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Managing Ethics and social responsibility

Managing Ethics and social responsibility

Introduction

This paper aims at highlighting the contemporary issue of managing ethics and social responsibility by Facebook. To begin with I will present the existing issues Facebook faces and how it is constantly struggling to deal with those issues.

Discussion

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking website which was launched in 2004 by a 23 year old Harvard university sophomore named Mark Zukerberg (Philips, 2007).The website was an instant hit amongst people and a total craze amongst teenagers, the website is free of charges and allows users to interact with friends, maintain a profile about themselves, post pictures, create pages, update statuses and openly discuss every little detail about their lives through this website. Recently Facebook has made various additions to the website all adding to the popularity of the website, users can now send gifts through the site and additional games and applications have been added which adds to the charm and popularity of the website.

However maintaining such a personal profile with countless details not every person needs to know is increasingly becoming an issue for users who have faced a number of issues mostly concerning privacy.

Contemporary Issues Facebook has to deal with

Every since the internet has gained popularity people have had to experience certain issues repeatedly which were caused by carelessness on behalf of users, by the beginning of the 21st century new media technologies for social networking brought forward a number of different websites similar to Facebook, Google +, Twitter and My space have been constantly transforming the social practices of people around the whole world however this excessive usage of social networking websites has brought forward a number of ethical issues some of which are discussed as follows;

Facebook and privacy

The most concerning issue with using social networking sites is the availability of a user's personal information for third parties who can use that information in any manner that they wish, details obtained can be used for data mining. For any person who possesses the slightest knowledge on how to configure settings and cookies can easily access and track a user's online activities which makes illicit monitoring of a user's activities possible, Facebook has repeatedly been criticised about its privacy settings since it can easily provide a multitude of private details of the user and since most users fail to understand the harm is sharing too much information there is always a possibility that somebody can use a users information in a negative manner (SEP, 2012). Once a user's privacy is hindered there are a number of issues which the users can fall victim to for instance;

Cyber bullying

Jester et al.(2012) elaborate that through the study conducted by isafe.org which is a non profit organisation which aims at creating a safer internet environment which is safe for youngsters and children to use, have released alarming information regarding cyber bullying. They claim that since children are allowed to have devices with internet connectivity since a young age which makes them more prone to ...