Out of all the aspects that the Business Ethics reading described as something that makes an organization unethical, it seems like Facebook only meets the “exploitation of consumers” criteria. They exploit their consumers through their advertisement algorithm and data collection or even how they structure the app to encourage addiction to the app. There have been huge repercussions to this structure of Facebook. For example, the 2016 election triggered lots of misinformation in the internet; Facebook was one of the biggest sources of this misinformation, and their lack of precautions to differentiate fake versus factual news led to a rapid spread of fake news throughout older populations (the most vulnerable populations because of their lack of media literacy).
With this context in mind, I can start to answer the question of would I accept a job at Facebook. Going back to the Business Ethics reading, it illustrates two main different questions to structure my decision: 1) How seriously wrong do I believe the company’s actions are? 2) How close is my work to those actions I believe wrong? Throughout this post, I will be exploring the first question.
I have to ask myself the question of how wrong do I believe the company’s actions are. Based on what I described above (for this case, ignoring the possible other ways that Facebook is unethical), I don’t think that Facebook is seriously wrong. This is not to diminish the harm that Facebook has caused (ex. encouraging social media addiction which leads to higher levels of depression), because I do think that it is wrong. But I believe that these problems could be solved internally. We have already seen efforts being made to mitigate these negative effects: Meta labeling fake news or TikTok building in a break reminder to avoid aimless scrolling. These can be implemented in Facebook, and I would be able to encourage these implementations better from the inside. Overall, because I see internal solutions, I don’t think it is seriously wrong.
Honestly… I think my current desperation for a job in general is influencing my stance right now. I do have a clear line that I won’t cross (i.e. companies that have a sole goal to harm human life), but I think Facebook is one of those companies that I think fall into a bit of a gray area for me. There could be other ways that Facebook is unethical, and I could be grossly underestimating the harm that Facebook has caused. Hopefully in the future I will be in the position to freely reject jobs.
