects their personal life. As per the theory, the leader has
to take the step that brings the happiness but Facebook fails in providing the happiness as it
brings the fear among them. It has been found that the step taken by the Facebook is unethical as
it fails to meet all the criteria of utilitarianism
Deontology theory describes the action that the leader should take according to the
guidelines whether it is right or wrong. According to the deontology theory, it is observed that
the leader has to take the right action for the society means for their benefits. The CEO of
Facebook has the responsibility to secure the data and also provides the services to users that
bring the happiness among the society. According to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it is
observed the leader of Facebook has the duty to protect the data of users but it fails to protect
their data. The step taken by the company of leaking the data is not right for the users and also it
is considered as the unethical step for them. Cambridge Analytica has a deal with the
government that is why; it has the responsibility to provides them information about the

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