The Ethics of “Giving People a Voice” and Political Advertising on Facebook PDF

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The Ethics of “Giving People a Voice” and Political Advertising on Facebook. Assignment 2...

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The Ethics of “Giving People a Voice” and Political Advertising on Facebook Introduction The field of IT has, without any doubt, progressed a lot in the past few years. The emergence of social media apps like Facebook and Twitter was specially hailed as a start of a new era. Little did anyone knew at that time that these apps, while appearing as a tool to stay connected, could easily become a security threat for all. The concerns of privacy are not new in this world and kept emerging time and again. However, recent allegations against social media apps in general and Facebook in particular have torn the façade of security being projected by these companies for years. Recently, Facebook faced an immediate backlash owing to its policy of Political advertisement. There is a mixed response from community and experts. While some feel horrendous on the aspect of stealing freedom of expression from citizens, other remain indifferent to the whole idea. This report analyzes both sides of this argument with the aid of some classical ethical theories. The ethical aspect being discussed is security in ICT. The intention is to see if Facebook policy is ethical or not in the ethical realms of our societies. Also, its apparent failure to provide a safe environment to its users would be discussed in detail.

Arguments in favor of political advertising a. Giving Voice There are numerous, including Mark Zuckerberg, who believe strongly that believe Facebook is only trying to give voice to people. The underlying premise of this claim is Facebook is being used as a platform to connect voters with possible candidates so as to see their point of view. Mark strongly believes that this would actually aid the voters in making correct decisions. The theory of Utilitarianism states that all policies should be evaluated in terms of benefits and consequences it has on larger part of society. According to this policy, the candidates are being connected to the candidates like never done before. The governor of Florida, in particular, admitted to the use of political advertising for winning elections. It is strongly believed that Facebook provides unique targeting abilities to political candidates. The proliferation into diverse voter groups, achieved as a result of this platform, is a splendid fate which needs to be celebrated by all.

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It was always felt that some sub-groups like Blacks were not taken into consideration previously. Their political inclusion was not the matter of priority for any political candidate. However, the Facebook connected these ignored segments of society with top candidates and made their inclusion possible in political process. The utilitarian ethics dictate that all types of decisions must take into account the aspect of greater good for greater number of people. Therefore, this principle justifies the political advertising policies of Facebook. b. Freedom in decision making Mark Zuckerberg has reiterated his stance on various occasions that Facebook has not intervened in any political process. In fact, it has actually given freedom to people regarding their decision making. The process of empowerment has led people to make decisions more sensibly than before. They make judgements based upon their experiences of daily life. As far as the theory of ethical egoism states, the ethical aspect depends upon the actors involved. If they feel fulfilled and genuinely believe that the said decisions produce good consequences in their lives, then the decision making process remains in ethical realm. Ethical egoism is a type of consequentialism theory which states that the end defines the means. As long as the overall impact of a decision remains beneficial, the decision is considered ethical. However, in this case, there is no denying the fact that Facebook did try to convince people in favor of politicians paying them for their advertisements. Facebook projected a positive image for some political candidates and helped them win in 2018 elections. Therefore, the theory of ethical egoism was violated in this scenario. c. Positive contribution regardless of misinformation In another scenario, Facebook faced a strong backlash for supporting content based on misinformed quotes and statistics. However, Mark remained affirmative that the overall contributions remained positive. He spoke on several occasions where he repeated his claims of deleting any content which appeared to be harmful for any particular community. This appeared as a good approach till it was disclosed that the actual policy is more damaging that perceived previously. Facebook is not concerned about misinformation spread through the platform by politicians. There is no possible mechanism existing within this app which could check the authenticity of claims being made by politicians. Despite tall claims, the political ads policy of Facebook is least bothered about the benefit to overall community. The principle of justice practiced in ethical decision making preaches that any decision made by policy makers needs to

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remain fair to all parties involved. This theory talks about overall benefit of society rather than that of majority. It states clearly that none of the segments of society should face any discrimination. If the said decision fails to be beneficial to all, it should be scrapped immediately. Therefore, the theory of justice is clearly negated in the aforementioned policy of Facebook. Facebook tried to take all the monetary benefits from acclaimed politicians without any desire to take a look into the material being propagated. Therefore, it was a matter of commercial interest as opposed to the matter of public benefit as being projected by its CEO. Thus, the theory of justice has been severely violated while composing political ad advertisements.

Arguments against political advertising There are numerous experts who have time and again stood firmly against the said advertisement policy of Facebook. Tarun Washwa is one of them. She published a detailed article in 2014 in which she blamed Facebook of interfering in political process. Some of her arguments are as follows: d. Direct influence in political process The social media giant has been accused to trying to influence a political voting process through his advertisement policy. Tarun made her point that Facebook tailored the whole process by influencing the decision making process of voters. She also claimed that some voters who were uncertain till the last moment were led to believe that voting for some particular political candidate could actually benefit them and their community. The theory of rights of ethical framework states that the basic human rights need to be exercised without any hindrance. The theory is of the view that all legal and moral rights of human beings need to be practices without any discrimination. Consequently, it is visible that the political rights of people were snatched away from them for minting money. Facebook let the politicians run their political campaigns online while ignoring the possible ethical dilemma being created. Therefore, the rights theory was violated on several occasions during these elections. e. Designing policies and algorithms for control of information Facebook has further been blamed for designing special algorithms for keeping certain information from citizens. The citizens had the right to access information of all politicians online. However, the polarization algorithms allowed politicians to gain access to certain sub

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groups to intimidate them. Like in the case of Donald Trump, the African American community was targeted through different campaigns to suppress their voting rights. A Bloomberg report has also accused Facebook of helping out important politicians in controlling information access to masses. This shows that instead of helping millions as projected initially, Facebook aided in threatening and silencing particular segments of voters. The theory of deontology in ethical framework suggests that the social and moral obligations must be considered while making important decisions. In this scenario, it is apparent that Facebook was morally bound to provide correct information to all the citizens. The online platform was bound to provide freedom of expression to all, yet it did not take into account the overall impact on community while devising a controversial advertisement policy. Instead of negating unprofessional and immoral requests, it actually made algorithms to try and suppress voting rights of some marginal segments within community. Therefore, the theory of deontology was violated severely by Facebook giants.

Conclusion All in all, it is clearly an ethical error committed by Facebook. The political advertisement policy committed numerous ethical issues for community. It stripped them of their legal and moral rights. It took away their freedom of expression for commercial benefits. It aided in controlling the voices of those suppressed for ages based on their racial and lingual differences. While doing so, the theory of deontology, rights, justice and ethical egoism were violated. However, Facebook has not changed its policy as yet and continues to defend it to date. The experts have voiced their concerns of possible increase in targeted Facebook campaigns. It is the need of the hour that Facebook should apologize and modify its political advertisement policy. It needs to increase its scrutiny of while process so that no false claims are made in future. It is only through some strict ethical measures like these that Facebook could re-claim its ideology of connecting people across the globe.

References Friedersdorf, C. (2019). Doubt Anyone Who’s Confident That Facebook Should Ban Political Ads. The Atlantic. Halpern, S. (2019). The Problem of Political Advertising on Social Media. The New Yorker. Newton, C. (2019). Facebook’s decision to allow lies in political ads is coming back to haunt it. Verge.

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Newton, C. (2020). Facebook’s revised political advertising policy doubles down on division. Verge. Raicu, I. (2019). The Ethics of “Giving People a Voice” and Political Advertising on Facebook. Markkula Center for Applied Ethics....