Introduction
Facebook Glasses are an emerging technology that might appear useful and appealing to several consumers worldwide. However, in business ethics and strategy, it is unclear how companies should interact with such technologies, particularly the ones presented by an industry giant with a hefty deal of controversies under its belt. As with any other step an organization might take, it is exceptionally important to consider the decision of purchasing Facebook Glasses for a team in terms of its ethical implications. The purpose of this essay is to investigate the potential harm that such a decision would generate. The following paper examines multiple perspectives yet ultimately argues that buying Facebook Glasses for the IT company would be unethical since it would lead to more negative outcomes than positive ones.
Main body
There are numerous ways to regard morality and what it entails. In order to present a clear and concise solution to the conundrum posed in the question of whether the company should purchase Facebook Glasses for the team, it is crucial to select one ethical theory to apply to the dilemma. In the context of this paper, it seems reasonable to choose a utilitarian perspective to examine the issue. In a business environment, enterprises need to make profits and survive. Hence, morality is not simply a question of producing happiness or satisfying needs. It should “ultimately be decided by consequences” (Tavani, 2016, p. 56). Therefore, the following discussion prioritizes the assessment of the positive decisions (to purchase) positive and negative outcomes.
Firstly, it is important to acknowledge that associating with a company such as Facebook would ultimately impair the enterprise’s external reputation. On the one hand, Facebook is one of the largest corporations in the world, generating around 9 billion dollars of revenue each fiscal quarter (Statista, 2021). Mark Zuckerberg ranks third on the list of wealthiest internet entrepreneurs globally, according to Johnson (2021). However, on the other hand, on countless occasions, Facebook has been involved in the dissemination of “fake news,” a term used to refer to “false or misleading content intentionally dressed up to look like news articles, often for the purpose of generating ad revenue” (Guess et al., 2019, p. 1). This fact is exceptionally important to consider regarding the 2016 Presidential Elections (Perrin, 2018; Geeng et al., 2020). Facebook has actively undermined democracy by allowing and even promoting fake news. A company expressing support by purchasing Facebook’s products would be equivalent to taking a public stance supporting the violation of democratic practices.
Secondly, a corporate decision to purchase Facebook’s newest device will surely hurt the company’s image among external and internal stakeholders. Facebook glasses are an example of ubiquitous communication aimed at “ensuring flexible and omnipresent communication possibilities between interlinked computer devices that can be stationed at various locations” (Tavani, 2016, p. 371). Wireless glasses with a camera and a potential option of facial recognition sound like a dystopian fantasy. Such a product facilitates opportunities for pervasive surveillance and numerous other concerns regarding the privacy and the panopticon (Tavani, 2016). Associating with a product, which endangers basic human rights and implies various ethical issues, is an undeniable risk for the IT company deciding whether or not to purchase the glasses for the team.
Some might argue that the IT company should take a people-centered approach. Since the staff is interested in the device, the management should cave in and purchase them for employees. After all, under utilitarian ethics, this would generate some good. For instance, workers will receive an expensive gift from the company and feel grateful and satisfied. In addition, the glasses offer useful features, including listening to music, taking pictures, and even taking calls (Culliford, 2021; Kurian et al., 2021). Despite that, the potential harm outweighs the good. Such a device threatens employees’ privacy as well as the reputation of the entire company. The success of a start-up depends on the security of sensitive data, which would be undermined if all the staff were to wear cameras 24/7.
Again, fans of Facebook as a brand or admirers of the glasses might counter that the Facebook team has promised no data would be collected from the devices, ensuring privacy and security. However, Facebook has a long history of outright lies regarding privacy breaches. According to regulators at the Federal Trade Commission, Facebook had continuously failed to keep its privacy promises, citing an incident when the enterprise “falsely claimed that third-party apps were able to access only the data they needed to operate” as an example (Newcomb, 2018, para. 15). Furthermore, the scandal surrounding Cambridge Analytica revealed that Facebook “handed over personally identifiable information of more than 87 million users” to a data center sponsored by the Trump team (Jim & Mina, 2018, p. 56). Thus, it is evident that Facebook and its products are indeed a threat to the privacy of individuals and organizations engaging with its products.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is evident that it is unethical for the IT company to purchase Facebook Glasses for its team members. Such a decision would inevitably lead to more harm than good. A business supporting another corporation financially would be perceived as an outright act of ideological support as well. This is not ideal when it comes to Facebook, a corporation with a long history of privacy violations, ethical controversies, and lies. Therefore, the senior leadership of the IT company should not make the purchase.
References
Culliford, E. (2021). Facebook unveils its first smart glasses. Reuters. Web.
Geeng, C., Yee, S., & Roesner, F. (2020). Fake news on Facebook and Twitter: Investigating how people (don’t) investigate. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery.
Guess, A., Nagler, J., & Tucker, J. (2019). Less than you think: Prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on Facebook. Science Advances, 5(1), 1-8.
Jim, I., & Mina, H. J. (2018). User data privacy: Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and privacy protection. Computer, 51(8), 56–59.
Johnson, J. (2021). Leading internet billionaires as of March 2021, by net worth. Statista. Web.
Kurian, N., Sabu, A., Subramanium, A., & Isaac, T. K. (2021). Smart glasses. British Dental Journal, 231(532).
Newcomb, A. (2018). A timeline of Facebook’s privacy issues — and its responses. CNBC. Web.
Perrin, A. (2018). Americans are changing their relationship with Facebook. Pew Research Center. Web.
Statista. Facebook’s net income from 1st quarter 2010 to 3rd quarter 2021. Web.
Tavani, H. (2016). Ethics and technology: Controversies, questions, and strategies for ethical computing (5th ed.). John Wiley & Sons.