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| Facebook Dating's story feature |
Facebook’s newest feature Facebook Dating may be the most ethical part of its platform.
Facebook Dating rolled out late last year with romantic flair bombarding users with romantic-comedy-esque marketing promotions and promises of an easy search for love. Users 18 years or older create an account directly through their Facebook profile. From there, users build a profile and hope the algorithm connects them with their true love.
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| Celebrity couple Sarah Hyland and Wells Adams promoting Facebook Dating at a promotional event. |
What is unique about Facebook Dating is its ability to collect data from its additional products to create more accurate profiles of their users. For example, users can connect and share with Facebook and Instagram stories, match with people attending the same events, and even match with their current Facebook friends.
I understand dating is a private and intimate part of people’s lives and Facebook is probably the last platform anyone would trust given their track record. However, Facebook Dating built differently from Facebook in that It hopes to give control back to users. Many of its new features were built along Luciano Floridi’s unified approach to information ethics.
Information-as-a-resource ethics is the study of moral issues arising from the triple A, digital divide, infoglut, and trustworthiness of information. Privacy falls under this category. In order to maintain users’ privacy, Facebook Dating creates anonymity by only showing users first name and age (unless the user consciously changes this) and redacting gender identity all together. According to Floridi redacting information can be viable method in protecting ethical and moral behavior. He states, “A [the moral agent] may need to lack (or intentionally preclude herself from accessing) some information in order to achieve morally desirable goals, such as protecting anonymity, enhancing fair treatment, or implementing unbiased evaluation.”
Viewing information as the product focuses on moral issues arising from the information users created. Think accountability, liability, plagiarism, and lying. It’s easier to identify real profiles on Facebook dating because their profiles are more dynamic. Users can post real-time stories and connect with other active social profiles. Additionally, users’ data are no longer the product. Facebook Dating is free and doesn’t include any advertising, and the company says it never will.
It is clear Facebook Dating was built on a different philosophy than Facebook. Giving users control over their information has made Facebook more transparent on how dating is being used and shared. For Facebook, Facebook dating is much more than a dating app—it is a step in the ethical direction.
Hi Bridget,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your article. The title was attention grabbing, and I genuinely learned a lot about Facebook Dating as someone who's never heard of it before. I also liked how you made sure to tie in Floridi's principles throughout the majority of the article as well. Your conclusion was a great wrap up as well.
This post grabbed my attention because I also have never heard of Facebook Dating being a real thing. I remember hearing that they might be rolling out a dating platform but didn't know it actually happened. I also thought it would be a good idea because Facebook knows so much about their users. But there is still a part of me that wouldn't trust Facebook and not believe that Facebook wouldn't collect the dating users' data as a product to sell.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, I think you did a great job on this post and like how you clearly referred to a specific idea that Floridi set forth. The majority of your blog post was about this idea and you gave a firm stance on your opinion that Facebook is taking a step in the right direction. Well done!
I had totally forgotten Facebook Dating went live and was a viable option for use as a dating platform. I am glad to see Facebook may be taking a better look at their practices when it comes to user privacy, but while it appears Facebook will give people the ability to control what aspects of themselves other people see in their dating profiles, I don't see a reference to how Facebook will use the data themselves. Also, adding which paper of Floridi's you're quoting would allow those who are interested to see exactly which work of his you are referencing.
ReplyDelete