Assignment 2 Chap 4-1: Business Ethics

Chapter 4-5: Online Privacy Scenario: Facebook Inc. launched a program called “Beacon” that automatically updated the profiles of users on Facebook social networking site when those users had an activity on Beacon “partner” sites. For example, one partner site is B, the user’s Facebook profile would be updated to share the purchase. The Beacon program was set up as a default setting, so users never consented to the program, but they could opt out. What are the ethical implications of an opt in program versus an opt out program in social media? Answers: There's ethically contentious issues on privacy and user controls over the information granted to Facebook by most users have on the site. With the launched of Beacon advertising service which shared information of users that they have not intended or agreed to share, Facebook has violated user privacy demands and principles of consent. The service has an “opt-out” feature in which even after users opted-out, the service will still continue to send information to Facebook regardless of whether or not the user was logged into the site at the time. Facebook's servers still have kept copies of all the user's information even if the accounts have been deactivated. Also, this issue was considered by many ethics committees as a serious problem because it violates the principle of consent that should be freely given to users