Instagram and Privacy Essay
What would you recommend Instagram do?
The modern world is living in the conditions of highly developed communication technologies. People from various parts of the world are free to share their personal news, and their media files, they can communicate in real-time, just via sending messages or using various programs, they are able to watch movies and play games. There is a number of difficulties, related to this situation, along with a great number of advantages. Most individuals like using social networks in order to communicate and share their interests and news. There is, however, a rather controversial ethical issue. On the one hand, users share a lot of personal information, making it available to a great number of other users, on the other hand, this is still their private information and it is not ethically correct to use it by any third parties for the sake of their own interests. Instagram should work out strategies, which would allow it to regain the trust of its users and attract new users.
How should free online service providers balance their need to achieve profitability and the customers’ privacy?
In the case of Instagram, there is no wonder that it lost so many users, as it made an attempt to use their personal information in order to increase its profits. This was initially the wrong choice, it would be much better to attract more and more users, offering good conditions for free and some paid services. These services along with advertising could improve the incomes. Providers of online services should do their best in order to preserve a certain level of privacy for their users, they could offer them close their profiles and allow access only to their friends for example or offer similar services in order for the users to feel safe, posting their personal information there.
Works cited:
Nelis, Maureen, Individualism (Friedman’s Economic Theory), Utilitarianism, Kantianism, and Virtue Theory Analyses of Business Controversies. Instagram: An Issue of User Privacy, 2013
Available at http://businessethicscases.blogspot.com/2013/04/instagram-issue-of-user-privacy.html
