Question 2:
Based on the article given, discuss and argue on the related ethical issues involved in 1000 –
1200 words. You may use suitable ethical theories to support your argument. If your reports are
considerably more or less than the approximated word counts, it is possible that you are provided
insufficient detail.
FaceMash – A Fun Site for Voting
In 2003, once summer evening when Mark Zuckerberg suffered from insomnia in the Harvard dormitory
room, he got an idea to create a site called FaceMash. Mark decided to hack the database of Harvard,
where the students uploaded their profile pictures. He quickly wrote a program that randomly selected two
pictures of two random female students and put them next to each other, asking “Who is hotter?”, giving
the option for voting.
The process was in full swing and site was visited by most of the students in Harvard. When the number
of visitors exceeded the limit, the server crashed due to overload. Mark appeared before the committee
on computer hacking. Of course nobody told Mark Zuckerberg ‘Well done!’ and he received a disciplinary
action, and had noticed that such kind of things cause stormy interest in society. By the way, Harvard has
refused to comment on the incident up till now.
About ten months before the Zuckerberg’s FaceMash epic, one of the students of Harvard – Divya
Narendra – had already spoken with the idea of creating a social network exclusively for Harvard
students, many of whom were suffering from emotional stiffness. And not have ‘aliens’ engaged into the
network, Narendra suggested using Harvard email address as the main username.
Divya Narendra’s partners were twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. The father of the Winklevoss
twins, Howard Winklevoss, is a successful financial consultant and put in his sons a lot of efforts and
money – so the problem with the initial capital for the future network could be solved easily.
In conversation with Mark Narendra said that the project would be called Harvard Connection (later
renamed to ConnectU), and its members will be posted to the Internet their photos, personal information
and useful links. The tasks of Mark Zuckerberg included programming of the site and creating a special
source code, which would allow the system to work as quickly as possible.
After a private meeting with Narendra and the Winklevoss twins, Zuckerberg agreed to join in the work,
but the potential of his new partners he estimated it skeptically. While working on Harvard Connection he
got a fantastic idea about his own social network.
On February 04, 2004 he registered the domain name TheFacebook.com, now known throughout the
world as Facebook.com. However, it functioned only within Harvard.
After Zuckerberg and his partner Eduardo Saverin realized that there were already registered 4000 users,
they have come to the conclusion that they needed the services of new programmers. One of them was a
Mark’s neighbor, Darren Moskowitz, who further opened the Facebook service to students at Columbia
University, Stanford, and Yale.
Around the same time after the IPO, Zuckerberg owned 503.6 million shares. And now Zuckerberg
controls nearly 60% of the company’s votes, 35% – Eduardo Saverin, and 5% went to newcomer
Moskowitz. Another friend of Mark, Chris Hughes, was assigned as the Press attache of Facebook.
Some time later, the registration was opened to all students. The main condition was the availability of an
email address in .edu zone, which also indicated a person’s belonging to education sector.
It must be said that at first this tactic worked out nicely. The project attracted audience attention of
sufficient quality. When a user was trying to sign up he had to fill out a detailed profile, and in addition to
the email address in .edu zone it was requested to add a real profile picture. If people used avatars
instead of real pictures their profiles were deleted.
Soon Facebook went beyond the education sector, becoming more and more popular. Mark Zuckerberg
started looking for investors. The first investments Mark received from one of the founders of PayPal,
Peter Thiel, who is well known throughout Silicon Valley. Peter Thiel allocated $500,000 dollars and that
amount was sufficient for immediate Facebook purposes. The project began to evolve rapidly. In less than
a year after it was founded more than 1 million people joined the social network. For further development
of Facebook they needed more investments. Accel Partners invested in Facebook $12.7 million dollars
and then Greylock Partners added to this amount $27.5 million dollars.
By 2005, Facebook became accessible for all educational institutions and universities in the USA.
Zuckerberg still believed that his project is a social network for students, but the interest of users to
Facebook grew exponentially. Then it was decided to make a registration accessible to the public. And
after this a Facebook ‘epidemic’ started.
The main thing that immediately attracted users in Facebook, is that friends who meet in real life now
could communicate with each other online. It was something new.
Facebook audience grew rapidly, but the monetization of the project still remained unclear. Everyone
expected that the main instrument should be context advertising. The fact is that every Facebook user fills
sufficiently detailed profile, which can be used to show relevant advertisements. Obviously that would
open up enough options to advertisers, who may be of interest to their audience. But Facebook continued
just to build number of users. When they got over 50 million users, large companies began to offer
Zuckerberg to sale them the project. So, one time even Yahoo! offered $900 million dollars for Facebook.
Impressive sum, but it absolutely did not satisfy Mark. Facebook biography and Mark Zuckerberg success
story is quite intriguing, isn’t it?
Lawsuits against Facebook
The Facebook project launch was accompanied by series of scandals. Six days later after launching the
site senior students brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra accused Mark
Zuckerberg in stoling their idea. They claimed that in 2003 hired Zuckerberg to make him complete the
establishment of the social network HarvardConnection.com. According to their testimonies, Zuckerberg
did not provide them the results of his work, but used the original source code to create Facebook.
In the same year, Narendra and the Winklevoss twins launched their own network renamed to ConnectU.
And they continued to attack on Mark Zuckerberg, complaining Harvard administration and The Harvard
Crimson newspaper. Initially Zuckerberg urged journalists not to publish the investigation: he showed
them what supposedly he did for HarvardConnection, and explained that those developments did not
have any relation to Facebook. But very inappropriately, another Harvard student – John Thomson – in
personal conversations started saying that Zuckerberg stole one of his ideas for Facebook. The
newspaper decided to publish the article and it offended Mark Zuckerberg very much.
Zuckerberg took revenge on The Harvard Crimson. According to Silicon Alley Insider, in 2004, he breaks
the mailboxes of two journalists from The Harvard Crimson, using the newly launched Facebook. He
found users who were involved in the newspaper and browsed their logs (i.e. history) of incorrectly
entered passwords in Facebook. Zuckerberg’s expectations were met: two employees of the newspaper
absentmindedly tried to login Facebook with passwords from their mailboxes. Silicon Alley Insider wrote
that Zuckerberg got lucky: he had a chance to read the correspondence about him between the editorial
office and HarvardConnection.
The Winklevoss twins and Narendra filed a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg, but the court rejected their
claim. They were persistent and filed another lawsuit. This time the court examined the code sources to
understand whether they were actually stolen. But the truth was still not clear. The examination results
were not announced. In 2009, Zuckerberg agreed to pay $45 million ($20 million in cash, and the
remaining amount in Facebook shares) ConnectU as part of the court settlement. The case was closed.
By that time ConnectU had less than 100,000 users, Facebook boasted about 150 million users.
The Winklevoss twins yet did not calm down and filed a petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals, but they
were denied a retrial. According to their lawyer Jerome Falk, the appellate court refused to take a review
of the case based only on the parties’ settlement agreement, which states that members of the trial after
the signing of the document does not have the right to resume the trial. In counsel’s view, the decision
was illegal, as Mark Zuckerberg in a proceeding in 2008 provided false information about the company’s
value.
1. Privacy and Security
“hack the database of Harvard, where the students uploaded their profile pictures”
“he breaks the mailboxes of two journalists from The Harvard Crimson, using the newly
launched Facebook. He found users who were involved in the newspaper and browsed
their logs (i.e. history) of incorrectly entered passwords in Facebook.”
Privacy is the right of people not to reveal information about them. Privacy is closely related
to data security. This ethical issue occurs when unauthorized access tried to get into the
system and manipulate the data, gathered, stored, mined, combined and exchanged (Tavani,
2013). An individual has privacy in a situation with regard to others if and only if in that
situation the individual is protected from intrusion, interference, and information access by
others. Students and those who involved in the newspaper need personal privacy and they
wish no one had access and control over information about them. Making sure that personal
information stored in computer databases is secure is important in helping them achieve and
maintain their privacy.
2. Prank for fun
“wrote a program that randomly selected two pictures of two random female students
and put them next to each other, asking “Who is hotter?”, giving the option for voting.”
Everyone desire happiness. Happiness is an intrinsic good that is desired for its own sake.
Consequence-based ethical theory can be described as an act, which is a morally permissible
if the consequence produced by doing the act result in the greatest good for the greatest
number of persons affected by the act (Tavani, 2013). Since it is assumed that all humans, as
individuals, desire happiness, it would follow on utilitarian grounds that those actions and
policies that generate the most happiness for the most people are most desirable. Zuckerberg
developed the program for the sake of having fun and wanted others to enjoy the voting too,
even though he knew it is unethical to make comparisons who is hotter among female
students. This ethical theory promotes happiness and ignores concerns of justice for the
minority population (Tavani, 2013).
3. Sexist
“wrote a program that randomly selected two pictures of two random female students
and put them next to each other, asking “Who is hotter?”, giving the option for voting.”
It is unethical to judge woman only by her appearance. Judging one physical appearance will
offends those who are lack in it. Furthermore, people should pay more attention to a person's
wisdom and attitude; it should never be about their physical appearance.
4. Plagiarism
“Zuckerberg did not provide them the results of his work, but used the original source
code to create Facebook.”
According to the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA), “plagiarism occurs
when a writer deliberately uses someone else’s language, ideas, or other original (not
common-knowledge) material without acknowledging its source”. As mentioned in the
article, Zuckerberg was initially hired to develop a social networking for the
Harvardconnection.com. However, instead of completing the site, he uses the code for his
own social network.
5. Social Utility
“By that time ConnectU had less than 100,000 users, Facebook boasted about 150
million users.”
Zuckerberg’s unethical acts were seemed to be ‘forgiven’ by us today. People enjoyed the
end product of Facebook, which helped restore his reputation. According to Tavani (2013),
utilitarian ethical theory claims that social usefulness is more important than morality. It
should be measured by the amount of happiness produced. This means the moral value of an
action should be measured in terms of their social usefulness rather than the known social
justice and individual rights. Zuckerberg’s act of privacy breach, humiliating female students
and stealing others’ idea seemed to be morally permissible as the consequence of his
unethical acts allows us, the majority, to enjoy Facebook and get connected all over the
world. He was only charged with small punishments. Even the court rejected the case when
the Winklevoss twins and Narendra filed a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg for stealing
intellectual property. He was advised that it would be best to pay them off and move on as he
was not likely to win the case. He paid millions to the Winklevoss twins and the issue was
resolved by a settlement outside of court.
Tavani, H. T. (2013). Ethics and technology: Controversies, questions, and strategies for
ethical computing. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Council of Writing Program Administrators. (2003). Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The
WPA Statement on Best Practices. Retrieved from: www.wpacouncil.org.
