IT Ethics Report: Three Perspectives on Facebook Data Breach Ethics

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Facebook data breach, examining the ethical dilemmas that arose from the incident. The report explores the situation through three distinct perspectives of applied ethics: professional, philosophical, and sociological/descriptive ethics. The professional ethics perspective, also known as the deontological perspective, is used to evaluate the standards of behavior and business practices, focusing on transparency, integrity, and accountability. The philosophical ethics perspective analyzes the ethical behavior of an association by recommending, defending, and systemizing rules. This includes how companies manage and increase security. The sociological/descriptive ethics perspective examines the ethical reasoning of individuals and society. The report highlights the consequences of the data breach and its impact on user trust, data security, and political views, concluding with the importance of ethical considerations in ICT and the need for organizations like Facebook to prioritize user privacy and data protection.

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Assignment 1: Three Distinct Perspectives of Applied Ethics
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1. Introduction
The main aim of the document is to discuss about the ethical dilemma faced by the
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in recent days. This document will
discuss about data breaching for examining the ethical issue involved in it. Social media has
become one of the most important parts of human beings. Lot of time has spent over surfing
the social media. One of the widely used social networking sites is Facebook, as this provides
platform for both business and personal purpose. It provides features such as discover,
remarks, share, advertisement and communication for a large amount .In this document,
selected situation for ethical dilemma is Facebook data breaching. This ethical dilemma
affected the views and opinions of supporters on behalf of representative and politicians in
year 2018. According to the report, it has been observed that for meeting this purpose data
collection started earlier at 2014 and for this Cambridge Analytica helped them (McNamee &
Parakilas, 2018). The main question arises here , is that how can a company like Facebook
allow a third party to leak and alter data of its users, this is against ethics. A large amount of
people got affected from this incident all over the world (Bakshy, Messing & Adamic, 2015).
Critical analysis will be done based on three different perspectives for addressing the issues
related to ethics, this are professional, sociological and philosophical ethics.
2. Professional Ethics Perspectives
Professional ethics perspective is often referred to as deontological perspective.
According to Tavani (2011), professional ethics perspective is a type of perspective that
determines standards for personal behavior and business, strategy and ideology. There are
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some specific components in professional ethics perspective, this are transparency, integrity
and accountability (Durkheim, 2013). Organization of ICT seeks help for their work
execution and function from professional ethics perspective. In addition to providing
guidelines, ethics function ensures that there is a need for awareness among the organization
regarding the current situation.
In 2018, an ethical issue arose from the well-known social media Facebook. The most
recent and well-known situation of ethical dilemma is from the most renowned company
Facebook. In March 2018,Facebook data breaching incident became the biggest ethical issue
of the year. According to the reports , there were around 250,000 The report claims that ,this
application provided information gathered from the users to Cambridge Analytica. This
condition violates the professional ethics code followed by the Facebook. The reputation of
this organization is also under threat; moreover, the CEO of Facebook guaranteed the users
that there would be proper investigation after getting the reports of data breaching. The
professional components of Facebook such as reliability, honesty, loyalty and integrity got
affected largely due to data breach incident.
Earlier also Facebook faced many controversies, but this time the issue became intense as
it effected the data security. Facebook officials implemented necessary guidelines for ethics,
so that the behavioral and professional objective can be understood easily (Williams &
Gulati, 2013). The question arises on the security provided by Facebook towards their users.
This resulted in trust issues among the users of Facebook.
After the controversy, it was suggested that the code of professional ethics would have
confined, if Facebook maintained the transparency with the users. From a renowned company
like Facebook it is expected that they will consider a process that is ethically appropriate and
will not harm the privacy of the user and their clients. The CEO of the company encountered
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the problem and ensured that this kind of incident will not get repeated in future (Badshah,
2018).
3. Philosophical Ethics Perspectives
This segment of paper will analyze and discuss the philosophical ethics in respect to the
incident of data breaching in Facebook. Tavani (2011 ) stated that ,the aim of philosophical
ethics is to analyze the ethical behavior of an association by recommending, defending and
systemizing . It is necessary for every association to follow some rules and laws in order to
continue in the world of business. In this growing technology world , business changes daily
and thus it becomes necessary to gain trust and priority from end user. Company expenses a
lot of revenue on managing data , as managing information over net is a crucial job for the
ICT management. This perspective provides ICT companies for proper management with a
set of ethics code. The main challenge faced by the organization is managing and increasing
the security (Christians et al., 2015). Companies like Facebook, faced incidents that
questioned on the data security. As Facebook is a platform, where people share their daily
activities, this turns as a genuine concern and they may feel unsafe and will eventually end up
by avoiding the use of this platform (Gardelli, Alerby &Persson, 2014). With the use of social
media like Facebook and other sites , their arises a requirement of data security and privacy
as technology had developed a lot this days.
After the incident of data breaching in Facebook , some preventive measures adopted
such as a modified settings , so that the user can know who is viewing the post . This
provides the users with assurance that their data are safe. In addition to this, a new module
got featured, this will check the permission of an individual to function the post in the news
feed. Facebook needs a panel of expertise for handling such cases of ethical dilemma in
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future. Therefore, need of modification in the ICT policies of the organization (Kosinski,
2015).
4. Sociological/Descriptive Ethics Perspectives
According to Tavani(2011) descriptive or sociological dilemma in ethics occurs as a
response of an individual or a group of people. This involves research based on theories and
observation from applied ethics. The main objective of descriptive ethics is to explain the
consequences of ethical dilemma in the society. This will illustrate the dilemma in ethics in
compare with ethical assessment making process. Descriptive ethics examines the situation of
ethical issue created by an individual or society based on politics and actions of law (Baum &
Smith, 2013). This part of the paper is concerned with the situation created due to data
breaching of Facebook .Considering the dilemma of data breaching in Facebook, descriptive
ethics will focus to examine the situation faced by the users is ethical or not. Further, this will
try to explain the ethical reasoning of an individual while discussing about their views
regarding the data breaching.
Users throughout the world, found this an unethical behaviour. The behaviour of a
user and staffs that will affect the society or an individual comes under cyber ethics.
Government had proposed several acts related to cyber ethics, and every site in the cyber
needs to abide by the rules and regulation. Facebook has also adopted some specific cyber
ethics policies. However, Facebook has failed in maintaining the privacy of their users and
allowed third party to access their information. After this situation, UK government decided
to impose penalty if anyone violates the Data protection Act of 1998 (Curtis & Curtis, 2018).
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People shared their views on this issue, that influencing someone else’s political view is not
at all an ethical act. This issue became a debate topic among the social media users. As the
political views were influenced by this, the government organization regarding to politics
came under pressure (Confessore, 2018).
It is necessary for an association like Facebook to consider several moral issues that are
related to ICT such as maintaining stability between ethical and technological problem,
property issues, confidentiality security and human rights within the organisation. Facebook
must grant rules in order to protect this platform for Facebook user. As Facebook is among
the trusted social media platforms, the responsibility of Facebook increases in terms of social,
professional and ethical to a huge extent.
5. Conclusion
From the paper, it can be concluded that, this year faced a major issue regarding to data
breaching in Facebook. The paper had efficiently discussed all the professional, sociological
and philosophical perspective of ethics in respect to the incident of data breaching and
provides the consequences faced by the users of this social networking site.
6. References
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Badshah, N. (2018). Facebook to contact 87 million users affected by data breach. Retrieved
from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/08/facebook-to-contact-the-
87-million-users-affected-by-data-breach
Bakshy, E., Messing, S., & Adamic, L. A. (2015). Exposure to ideologically diverse news
and opinion on Facebook. Science, 348(6239), 1130-1132.
Baum, D. A., & Smith, S. D. (2013). Tree thinking: an introduction to phylogenetic biology.
Greenwood Village, CO: Roberts.
Christians, C. G., Richardson, K. B., Fackler, M., Kreshel, P., & Woods, R. H. (2015). Media
Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning, CourseSmart eTextbook. Routledge.
Confessore, N. (2018). Cambridge Analytica and Facebook: The Scandal and the Fallout So
Far. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-
analytica-scandal-fallout.html
Curtis, S., & Curtis, S. (2018). Facebook facing fine in UK over infamous data breach.
Retrieved from https://www.welivesecurity.com/2018/07/12/facebook-fined-data-
privacy-scandal/
Durkheim, E. (2013). Professional ethics and civic morals. Routledge.
Gardelli, V., Alerby, E., & Persson, A. (2014). Why philosophical ethics in school:
implications for education in technology and in general. Ethics and Education, 9(1),
16-28.
Kosinski, M., Matz, S. C., Gosling, S. D., Popov, V., & Stillwell, D. (2015). Facebook as a
research tool for the social sciences: Opportunities, challenges, ethical considerations,
and practical guidelines. American Psychologist, 70(6), 543.
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McNamee, R., & Parakilas, S. (2018). The Facebook breach makes it clear: data must be
regulated. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/19/facebook-data-cambridge-
analytica-privacy-breach
Tavani, H. T. (2011). Ethics and technology: Controversies, questions, and strategies for
ethical computing. John Wiley & Sons.
Williams, C. B., & Gulati, G. J. J. (2013). Social networks in political campaigns: Facebook
and the congressional elections of 2006 and 2008. New Media & Society, 15(1), 52-
71.
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