Facebook, Inc. is the largest online social media and social networking service company based in the Americas. In the following, Facebook’s social responsibility will be analyzed in four aspects. For the economics responsibilities, Facebook is a profit-oriented and market-driven company that operate well economically. There is the continuing growth revenue from the beginning until now and the total revenue of Facebook were US$40. 7 billion at the end of 2017. It is shown that Facebook is aiming for the long-term growth and profit. Also, Facebook provided thousands of jobs to the economy by spawned many new businesses.
For example, Facebook’s app development platform has added around 182,000 jobs in America's job market in 2011 and it brought about US$12 billion economic value. Base on the mass profit generated and creation of employment opportunities, Facebook has fulfilled the economic responsibility to their stakeholders. For the legal responsibilities, there are a few notables of Facebook, such as Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Facebook was revealed that they are sold over 87 million Facebook users’ personal information to Cambridge Analytica in March 2018 and they violated the law with the Federal Trade Commission. Also, Facebook is facing a lawsuit, which is against Facebook gathering Android users’ data and unauthorized access in users’ contact data that without users' consent for years. Since Facebook had not done to stay within the law, I believe Facebook is not legally responsible. For the ethical responsibilities, Facebook is facing a lot of ethical problems, such as violation of the right to privacy, emotional health impact, fake news and hate speech.
First, Facebook has come under criticism for raising users’ negative emotion by feeling of envy. However, Facebook did not take any action to solve or minimize this problem. Second, Facebook used to developed special censorship software to filter out false or misleading content. However, in the recently, Facebook no longer to display warning flag next to fake news and hoaxes. ( BBC news, 2017) Third, Facebook displays political ads on its pages and rise about the role played in political, they might sway the presidential election. In fact, they have affected the electorates’ voting rates and supporting rate. Fourth, Facebook is giving a platform to violence, conspiracy theories and fringe discourse, but they did not take responsibility for it. Thus, I do not think Facebook has fulfilled its ethical responsibilities. For the philanthropic responsibilities, Facebook is the world's biggest social networking service company. They should be take up self-initiatives activities and expenditures, however, they only did the society’s minimum expectation – donations.
Moreover, they have dropped the fee on donation in the recently. ( Josh. C. , 2017) Facebook had not done any self-initiatives activities to the Americas society, even they used to affected the users in Americas, such as selling personal data, Russian interference in the 2016 U. S. elections, fake news and violence on Facebook Live. The donation seems the tactic that makes Facebook look better, but they do not take the philanthropic responsibility on the voluntary basis. Therefore, based on what Facebook did, it does not fulfill the corporate social responsibilities.
