Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the responsibility that an organization takes for the impact that its activities and decisions have on its prosperity, the society, and the environment. Transparent, responsible, and sustainable approaches are key to building a brand and its reputation and also helps strengthen the community. Business ethics, on the other hand, are used to examine the ethical or moral problems that arise when dealing with a business environment. This is a case study analyzing the major business ethical perspectives and CSR theories regarding Facebook’s ethical dilemma. Facebook is an American Company that offers online social networking services. It is the largest social network with the most users in the world. We will analyze Facebook’s ethical dilemma from the perspective of the moral theories by Aristotle, Kant, and Mill. These three philosophers affirm that ethics is the overall pursuit of the highest good, which each philosopher defines differently. These theories hold that each individual has a key role and control on the results of their actions.
One of the key ethical issues that Facebook has been facing is the accusation of harvesting, analyzing, and selling the information of their users. This scandal first came to light when it was realized that Cambridge Analytica, a private company based the U.K. was using Facebook to gather its data and statistics. Facebook users are required to share their work history, interests, religious and political affiliations, and educational background, and this information is being misused. After the users had unintentionally provided information, they were then shown ads based on the same. In this case, Facebook had allowed the violation of privacy and this resulted in the manipulation of political ideas. Even if the information was stolen was not social security information, it was still unauthorized, and this is an ethical breach (Solon, 2018) . Isn’t it interesting that Facebook usually knows the people who you might be knowing and gives you friend suggestions? This is a clear indication of the fact that the information that you provide on Facebook is not private.
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In 2015, Facebook gave a psychology professor from the University of Cambridge the permission to collect information from all the individuals who completed the personality quizzes provided on the site. The information was meant to be used for academic purposes. However, the professor ended up selling the information illegally to Cambridge Analytica, who used the figures to sway the voters during the 2016 political elections. This action is a complete violation of the Facebook users’ privacy, yet their only goal was to take an online quiz for fun. It is even more horrifying that the companies are not just stealing your personal information, but they are also using it in an attempt to sway your mind regarding a political opinion (Meredith, 2018) .
In this case, Facebook is trying to be nice to the stakeholders because they benefit when they give them access to this data. However, this action is at the expense of the users of the platform because their privacy is violated. The moral theories outlined by Aristotle, Kant, and Mill affirm that ethics is the overall pursuit of the highest good. In this case, Facebook goes completely against these ethical theories because the company only seeks to build good stakeholder relationships but does not keep the highest good of the users in mind.
References
Meredith, S. (2018). Facebook-Cambridge Analytica: A timeline of the data hijacking scandal. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/facebook-cambridge-analytica-a-timeline-of-the-data-hijacking-scandal.html
Solon, O. (2018). Fact-checking Mark Zuckerberg's testimony about Facebook privacy. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/11/fact-checking-mark-zuckerberg-testimony-congress
