Alphabet and Facebook Role in Democratic Process
Introduction
Following the 2016 presidential elections, Facebook and Alphabet – through its Google portfolio – were embroiled in a scandal of election malpractice. One of the bases for the allegations was the spreading of fake news through their social media platforms with claims of harvesting of customer’s private information for targeted advertising. The advertising was aimed at divisive politics to ensure that a favored candidate would be president. The role of the companies was receiving revenue from the targeted adverts without proper consideration of the influence on maintaining the fairness of the democratic process in the country.
Discussion
Social and Ethical Responsibility
The social environment, especially communication, has greatly been influenced by the presence of the internet. With this growth, there is the development of more interference with personal data. Personal data, in this case, means data that has a direct or direct link to an individual (Boldyreva et al., 2018). This data can easily be accessed by service providers such as Facebook and Google in various ways. From an ethical point of view, these organizations have the role of ensuring that this data is protected from individuals or organizations that may want to use it for personal gain. To this extent, Facebook and Google did not act in a manner that is consistent with social and ethical responsibility.
The preservation of the customer-provider relationship in dealing with privacy issues relies on trust (Wanbil et al., 2016). In this way, various aspects should be considered. There has to be freedom from unauthorized data access (Wanbil et al., 2016). The scandal involved the use of personal data to drive elections. This can be considered as a data-driven election. Facebook, for instance, found that there were over 3,000 adverts linked to the Kremlin while Google found thousands of advertisements with Russian links (Shen, 2017). These adverts were aimed at promoting insights in support of a favored presidential candidate. For the adverts to be targeted efficiently, they had to use a selection of people through segmentation of the market based on the data from people using the website.
- Role of a Third-Party – Cambridge Analytica
In the scandal, Cambridge Analytica was found to have worked for the Presidential campaigns on behalf of Donald Trump. The firm provided consulting services for the president by harvesting data from over 87 million Facebook accounts (Chang, 2018). This was possible by exploiting a loophole in the website where an application was used to collect data from people by posing as a quiz application. While data was being collected from people taking the quiz, in the background, the application could access data of the friends of the users illegally. As such, the organization seems to have a loophole in the security and policy teams on the issue of user protection such that such an instance was not flagged. While this was happening, Google and Facebook were collecting revenue from the adverts that were developed and targeted from the harvested data, which creates a serious ethical and social responsibility issue.
What Could Have Been Done Differently
- Adequate Investigation
Several things could have been done differently to avert the scandal. To begin with, there is a need to have all the applications that are aimed at mass-market use to have in-depth investigation and analysis. Facebook should have been able to determine the root destination of the large volumes of data that were being amassed by the data collection application at the time. The policy of the organization is such that third-party organizations are not allowed to have access to the data collected by primary parties. This is a situation that happened where Cambridge Analytica was engaged in the sale of the information retrieved to Russian agencies.
Upon this realization, there was a need for the organization to act fast by engaging the relevant authorities in reporting and taking action over the matter. A further step is ensuring that users and applications or organizations that have links to any past fraudulent activity are banned from accessing the site.
- Relevant Tools
For both Google and Facebook, there was a need to have a tool that allows for the clearing of history that constitutes the data of people’s activity as they use the internet. The tool would allow for the deleting of data by users on their activity over the internet. This is a move that would limit the use of data-portability that was used to collect data from the users of the quiz application alongside all their friends.
In dealing with the issue, the leaders of the organizations were rather quiet. This led to the development of conspiracies and rather, a loss to the extent of trust from the users. The leaders should have engaged the public either directly or indirectly following the scandal to ensure that they maintain a close working and transparent relationship with the public. Additionally, the clear steps developed to deal with the issue should have been communicated and periodic updates offered to the public on the progress and the benefits of the changes.
- Transparency to Users
Also, there is a need to have users know how their information is used. This creates a level of transparency that allows the organizations to build a strong relationship with the consumer. Also, this would have given the organization more room to clear the scandal efficiently. The consumers were surprised to learn of how their information is harvested and used by organizations for a profit.
Who was Responsible for the Incident
The responsibility can majorly be placed on the organizations – Facebook and Google. To begin with, the organizations have a trust agreement with the consumers on the need to protect their privacy on the internet. To this extent, the organizations have extensive data and privacy policy handbooks. As such, the organizations are expected to protect the systems and users from the manipulation of data in various instances. As such, although there was no breach in the systems, the organizations were responsible for ensuring that the systems could not be manipulated by individuals.
Facebook also played a critical role by allowing third-party applications to access data from individuals networks. The quiz application used by Cambridge Analytica tapped into the information of the users to the extent of their friends and by doing so, had far-reaching extents. This was legal as per the Facebook operational policies. Therefore, the organization allowed third-party users to have access to data that in a way that is legal, which removes many implications on the third-user party.
There is the responsibility of ensuring that the users’ information is protected from fraudulent users. The information that was harvested was used as a psychological warfare tool. This is an aspect that led to the manipulation of the democratic process in favor of promoting the probability of the success of President Donald Trump in the period. This use of the information should be the responsibility of the organization to identify before selling or allowing third-party organizations to collect data on its platform.
Google and Facebook have the responsibility of ensuring their platforms are not used to divide governments and people. To this extent, the advertisements used by the organizations allowed the organizations to promote the use of psychological warfare on the public. This is information that can cause harm to the people and society, as seen in this case. As such, there is a need for organizations to have had a better mechanism of identifying the adverts that were playing widely on their platforms and flagged for violations.
Additionally, Cambridge Analytica had earlier mentioned that through the information retrieved from Facebook, they could identify and predict a host of things regarding the personality of the users (Lapowsky, 2019). The prediction goes to state that the information can be used dangerously (Lapowsky, 2019). However, there was no action taken from both Facebook and Google to make their platforms more secure and as such, were responsible for the inevitable mess.
Ensuring the Incidents do not Recur
To ensure various changes can be instituted on the systems to ensure the problem does not recur. However, there is a need to set in place better decision-making models as the basis. The decision-making model should be based on logic and as such, the rational decision-making model becomes adequate. This is a model that allows the organizations to set a procedure by which they can gauge the process of making ethical decisions in various other instances that can take place. As such, the organizations can model an accurate, socially and economically responsible strategy.
To begin with, there is the identification of the problem. A well-defined problem is a half-solved problem. There is great importance in the identification of the problematic situation as a basis for solving it. As such, there is a need for organizations to outline the aspects of their operations that risk their ethical responsibility. This is supported by the development of a solution scenario (Uzonwanne, 2016). This is the ideal situation that the organization targets. The most desirable outcomes are the ones that promote the well-being of the stakeholders as well as the organization over the needs of the individuals.
A gap analysis is a process of developing the problem and solution differences. This is the difference between the ideal situation and the current state. As such, the steps required to attain the solution can clearly be defined. This is supported by the collection of facts and alternatives. The steps that are to be taken have to analyze the stakeholders’ impact on positive and negative aspects. This can help in analyzing the outcomes.
The outcomes are analyzed based on the consequences to identify the most effective and functional options. The organizations have to engage a mechanism that allows for accurate predictions of the outcome. A final option can be selected. The outcome selected is then implemented. After implementation, there has to be continuous evaluation of the implementation to ensure there are accurate hitch-free processes that align with the desired outcome. Through this procedure, the organizations have a step-wise and logical step that can be used to avert the situation from recurring as well as implement in other areas that may be at risk.
Society and Stakeholders Preventing the Incident
The society and stakeholders can be engaged in the process of ensuring the incident is not repeated, promoting ethical integrity. The first step is being engaged in the process of assessing and developing the resources for upholding ethical integrity at the organizations as well as the technology industry at large. This is a process that requires collaborative thinking to identify challenges in upholding ethical behavior in the organization and the industry. The hot spots or risks identified to offer a good basis by which to engage both the organizations in policing to ensure the areas are addressed. The society and stakeholders are a crucial part of identifying the ethical values necessary for the operation of the organizations and industry.
An ethics compliance program is a strong tool by which society and stakeholders can act as watchdogs. There is a need to have an active compliance program that protects whistleblowers and reduces the pressure on organizations to compromise on ethical standards. Therefore, society and stakeholders have a role in pushing for written standards for ethical performance and having frequent evaluations on the performance level of the organization in meeting the standards.
An important aspect of maintaining ethical integrity is promoting a conducive culture. People and society generally have a desire to get along to the norms and the environment that they are subjected to. This is a way in which people aim to do the right thing. This culture can be promoted by society and stakeholders demanding and exercising ethical behavior in their working processes. This is enhanced by talking about ethics at the societal level, staying informed on various issues, and having mechanisms for acknowledging and rewarding ethical behavior.
The society has to have a focus on values. Values define the level of ethics in society and eventually at the organizational and personal level. There has to be a corporate and societal focus on defining and promoting common values that engage in behavior that is aligned to ethical integrity. Moments of crisis such as the one presented by Facebook and Google are particularly important in shaping the culture of ethical integrity due to the heavy emotions involved. As such, this is an opportunity by which societal values aimed at securing democratic integrity can be exercised and embedded through push and pull of the society, stakeholders, and the organizations to attain an equilibrium that benefits all.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Alphabet and Facebook have been the topic of debate on their role in the interference of the democratic process of the 2016 election. The networking platforms of the companies show that they were used to capture information of users and sold to third-parties who used them to target campaigns that caused division in the country. This psychological warfare in this respect, presents various issues on ethical integrity. The organizations in protecting users’ privacy, especially with the companies receiving revenue from the targeted adverts without proper consideration of the influence on maintaining the fairness of the democratic process in the country. The organizations can prevent this scenario by using the rational decision-making model in addressing future needs. Society and stakeholders can play a critical role by promoting a culture of ethical integrity.
References
Boldyreva, E. L., Grishina, N. Y., Duisembina, Y. (2018). Cambridge Analytica: Ethics and Online Manipulation with Decision-Making Process. The European Proceedings of Social and Behavioral Sciences. https://dx.doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2018.12.02.10
Chang, A. (2018). The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal explained with a simple diagram. Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17151916/facebook-cambridge-analytica-trump-diagram
Lapowsky, I. (2019). How Cambridge Analytica Sparked the Great Privacy Awakening. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/cambridge-analytica-facebook-privacy-awakening/
Shen, L. (2017). The 10 Biggest Business Scandals of 2017. Fortune. Retrieved from https://fortune.com/2017/12/31/biggest-corporate-scandals-misconduct-2017-pr/
Uzonwanne, F. C. (2016). Rational Model of Decision Making. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311761486_Rational_Model_of_Decision_Making
Wanbil, W. L., Zankl, W., Chang, H. (2016). An Ethical Approach to Data Privacy Protection. ISACA Journal. 6. Retrieved from https://www.isaca.org/resources/isaca-journal/issues/2016/volume-6/an-ethical-approach-to-data-privacy-protection