Analyzing The Cambridge Analytica Scandal: Ethical Concerns And Violations In An Essay.

Discuss the key ethis issues,concern raised in the artical this can included corporate governance,corporate social responsibility,corporate citizenship,leadership ect.

In your opinion has/have the most appropriate decision been made?if so why?if not why not ?

Background on the Cambridge Analytica Scandal

Cambridge Analytica is a commercial data analytics company, which has been the source of one of the biggest privacy scandals that have occurred last year. The company has used private data that they have derived from more than 50 million Facebook profiles, which they have planned to use it on the voters of the United States in the Presidential election in the year 2016 (Persily 2017). The article in The Guardian states that Christopher Wylie, who was a former contractor of Cambridge Analytica, was the one who helped in building the algorithm. The scandal started when Alexander Nix, former CEO of the company and several other employees were filmed boasting about the possibility of using unethical measures to swing the votes in the election. Facebook has also been a target of the scandal as their weak data security policy was the reason that Cambridge Analytica was able to extract the private information of the users without their permission. There was a severe reaction to the scandal, and also an emergence of a #DeleteFacebook movement. A link to Brexit was also derived as written by the reporter of The Guardian (Cadwalladr 2017). The article also suggests the involvement of the Electoral Commission in the whole scandal. This essay will elucidate on various information on the scandal and discuss the ethical concerns that were observed in the article. Furthermore, the essay will evaluate if the ethical concerns adopted were appropriate or not. The further paragraphs will discuss if the ethical decision-making process aligns with moral philosophies.          

The scandal of Cambridge Analytica was the use of data of 50 million users derived through Facebook. The data was collected through an app that was called “thisisyourdigitallife”, which was developed by Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, who was a psychology lecturer in the University of Cambridge (Cadwalladr 2016). This app was available to the online users since 2014 and urged them to take a survey for a minimal amount of $1 or $2. The app sent request to the users to access the information of the user’s profile and also that of their friends for academic research. In this way they were able to trick the users into giving their profile information. By sharing the information derived from Facebook, with Cambridge Analytica, Kogan had breached the contract that he had made with Facebook, of only using the data for research purpose. When Facebook found about about this breach they deleted the app in the year 2015 and demanded that all data given to Cambridge Analytica by Kogan be deleted as a priority (Albright 2016). Cambridge Analytica claimed that they had deleted all the derived data from GSR when it was found out that they have derived the data by tricking the users. They also refuted any claims that had been made against them about the obtaining of those data. However, Christopher Wylie, a former employee of the company, provided evidence that the data had not yet been deleted and that is was used in the influencing of votes in the US presidential election (Cadwalladr and Graham-Harrison 2018). There was also a statement made by Facebook, which said that there might have been a count of 80 million users whose profile information have been shared as opposed to the count of 50 million, that was derived earlier. Despite of such a huge scandal and the breach of privacy for 50 million users, there have been no legal actions that have been taken on Cambridge Analytica. Kogan had violated the agreement he had with Facebook on sharing of user data, however no legal steps had been taken by Facebook against him, other than deleting the app. There was yet to be any kind of legal or sanction application against the company or its member on the scandal.

Ethical Concerns and Violations

Ethics in business are the moral principles that show the way that a business should behave and operate. Having business ethics is mandatory so that the organization can differentiate the right from the wrong. In the article concerning the scandal of Cambridge Analytica, there are many ethical issues that have been violated. Firstly, the company has broken the most fundamental ethics of a business which is trust and integrity (Crane and Matten 2016). The article emphasizes the use of false means to derive information about the users. In doing so Cambridge Analytica have also brought down the image of Facebook in safeguarding the information of its users. Secondly, the corporate governance and compliance issues have not been followed as is evident from the article (Weiss 2014). Every business is supposed to follow certain rules and regulations and abide by the federal and state laws. However, Cambridge Analytica have broken the ethics for corporate governance by taking information about individuals without their permission. They have further used this information to manipulate the individuals into voting their desired candidate during the US presidential elections. This is a breach if may laws such as unlawful derivation of information without the consent of the individual and trying to manipulate the audience during an election. They have also worsened the relation between their company and Facebook by taking data from them with the help of Kogan. Thirdly, a company should be able to make ethical decisions which is beneficial for the company but do not harm the people outside it (Hoffman, Frederick and Schwartz 2014). Cambridge Analytica has not been able to follow this ethical consideration of a business and have made decisions which were only beneficial for the company itself. They did not keep in the mind the harm that they might be doing to the common people and the users by misusing their information. The article also states that Facebook was also not able to make ethical decisions as their decision to give access to Kogan ended up violating the privacy rights of the users. Lastly, the ethical issue of fraud have been committed against all users and also to Facebook if that can be said from the article (Jennings 2014). According to the article, Facebook did not know about the sale of data from Kogan until later when various users started to complain. They said that user access was given to every third party user on their word that this data would only be used for research purposes and not misused under any condition. When this data was sold to Cambridge Analytica for their own benefit, Kogan committed fraud towards Facebook and also towards its users. On the other hand, Cambridge Analytica used this information to flow the votes towards their preferred candidate for the US presidential elections. This was also a fraud towards the government and the society. Hence it can be said from the evaluation of the article that several ethical considerations have been broken during this scandal.

After analysis the above paragraphs it can be said that the Cambridge Analytica scandal have broken many ethical considerations if business which would hurt the public and the users of Facebook. It was an unwise decision to break the trust and the privacy of the users which ultimately led them to be subjected to being caught in the act of doing so. Even though Cambridge Analytica had denied all the accusations against them, it can still be said on the basis of the proof that were provided by a former employee, the company stands guilty of all the accusations that have been made against them. They did not follow any ethical or moral principle in their work and were breaking the law along with every ethical aspect that a business should follow. This makes it evident that the company have made no ethical decision in the given scenario. This was because they only focused on the profit that they would receive when their desired candidate would win the election. They also received funding from different powerful individuals to carry on the work that they were doing. Hence, profit making for the company overrode any ethical or moral value that they might have adopted in the past. There are various other cases concerning business ethics. Firstly, a scandal was caused in Wells Fargo which was a bank. The scandal concerning Wells Fargo was that there was immense pressure on the employees of the bank to complete their saes target which led many of the employees to adopt unfair means to complete the target. When the issue came to light the bank fired many of its employees who were engaged in such practices. The company itself conducted an investigation concerning the scandal to understand the root cause behind this issue. Secondly, Google had been the radar for a very long time concerning the problem of gender discrimination in its company. There were also accusations that there were continuous discriminations against women and existing gender pay gap. In the year 2017 a male employee was fired when he posted an internal memo contained gender stereotype contents. After the leaking of the memo to the common public there was a huge outcry which called the memo anti-diversity. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, explained the reason to fire the employee and also pointed out the criticism against Google in the memo to establish a diverse culture in the organization. These were two huge ethical cases that have come to a stable conclusion after desired actions have been taken.

Evaluation of the Ethical Considerations Adopted

Moral philosophies are mandatory to what brings an organisation to a good standard. Organizations that are not able to conduct good ethical values are the ones who are unable to make good decisions and follow good principles. This is where moral philosophy is important as they provide moral perspectives to the organizations and guide them into committing good and adapting good values. There are several moral philosophies that are used while making business decisions. Firstly, the philosophy of teleology states that an act is morally right or acceptable in the society only if it produces a good result (Bennett 2016). In the case of the scandal there was no good result that was derived from the act hence this philosophy does not align with the ethical consideration that should have been followed by the organization. Secondly, egoism defines that acceptable actions are those that can maximize the self-interest of a person (Spencer 2017). However, the self-interest of the users have been violated instead of being maximized. Thirdly, utilitarianism defines those actions as acceptable that is done for the greater good of a great number of people (Mill 2016). This philosophy like the above two does not coincide with the scandal as they did not act for the greater good of a large number of people. Fourthly, relativist evaluates the ethicalness based on the experiences of the individual or group (Fromm 2013). In this context, the company had not followed any ethical way in conducting the act that they had committed. Fifthly, virtue ethics states that morality of a situation is not only what a traditional moral principle suggests but also the good moral of an individual would certify as appropriate (Van Hooft 2014). The company had no good moral as they did not think about the fraud that they were committing by taking the user data and also by manipulating the election. Sixthly, justice evaluates the ethics of a business based on fairness of the actions taken by the company (Braswell, McCarthy and McCarthy 2017). The company take lawful or fair actions and hence does not align to this moral principle. Lastly, deontology focuses on safeguarding the rights of all individuals (Crossan, Mazutis and Seijts 2013). This was the major breach of policy in the scandal as the whole issue evolved around the inability of Facebook to safeguard its users’ rights and information and also the use of unfair means by Cambridge Analytica into deriving that information through Kogan. Hence, it can be said that none of the moral philosophies were followed by the company at any time.

Therefore, it can be concluded from the above case study that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was a major breach of all ethical and social principles that’s should be conducted in a business. The company followed no moral philosophies and acted only for their benefit.           

References

Persily, N., 2017. Can democracy survive the Internet?. Journal of democracy, 28(2), pp.63-76.

Cadwalladr, C., 2017. The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked. The Guardian, 20.

Cadwalladr, C., 2016. Google, democracy and the truth about internet search. The Guardian, 4(12), p.2016.

Cadwalladr, C. and Graham-Harrison, E., 2018. The Cambridge Analytica Files. I made Steve Bannon’s psyhological warfare tool’: meet the data war whistleblower.

Albright, J., 2016. How Trump’s campaign used the new data-industrial complex to win the election. USApp–American Politics and Policy Blog.

Crane, A. and Matten, D., 2016. Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.

Weiss, J.W., 2014. Business ethics: A stakeholder and issues management approach. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Hoffman, W.M., Frederick, R.E. and Schwartz, M.S. eds., 2014. Business ethics: Readings and cases in corporate morality. John Wiley & Sons.

Jennings, M.M., 2014. Business ethics: Case studies and selected readings. Cengage Learning.

Bennett, J., 2016. The enchantment of modern life: Attachments, crossings, and ethics. Princeton University Press.

Braswell, M.C., McCarthy, B.R. and McCarthy, B.J., 2017. Justice, crime, and ethics. Taylor & Francis.

Fromm, E., 2013. Man for himself: An inquiry into the psychology of ethics (Vol. 102). Routledge.

Mill, J.S., 2016. Utilitarianism. In Seven Masterpieces of Philosophy (pp. 337-383). Routledge.

Spencer, H., 2017. The data of ethics. Routledge.

Van Hooft, S., 2014. Understanding virtue ethics. Routledge.