Read the Case Study 13-2, Ethical Decision Making: Situation 3. Then, answer the following questions:
Situation 3
Facebook has been cited by the United Nations as enabling genocide in Myanmar. Myanmar did not have any type of telecommunication network when Facebook persuaded the government to reduce the price of cell phones. In return, Facebook provided a basic Internet infrastructure for the people living in Myanmar. Military personnel posted fake stories and propaganda that incited the violence against the Muslim Rohingya minority group. Reports indicated that 1.3 million people followed the accounts created by hundreds of military personnel who posed as fans of rock stars, models, national heroes, and even a beauty queen. Photos of victims of conflicts from other countries were even falsely labeled as a current conflict caused by the Rohingya to fuel anger among the majority. The fake news Facebook posts were largely believable because many of the 18 million users in Myanmar believed what they readthey are known to confuse Facebook with the Internet itself. Facebook admitted it was slow to react and to remove those accounts, as the hate speech campaign stretched over half a decade. The result: in just one year 700,000 Rohingya left the country.i One report in December 2018 revealed that Facebook employed two fulltime moderators who spoke Burmese in 2011, but in late 2018, Facebook employed over 100 and claimed it was getting better at removing fake and hateful content.ii,iii Roger McNamee claimed in an interview on 1A on National Public Radio that Facebook sees such unfortunate incidents as a cost of doing business in its virtuous goal of connecting the whole world.
Do you think that Facebook was blamed unfairly by the United Nations for the genocide? Please explain.
Did Facebook act in an unethical way? If you think it did, why were its actions unethical and what should it have done differently? If you think Facebook did not act in an unethical way, please explain why not.
You must submit your answers, using the Assignment Template, to the appropriate Dropbox folder by Saturday at 11:59 pm CT. Before submitting, make sure to thoroughly read your assignment to ensure you understand all the details required to successfully submit the assignment.
Your answers are expected to be in meaningful paragraphs composed of well-formatted sentences with appropriate flow. Bulleted or numbered lists will not be accepted. Be sure to restate the question in your answers to make sure you cover all of the material requested. Make sure you complete the student feedback section as well.
