Summary

In the current world at hand, there is an increasing venture of social media companies and other
internet-based platforms that collect the sensitive data of users who use their platforms, and
through the collection of these data, are incentivized to use them for purposes which the users
had not authorized them to use them for such as selling data to third parties who wish to conduct
marketing and advertising, or selling and providing data to companies and groups that wish to
conduct some form of research based on the given data.
There are several ethical considerations that exist, and key ethical theories and factors that play a
large role in providing a rationale for such actions and scenarios, which will be used in this
project very thoroughly in order to provide the reader with an absolute understanding of the
concepts, scenarios and findings that the project team has compiled throughout the period of
research.
An evaluative and informed conclusion will be provided at every closing juncture with a final
conclusion at the very end of this project that will effectively summarize and conclude the
current state of events, relevant data that supports the findings of the project team, and the
multitude of ethical theories that have been learnt as a result of attending the overall course.

The research that will done will have several methods and sources that are used, which range
from statistics provided from a large range of secondary and primary sources, findings from
news articles and websites, and various accounts and incidents of breaches of sensitive
information.

Introduction

Currently, there are several social media platforms that engage in the collection of user data,
where these user data will be stored on their servers for future use which may or may not be
within the term and conditions / user agreements of the platform. (Pixees, 2022)
The collection of user data is generally done during the signing-up stage of the social media
platform where the individual is required to enter their details onto the platform in order to
register an account on that platform. Some of the required information during the registration
stage would be a full-name, email address and a mobile number, which are often highly sensitive
pieces of information for any individual, and is viewed as information that has a requirement to
be protected due to the spam, and other breaches of privacy that may follow if the information
was leaked to other organizations by any chance.

Why information is illicitly sold/leaked

Most large companies work with the trust of their user base, and similarly, when there is a trust
that the user base has to the social media platform, the respective platform is able to run very
well due to the popularity it has as the trust it has with its community is maintained to a large
degree. However, when there is a large number of sensitive user information available in the
database of the servers of the social media platforms, it gives incentive to these platforms to sell
these data to third parties who are willing to pay large amounts of money simple to get such
information.
Social media platforms may see these third party buyers as an extra revenue stream that could
potentially provide a good amount of revenue consistently to the platform due to the large
number of types of data that may be collected such as the user search histories, user activity logs,
emails, phone numbers and other information that is extremely sensitive to the users themselves
and could be used for several purposes such as analyzing the data of these users to create
marketing content that will be used to markets relevant products to the customers at a later date.

Therefore, although unethical, companies would do this usually in a backhanded way to ensure
that there are extra sales to the company without having to make any investment. This is one of
the main reasons that social media platforms sell user information.
Furthermore, there are instances that this information would not be sold by the social media
company themselves but by the employees who act on a personal capacity and other hackers or
mistakes that cause the sensitive information of the users to be leaked.
The core reason why this type of practice still exists in this current day is due to the lack of
consideration for ethical practices in the environment, and the lack of moral values that would
dictate the ethical decisions that individuals make. Therefore, the lack of values would be a core
area that this project will touch on amongst other subject matters. Furthermore, other reasons as
to why data is breached, sold, and shared will be explored, such as hacker group activity. But the
main area of focus is the role that social media groups have with relation to the safety of
sensitive data of users and their involvement in the selling and sharing of data with third parties
that the users do not consent to expressly.
Long-term impacts of data sharing

There is always a chain reaction to certain events, and these consequences must be fully taken
into account, especially in a world where the rate of cybercrime is high, and where there is a high
reliance on online activities by every individual in the world, where a small issue could create a
domino effect into escalating into a bigger issue that affects many individuals. Therefore, there is
an inherent responsibility of social media companies and platforms to ensure that the data that
they take from the users are safe and protected and not unethically shared with third party for
whichever reasons that may exist. However, the question would be what the long-term effects are
of when it coms to social media platforms selling o sharing the data of individuals and users that
decide to register and conduct activities online on the platform.

When looking at the initial effects on a smaller scale, it is seen that social media information
could span from sensitive information to information that is not of importance. Therefore, it is
important to look at the different types of information that is shared and the impacts each type of
information can have on the consumers and other stakeholders. Social media platforms selling
the data of users that Are deemed more sensitive and more dangerous to be shared can amount to
email addresses and phone numbers, where malicious parties can use these information to call
the users, send them scam emails in order to scam them of their money by tricking them through
various means.
There are also advertising and marketing companies and other types of research firms that
require these information for non-malicious use, where there would simply be researches
conducted with the user data that has been collected throughout the time that the user uses the
platform such as the content they view, and the statistics on their daily use schedules. This
information may simply be very normal information that may not be a threat to individuals as
they are simply a collective form of data that has analyzed the user’s activity on the social media
platform. This type of information can be used to create products or services that the users would
find useful in the long run as there is market research that is conducted through the use of these
types of data. However, it must be noted that these types of data, although not harmful, are still
data that the users did not consent to sharing, and such sharing of data can create mistrust in the
social media platforms that the users are working on and could be consequential to the social
media platform.

Can social media platforms operate without the collection and/or sale of user data?

The main aim of social media platforms is to provide users with a platform to connect with other
individuals and groups, where even businesses use social media platforms such as Instagram and
TikTok in order to boost their reach. Social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and
TikTok generate revenue through the running of advertisements on their platforms, where they
charge a fee for every ad that a user runs. The main source of revenue for such social media
platforms can be considered to be ad campaigns, however, it may not simply stop at ad
campaigns due to the fact that social media platforms possess various other ways to generate
more revenue from the running of these platforms.

In order to answer the question at hand, it will be looked at as to whether social media platforms
really require the sale of such data in order to survive in the industry. On an initial note, it is
important to understand that the storing and analyzing of data by the social media platform
internally is vital to the development of the platform and the way in which users will be treated,
and would essentially dictate how the future updates of the platform would look like, where the
activities of users are monitored and analyzed in order to provided a better qualities experience
of the app in subsequent updates.
In this scenario, it is vital that the data of uses is stored and analyzed in a geopolitical and
geographical context to ensure the maximum accuracy of the data that has been analyzed, and is
seen as an ethical doing since this data is not divulged to other third parties and are simply used
in order to provide a better qualitative experience to the users in the future. However, there are
instances where there can be fraudulent and malicious uses of this data that social media
platforms conduct which could crate issues for the livelihood of people and their data, which is
when the data is sold to third parties; where these third parties are malicious entities who simply
use the data for purposes in which it can exploit users by sending them spam emails that simply
contain product marketing which they never consented to, or carefully written emails that turn
out to be scams that are extremely believable due to the prior data which they had about the user
that is being scammed.
When looking at it from an extended perspective, it is extremely clear that this data can that is
shared to other third parties contain a long-term issue that can harm the long term livelihoods of
individuals. A social media platform ultimately can survive without the disclosing of data to
third parties and could make a generous revenue and survive their business by solely running
advertisements on their platform, which is already a business model that is bound to generate
billions for an extremely long time period.
In that context it is able to be concluded that the social media platforms can indeed survive
without conducting such unethical activities of selling user data to third parties based on the
revenue model that the social media platforms currently follow that mainly collects revenue from
the running of ads.
The main reasons that the sale of data would not stop is initially due to the lack of knowledge
that users have with regard to the gravity of their data being collected y social media platforms,
where such lack of awareness can lead to disastrous consequences due to the fact that data of
individuals can end up in the wrong hands.
Another reason for the widespread sharing of data is the fact that social media companies illicitly
engage in this activity although they state that they shall not engage in it, which is an absolute
unethical and illegal factor that must be taken into account, where the only method in which this
can be prevented is from proper awareness of the user where they explicitly understand the ways
in which their data can be breached and the measures they can take to solve this issue, which
ultimately could solve the issue of data sharing and data selling of social media platforms. The
most basic level that must be looked at is how the awareness can be created, and in order to do
that, a video can be created that effectively summarized the negative effects of data collection
and what individuals can do about it.

The creation of awareness to both social media platforms and users

Within the current status-quo, it is apparent that there is a major lack of awareness in the whole
sphere of data collection, data sale and the general disclosing of data of users of social media
platforms, where social media platforms can take advantage of this lack of awareness to exploit
the users as they wish and maximize their revenue outputs.
The major reason for the lack of awareness of users is due to their ignorance and lack of
knowledge on how their data impacts them, where they do not fully understand how the
providing of their sensitive data such as email addresses and mobile numbers could create major
repercussions if shared with the wrong parties, and such sharing of data could be done without
the knowledge or the express consent of the users.
The users will only figure out the grave repercussions of them sharing their data to other
platforms after they experience a security breach, or some form of scam or hack that utilizes the
data which they have entered on the platform.

Many users also do not understand the different types of data that can be collected off of them
such as their overall platform activity data which creates statistics on the type of content that the
user may view, or the times and dates that the user is most active on, which would be extremely
lucrative information for certain firms and also hackers who wish to collect as much data on an
individual or group of individuals before proceeding with their hacking procedures.

On the other hand, social media platforms also require some form of awareness to be brought to
them on the wider repercussions of their use of user data, and must be held accountable for any
type of breaches of user data as they are collecting sensitive data that could danger the security
of their users if released to the public. Therefore, there is a requirement of understanding whether
the gathering of data for the purposes of improving their platform’s services to users is worth the
burden that they would have of protecting the data of their users.

The primary question that arises in this scenario is whether indeed the creation of awareness is
sufficiently possible, and the extent to which this awareness can be created along with the
success of this awareness campaign. The previously mentioned factors are clear determining
factors of the success of the whole awareness campaign, and may essentially be the foundation
towards the greater conclusion of this project due to the fact that the final conclusion will be
based on the test as to whether the awareness campaign will be successful or not.

In the scenario at hand, it is clear that there is already a widespread collection of different types
of user data that is analyzed, sold, and used for different purposes. Social media platforms have
already used this as a traditional practice, and this essentially equates to billions of users worth of
data which the social media platforms collect.
It is to be understood that with this large collection of data throughout the years, it is extremely
dangerous for the personal safety of many individuals who use these social media platforms
because of a digital footprint that could be breached at any moment, where billions of user data
could potentially be put out into public where years' worth of user information could potentially
create the biggest digital catastrophe that mankind has known
Therefore, establishing the gargantuan risk that every user of social media platforms is taking
when they decide to register an account on such platforms and go about their usual activity
online. Therefore, it is clear that even with sufficient awareness created for users, the data that
has been already collected will not disappear, and the threat of this collected data being released
still would exist to this very day.

The overall success of awareness

Before looking at the success of awareness campaigns for the users of social media platforms, it
is important to understand the methodology of such awareness campaigns, which will initially
start with a general survey on everyday users of social media from different age ranges.

The survey that has been conducted in the course of this project was a hybrid questionnaire type
of survey where different individuals who were approached had been provided with a 10-
question questionnaire where they had to choose which answer suits their descriptions of their
daily social media use, where 90% of the participants had answered in a manner in which the
conclusion drawn would be that the social media platform has collected many data from these
individuals, proving exactly how much of an exposure that they have already had to these
platforms, and the way in which these platforms can exploit them if needed, where even legal
mechanisms of protection would not be sufficient.

Awareness can occur in a few stages, where users of social media in general would be educated
on the pros on cons of divulging their personal data to social media platforms, and the long term
repercussions of doing so, where the user will gain the maximum knowledge on how exactly
social media can be a hindrance to the safety of their identity.
These insights that will be provided can potentially allow them to better choose which type of
data they would be comfortable to disclose to the social media platform, which would be much
better than them not knowing the repercussions of it and disclosing all their personal information
without prior knowledge.
In the event that this campaign goes according to the projected outcome, instead of the unlikely
possibility of the whole problem being solved, the project will have a success due to the creation
of some form of positive outcome. Ultimately, bringing a solution to a part of the problem and
reducing the issue partly is more than sufficient as compared to the unlikely possibility of
completely solving the issue of data selling.