Data Collection: “Harvesting” Personalities Online

This article discusses the case of Cambridge Analytica and its unethical use of personal data for voting prediction. It explores ethical theories such as deontology, utilitarianism, virtue theory, and contract theory. Recommendations are provided for stricter social media policies and user precautions.

Social Media

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Data Collection: “Harvesting” Personalities Online
Social Media is an online platform to interact with the people in order to share the
ideas, information, and their career interest. It is an attractive platform for interaction because
it has no boundaries and restriction to share their point of view with the millions of people.
There are many facilities provided by social media to users such as sharing information, start
career, enhancing knowledge of real world and many others. There are many people start
their business at this platform (Raicu, 2018). Social Media Applications are also a business
and nowadays there are large number of people develops their applications to earns the high
amount. There are many disadvantages of social media such as leakage of personal data,
fraud advertisement and news as Cambridge Analytica has done by collecting the personal
data. Cambridge Analytica is an advisory company for government. During the election
period, it collects the personal data of Facebook users to evaluate their voting preference. In
this paper, the discussion is made on the case of “Cambridge Analytica” with the ethical
theories.
Deontology theory defines the actions of an individual whether it is right or wrong as
per the obligations and rules and regulations. The organisation has the duty or it is bounded to
provide the services to consumer as per their benefits. Online organisations have to provide
the different opportunities that can easily grab by the users such as providing the platform
from which they can expand their business at the international level without any boundaries
(Baron, 2017). In the case of fraud of Cambridge Analytica, it is observed that the
organisation collect the personal data of users in terms of colour, religion, and their
conversation to analyse their voting preferences for election. It is a consultancy company that
helps the government and the political parties that is why; it can be said that providing the
information to the government is a right job done by Cambridge but using the personal data

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of people for own work is unethical. Using the personal data of people affects their personal
life. It is a wrong decision taken by the company towards the society.
Utilitarianism theory is the other ethical theory which states the actions that brings the
happiness in the units. As per the definition of theory, the organisation has the duty to provide
the facilities to consumers with the purpose of spreading the happiness. An online
organisation provides the many facilities as per their favours and interest to make them happy
(Mill, 2016). In Cambridge Analytica, it is observed that the organisation utilise the data for
their own purpose in order to earn the money. The company predict the data for Donald
Trump during the election period in the exchange of higher amount of money. In this case,
Donald Trump and Cambridge Analytica get the happiness. But the users of Facebook scared
from the social media especially from Facebook as their personal data is leaked and used by
the organisation (Allcott, & Gentzkow, 2017).
Virtue theory defines the roles and responsibility of an individual or a character that
performs the actions for the society whether it is good or bad for them. According to this
theory, organisation is bound to take the right step in the favour of the society as per the
obligations and they also have to take care of core and moral values (Ngai, Tao, & Moon,
2015). The online organisations are bounded to provide the services to users so that there
trust and loyalty towards the online platform will maintain and they can easily share their
information with others without any fear (Ahrens, & Cloutier, 2019). In this case, Cambridge
Analytica plays the main role towards the society. The users of Facebook had the strong trust
on the organisation and its services but after this scandal the trust of users was broken. People
scared to use the online platform instead of getting the happiness. It can be said that the
decision of Facebook and the Cambridge Analytica is unethical as per the definition of
theory.

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The contract theory defines an agreement between the people which lives in a same
place. As per the theory, the organisation has a mutual agreement with the consumers that
they provide the effective services to them. An online organisation is responsibile to prevent
their personal data of users (Fried, 2015).In the scandal of Cambridge Analytica, Facebook
leaked the personal data of their users in the exchange of money. The contract between the
users and the Facebook has been broken by the company as it leaked the personal information
of the company to the other company for voting prediction. The faith and trust of users is
broken which is unethical behaviour for the society.
As per the above discussion, it is recommended that the government of the country has to
take the strict actions towards the social media policies and also punish the companies. The
companies also have to install the software that can easily catch the hackers so that the
chance of leakage the data is reduces. The user also has to be take care of these frauds. It is
recommended that they also install the hacking application in their mobile phones so that they
can easily catch the hackers and prevent their data (Fuchs, 2017).
At the end, it is concluded that the online applications for chatting with the peoples is
beneficial for the society and it also brings the happiness in life of people. But there are many
issues arise from social media due to which the life of people is also affected. In the scandal
of Cambridge Analytica, they used the personal data of people for voting prediction. As per
the ethical theories, the decision taken by the company is shown as the unethical behaviour of
the people towards the society. It is recommended that the government has to take strict
actions towards it in order to overcome this issue.

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References
Ahrens, A. H., & Cloutier, D. (2019). Acting for good reasons: Integrating virtue theory and
social cognitive theory. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, e12444.
Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election.
Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211-36.
Baron, J. (2017). Utilitarian vs. deontological reasoning: method, results, and theory. In
Moral inferences (pp. 145-160). Psychology Press.
Fried, C. (2015). Contract as promise: A theory of contractual obligation. Oxford University
Press, USA.
Fuchs, C. (2017). Social media: A critical introduction. Sage.
Mill, J. S. (2016). Utilitarianism. In Seven Masterpieces of Philosophy. Oxon: Routledge,
337-383.
Ngai, E. W., Tao, S. S., & Moon, K. K. (2015). Social media research: Theories, constructs,
and conceptual frameworks. International Journal of Information Management,
35(1), 33-44.
Raicu, I. (2018). Data Collection: “Harvesting” Personalities Online. Retrieved from:
https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/internet-ethics/resources/data-collection-
harvesting-personalities-online/