The Social Network Mark Zuckerberg

By Kunal Paul
April 30, 2015
IS 304

Ethical issues are very elaborate and unique to learn about. Each story
is said to have three sides your side, my side, and the truth. Trying to
differentiate between the truth and what is not the truth can involve some
research into ethical ideas. However, sometimes what is the truth may not
always follow so closely with what would be considered to be ethical. Ethics
are said to be the motivation based on ideas of right and wrong. It is a set of
principles of right conduct. There is much to learn from some of the decisions
made in history by some of the greatest and most famous people that we
know. One persons story from which we can learn much about ethical ideas
is that of Mark Zuckerberg and the development of what we know today as
the social networking website Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg was born in White Plains, New York on May 14, 1984
to a well-educated and well-to-do family. His interest in computers and
programming was evident at a very young age. He was what some may like
to refer to as a child prodigy when it came to programming. Mark had a very
promising youth, as he was very intelligent and always ahead of his peers. It
was known that he would become someone great when considering his many
talents, intelligence, and eclectic activities in high school including fencing,
literature, and course computers. During his time in high school in New
Hampshire, Mark was steadily developing many new programs.
Mark later began attending one of the most prestigious Ivy League
schools in the nation, Harvard University, in 2002. Mark continued to excel in
programming and built a reputation as the go-to programmer on campus.

People all around Harvard knew that Mark was the person to ask when they
needed assistance with anything to do with computers. Some of his early
projects that he built were helpful to other students. He built a program
called CourseMatch, which would help students to choose classes based on
course selections of other users (Bio). However, the real story of Mark
Zuckerbergs ethically controversial rise to success began with a program
that he began to develop known as Facemash.
One night at Harvard, Mark found himself starting this new project
which would compile photos of other Harvard students and would present
two photos side by side of females and would allow the user to rate one of
them hot and the other not. This new development intrigued some of his
friends, Divya Narendra, Cameron Winklevoss, and Tyler Winklevoss. The
thing about this project that surprised them was not simply the fact that
Mark was able to do this, but that he actually did it that night while
intoxicated. This showed the high intelligence of Mark, as he was able to do
something like that while not even fully sober. The way that Mark achieved
this was that he hacked into the databases of various directories of Harvard
and downloaded many pictures of the female students. This coupled with an
algorithm that Mark got from his friend, Eduardo Saverin, allowed him to
create the system that was known as Facemash (IMDb). The website that
Mark created quickly drew popularity around campus. However, the school
administrators found that the website was inappropriate and had it shut
down. This project would later show to have been a seed for something much

greater. But the way that Mark Zuckerberg went about in creating this
Facemash program was quite unethical. It went against privacy rights as
Mark had hacked into secure places in order to download the data. It could
also have been deemed professionally inappropriate and unethical as a
university campus is in many ways seen to be a professional place and needs
to be treated in the same way that the workplace in future careers may be
treated. Students could have also argued that there was defamation involved
in the website. The hot or not website concept could have put female
students names in a bad light, which would be defaming their name. That
would of course be ethically unacceptable. In some ways, this could have
even been considered sexual misconduct. There were some consequences to
be dealt with as a result of what Mark had done to create Facemash. The
network traffic was too much for Harvards bandwidth and crashed their
systems, the feminist groups around campus were upset because of the
nature of Facemash, and his comments on the blog about the site were also
upsetting people. Mark Zuckerberg was charged by the administration with
breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy
(Lickona). The charges were later dropped. This did not affect Mark
Zuckerberg and his aspirations, though.
Students all around Harvard at this time were imagining an idea that
would be original. Dozens of people were thinking about a social networking
site that would interest people around the world. Mark Zuckerbergs idea for
Facemash became a catalyst for many great things to come for him. At this

time his friends Divya, Tyler, and Cameron were trying to start up a new site
called HarvardConnection that would be a small scale social networking site
for students at their university. They were looking for help in programming
the site and of course looked to none other than the infamous programmer
around campus, Mark Zuckerberg. He agreed to help them with their site in
the beginning. However, Mark soon came up with his own idea based from
his previous project of Facemash and would call it Thefacebook. He
approached his other friends, Eduardo Saverin and some others, about
working on his new idea for the social networking site. Due to this new idea,
Mark dropped out of the project with Divya Narendra, Tyler Winklevoss, and
Cameron Winklevoss (Mezrich). This did not please them very much after
Mark and his other friends had begun to develop their own idea for a social
networking site. The HarvardConnection group thought that they had fully
brought Zuckerberg on board while he claimed that there was no firm
agreement. This was another ethical dilemma that came about during Mark
Zuckerbergs rise. The HarvardConnection group began to claim that
Zuckerbergs new idea was based from ideas stolen from them. He was
developing Thefacebook at this time and was also delaying the launch of
HarvardConnection, which would give him an advantage (Mezrich).
This entire situation has many ethical issues surrounding it. Was it
ethically and professionally acceptable for Mark to have left the project with
Divya, Tyler, and Cameron in order to pursue his own ideas after he had
already agreed to help them? The group had agreed to help each other, but

was the agreement legally binding? The agreement was surely ethically
binding, even if it was not legally binding. When the group had asked Mark to
help them, and he agreed, he was saying that he would help them to
complete the project and would not simply leave them whenever he wanted
to. This situation may have diminished some of his integrity in the eyes of
many. And we know that integrity is the cornerstone for ethical behavior.
However, many ethical dilemmas are not always as simple as right
versus wrong. There may have been many factors in this situation that made
it seem acceptable for Mark to have left the HarvardConnection project to
work on his own. Also, the fact that they were not simply his business
acquaintances, but were his friends made the situation all the more ethically
challenging. A way that this dilemma can be analyzed is similar to the
concept of employee loyalty. Employees are expected to be loyal to their
company and their employer, but also to their fellow employees. And
although in Mark Zuckerbergs situation with the HarvardConnection group,
they were not fellow employees of a company, I think that their small group
could have been considered an organization of sorts. This would mean that
they should have some type of loyalty to each other and to the task at hand.
The goal of the group was to create something new that would be mutually
beneficial to all involved. However, Mark may not have thought about this
during that time. He was simply being autonomous and was thinking about
his own individual goals and aspirations.

Upon removing himself from the HarvardConnection project, he was

beginning his work with Eduardo Saverin and others to develop his idea of
Thefacebook. The goal of this new group working on Thefacebook was to not
only provide a social platform for Harvard students, but to broaden the idea
and make it for students across many more universities. The site was made
allowing users to create their own profiles, upload photos, and communicate
with other users (Bio). This was the beginning of what we now know as
todays Facebook. The group first ran Thefacebook out of a dormitory room
at Harvard until June of 2004.
Once Mark realized the full capability of the project and of his efforts,
he decided that he no longer needed to continue studying and that working
towards graduation would not benefit his career but simply hinder it as it
would delay his goals. While Divya Narendra, Tyler Winklevoss, and Cameron
Winklevoss saw Thefacebook continue to excel, they thought about suing
him for stealing their idea. However, they eventually decided against it and
instead accused Mark of violating the Harvard student Code of Conduct. After
the Harvard president saw no potential value in either a disciplinary action or
lawsuit against Thefacebook, the issue was seemingly defunct (IMDb). So in
his sophomore year, Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard and worked on
the website. The ethical implications of this part of the story also are very
debatable. Although the Harvard president did not find him to have broken
the Code of Conduct, Mark may have still been in the wrong ethically.

Stealing any intellectual property is not acceptable and is also ethically

unacceptable.
After this ordeal with the HarvardConnection group, Mark moved on
with his new start up company and went to Palo Alto, California, where he
would be able to better grow this newly planted seed in Silicon Valley. Mark
made some new connections with people and the business was blooming
faster than anyone could have imagined. However, other issues arose with
his former friends and the HarvardConnection group came back to haunt
him. They claimed that Mark Zuckerberg had indeed stolen their idea for the
site and that they needed to be paid for their business losses. Mark said that
their ideas were actually based on two very different types of social
networks, but after some legal research, it was found that Mark might have
indeed intentionally stolen some of the intellectual property of Harvard
Connection. The group ended up receiving an initial settlement from what
was now known as Facebook of about $65 million. Through these hurdles,
though, Facebook continued to succeed and grow larger than what they had
dreamed (Bio).
Facebook is now one of the largest companies in the world and it is
arguably because of Mark Zuckerbergs ravenous hunger for success. He did
whatever he needed to in order to make the website and company what it is
today. Mark Zuckerberg was named the Person of the Year in 2010, he
became the youngest person on the Fortune 500 list at the age of 28, and he
is a role model for many young entrepreneurs who may be in the same

position now as he was in while at Harvard. He is not only known for being
one of the founders of Facebook, but for being an innovator who created a
rejuvenated idea of social networking and made it possible. His philanthropy
also gives him a lot of credit. However, even after all of this success, people
doubt him and his efforts. Many people believe that the ethics of how
Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg are not good. There are many
different perspectives that can be used to analyze the story. Business ethics,
property issues, privacy issues, and professional ethics issues surround the
story of Mark Zuckerberg.
Although the Mark Zuckerberg of today holds a good place in society,
as he is philanthropic, people think that since what Facebook is based from is
not ethically acceptable, the entire development cannot be viewed as a good
thing. Others on the opposite side say that what Mark Zuckerberg did to
create the company that he has today was simply from desire and a dream,
so that makes what he did acceptable and ethical (Charrington). It may be
more accurate to say that he made some mistakes but has learned from
them tries to continue his business in an ethical manner today. There may
not be very many arguments that can be made about the ethics of Facebook
today, however, there are of course those who find other things to criticize
the ethics of Mark Zuckerbergs company. One reason why some of Mark
Zuckerbergs business ethics are questioned is due to the way that Facebook
makes its profitability so great. The money is seen to be clean, however,
there may be reason to believe that a large portion of the money that they

receive is through scamming users. This adds on to the questionable ethics

of the way that he started up the company. Does the background of Mark
Zuckerbergs rise to fame and fortune make him an unethical person now?
The foundation of what Mark Zuckerberg has created has not been fully clean
in regards to the ethics of it. However, people grow and learn and I think that
he continues to try to become a better and more ethical businessperson.
Works Cited
Charrington, Dwayne. How Strong or Weak Are Mark Zuckerbergs Ethics?
Quora. N.p, 23
Dec. 2014. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.
Foremski, Tom. Questionable Ethics And The Next Generation of
Entrepreneurs. SVW.
Silicon Valley Watcher, 19 Apr. 2011. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.
Lickona, Mark T. The Unfriending of Mark Zuckerberg. The Social Network:
A Meaningdeprived but Thrilling Spectacle. MercatorNet, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.
Mezrich, Ben. The Accidental Billionaires The Founding of Facebook. N.p.:
Anchor, 2010.
Print.
"Mark Zuckerberg." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2015. Web. 29 Apr. 2015.
Synopsis for The Social Network. IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.