As many people know, social media companies like Facebook, TikTok,  YouTube (yes, it’s social media), and the like are storing petabytes of users’ data and using it to make tons of money. But are these companies using the data they collect ethically? In most cases, no. However, there are ways they could do it ethically.

The Right to Privacy

My first thought  on this issue is that the main thing we need to ask is, ‘What is the right to privacy?’ And secondly, how do privacy rights apply to user’s social media data?

Most people haven’t heard that the right to privacy is derived from the right to property. The right to privacy doesn’t exist on its own. But, according to the right to property, you should not enter someone’s personal space without their permission. In the digital realm, someone’s social media account could be considered to be their personal space because they “own” or “manage” that space.

Privacy in digital spaces

Because users can let other people into their space, the ethics of using their data depends on whether users have allowed their data to be shared. Are today’s social media companies respecting the right to privacy and entering users’ personal space ethically?

Even though users’ social media data is hosted on a company’s server and they sign a Terms of Service Agreement, that doesn’t mean these companies should get to do whatever they want with that data. Users have been seduced into the illusion of privacy and ownership. In reality, if the company asked users every single time for each use of their data, most people would say no.

For instance, does this conversation sound realistic?

Most real people would answer these three questions with, “No way! Who do you think you are?!” “I’d prefer not,” and, “Leave my friends out of this!”

Additionally, users are deceived into thinking they “own” their little digital space. But the truth is the complete opposite. An article on The Gospel Coalition says, “These free or cheap services are indeed too good to be true. Our payment is ourselves. We are the product.”

What I’m trying to say is: that social media users are being taken advantage of. They believe the lie that their info is mostly private, while all along, companies have been selling¹ and using it behind the scenes.

Invalid ToS

As I was saying before, the Terms of Service (ToS) don’t matter. First of all, ToS are one-sided “agreements” that you cannot debate with. In other words, I believe they are a kind of unconscionable contract. “An unconscionable contract is a contract that is so severely one-sided and unfair to one of the parties that it is deemed unenforceable under the law,” as it says on LegalMatch.com. 

The unfairness in Terms of Service agreements voids the contract because most reasonable people would not agree to the terms of this “contract” if they had an actual choice. The Irish government seems to agree with me on this, because they said in a lawsuit against Facebook, “that Facebook and Instagram can not ‘force consent’ by saying consumers have to accept how their data is used, or leave the platform.”

The Network Effect

“But they have a choice,” many people say. Actually, no, not really. Social media is an invaluable part of the modern world system, and all of the large social media organizations are controlled by companies with exploitative ToS. There isn’t an alternative service of comparable value. And while some smaller social media websites have better ToS, these websites have exponentially less value than the larger ones. 

Smaller social media sites have less value because the principle that makes the internet valuable is the same for social media: the larger the network, the more valuable it is. This is called the network effect, and it “has helped tech companies become the most valuable companies on earth.”

So my first point can be summed as: Users have been deceived into thinking they own their digital spaces, and social media companies exploit their users because of that. Because of this, my conclusion is that social media companies don’t automatically have the right to analyze their user’s data.

Is it always unethical?

However, my second point is that analyzing social media data isn’t unethical in and of itself. What makes it unethical is how it’s obtained.

For example, let’s say a data scientist requested a company to make a little pop-up in their user’s windows that would let the users share a specific kind of data with him. The scientist would have the right to use the data because he obtained it without coercion. This data scientist just found a way to ethically use social media data.

Modern-Day Pharaohs

On the other hand, today’s social media companies analyze social media data to manipulate their users, sell it to others who may have nefarious purposes for it, and treat their users like products rather than people. 

Phil Chen says that just as the Israelite slaves worked to build Egyptian monuments, “internet users are being worked to generate and build modern treasure houses for their overlords, using their own data as bricks. Within the walls of these modern pyramids is all of our personal data, which empowers and wealthifies the modern-day Pharaohs: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Google (known with the addition of Netflix as “the FAANGs”), coupled with their Asian counterparts Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent.”²

Conclusion

To conclude, today’s usage of social media data is unethical because it violates people’s privacy and forces them into exploitative agreements. Users’ data is being accessed so companies can profit off of private information, and this isn’t usually in the users’ interest. As The Gospel Coalition article said,

“Being fully known and not loved is one of the scariest things we can experience… In many cases, we are known by thousands of companies and marketers but not loved. There is always a bottom line or quota to be met. For all the promises companies make about seeking our good and benefiting our lives, those promises will always come second to profit.”

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Notes

1. Facebook: We don’t sell it! We only share it with our partners.
   Me: Fine then, you profit off of it by sharing it with your partners.
   Facebook: [declined to comment] ↩︎
2. This quote was the inspiration for the title image. ↩︎