Twitter: Elon Musk Layoffs (2022)

Abstract

Between January and April, Elon Musk began to collect large amounts of shares of the social media company known as Twitter. On the 27th of October, the deal was finalized. Musk immediately became Twitter's new owner, promptly firing Agrawal, chief financial officer (CFO) Ned Segal, Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett. Because of the exorbitant expense of the Twitter Exchange, Mr. Musk began to cut costs within the company, on October 20th The Washington Post reported that Musk intended to terminate 75 percent of Twitter's staff to which Mr. Musk told Twitter employees, while layoffs were still likely to happen, he did not intend to do so at the scale the Post had previously reported. Fast-forward to November 4th Musk and Twitter began laying off a substantial portion of the company's workforce and Twitter temporarily closed its offices, with The New York Times estimating that roughly half of the employees had been let go. Because of this mass layoff without warning five Twitter employees based in San Francisco and Cambridge, Massachusetts filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that mass layoffs would violate federal and California WARN Acts.

This paper will be an analysis of the potential ethical violations that Mr. Musk has committed, according to the theories of Individualism, Utilitarianism, Kantianism, and Virtue Theory to determine whether Mr. Musk and the company was acting ethically or unethically.

Company takeover overview

Between January and April, Elon Musk began to collect large amounts of shares of the social media company known as Twitter. On April 2nd Mr. Musk becomes the largest shareholder and is invited into the spheres of influence within Twitter. On the 14th Mr. Musk makes a bid to buy out the company to which the board of directors unanimously agrees on the 25th for a price of $44 billion. Between May and June however, Elon Musk begins to back out of the said deal for a multitude of reasons. The first of which was revealed to the public was the report that five percent of all Twitter users were either bots or spam accounts. To ensure that the deal would be as smooth as possible, the board agrees to a 3rd party investigation, to dismiss the claims that were given by Mr. Musk.

In July, at the time, security officer Peiter Zatko had accused several Twitter executives, including CEO Agrawal and certain board members, of making false or misleading statements about the privacy of its users. Because of this Mr. Musk then announced his intention to terminate the proposed acquisition, claiming in a regulatory filing that Twitter was in "material breach" of several parts of the agreement. In response, Twitter formally launched its lawsuit against Musk at the Delaware Court of Chancery and hired the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to represent its case on July 12th. When the Board and Mr. Musk went to court on the 19th judge Kathaleen McCormick ruled that the trial would take place in early October and last for five days. In the coming weeks, many chaotic events took place, that caused the value of Twitter to fall drastically, on the 22nd Twitter cited the "chaos" caused by the proposal as the primary factor for its decline in revenue. At the end of the month, Musk's lawyers complained that Twitter had hindered them from commencing the discovery process and requested an October 17 start date, which they were given.

On August 10th Musk sold 7.92 million Tesla shares worth a total of $6.9 billion as a backup should he lose the lawsuit and be forced to buy the company. To strengthen his case Elon Musk would begin to gather evidence that suggests Twitter had manipulated the deal in bad faith. On the 29th Musk filed a "termination letter" with the SEC, citing Zatko's claims as evidence Twitter breached their contract, which was accepted into the case.

On the 13th of September Zatko testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, while Twitter shareholders voted in favor of the acquisition. While at the same time Musk privately offered to purchase Twitter at the reduced prices of $31 billion and $39.6 billion, both of which the company rejected. On October 3rd as the time for the court hearing drew nearer Mr. Musk’s legal team informed Twitter that Musk had changed his mind and decided to move forward with his proposed acquisition at the originally agreed-upon price of $54.20 per share, on the condition that Twitter drops its lawsuit. They accepted and McCormick agreed to a request by Musk to postpone the trial to October 28 so Musk could finalize his debt financing for the acquisition. On the 27th of October, the deal was finalized. Musk immediately became Twitter's new owner, promptly firing Agrawal, chief financial officer (CFO) Ned Segal, Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett

Case Controversy

Because of the exorbitant expense of the Twitter Exchange, Mr. Musk began to cut costs within the company, on October 20th The Washington Post reported that Musk intended to terminate 75 percent of Twitter's staff to which Mr. Musk told Twitter employees, while layoffs were still likely to happen, he did not intend to do so at the scale the Post had previously reported. Fast-forward to November 4th Musk and Twitter began laying off a substantial portion of the company's workforce and Twitter temporarily closed its offices, with The New York Times estimating that roughly half of the employees had been let go. Because of this mass layoff without warning five Twitter employees based in San Francisco and Cambridge, Massachusetts filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that mass layoffs would violate federal and California WARN Acts. which have yet to be addressed in a court of law. Due to the layoffs being so numerous Twitter asked some employees who had been laid off to return to the company, either because they had been fired by mistake or because they were belatedly deemed important to the health of the business. On the 16th Musk stated that he planned to appoint a new CEO to oversee Twitter eventually. Musk and his advisers met with several employees to dissuade them from leaving the company while Twitter offices were once again closed until the following Monday.
On November 18th a large number of core functions had been rendered nonviable due to resignations. These included the "payroll team, financial reporting team, and taxes team for the US, [who] completely resigned". Elon Musk calls for 'anyone' left at Twitter who can write software to meet him, or fly in, to help him 'better understand' Twitter's tech

Stakeholders

The stakeholders, in this case, are the employees at Twitter and their families. Due to the massive changes being made in their workplace they have had no assurance that they will be employed by the end of the week each day. The workforce of Twitter is directly being treated unethically. Being left without a job with no prior notice, their livelihood being put at risk as well as their families being left without a major source of income in many cases will leave people destitute.
The other stakeholders, in this case, are the users and distributors of Twitter, because of such a major slash within the company, many features that were to be rolled out with new updates to Twitter will no longer be on schedule, this will cause an eventual bottleneck within the development pipeline, that will affect all users as well as distribution companies such as Apple and Google.

Today we will take a look at this controversy through several mindsets, summarize those mindsets, and how those mindsets affect what the resolution to the controversy should be.

Individualism

Individualism according to Machan says “the only direct goal of business is to profit, and the primary obligation of the businessperson is to maximize the profit created, for the company and its shareholders.
Looking at the controversy through this lens, ElonMusk has been within the specifications of his purview, by trying to maximize profit, because the company was taken private as of October 26th we cannot tell if the profit is being increased however the plan Elon Musk would indicate he is trying to cut costs to decrease the accumulating debt, and as long as he does that within the purview of the law, he is within the ethical boundaries. That however is up to debate, the laws for layoffs are long and complex, as stated before in the case controversy section, the federal WARN law is a U.S. labor law that protects employees, their families, and communities by requiring most employers with 100 or more employees to provide 60 calendar-day advance notification of planned closings and mass layoffs of employees. Because Elon Musk had not given a 60-day notice it could be argued that he is breaching the laws, however, that could also be contradicted because § 639.9 (b) within the law states that due to unforeseeable Business circumstances the layoffs without notice could be accepted within a court case.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is by far more pro-stakeholder, it takes a stakeholder’s approach by saying in order to maximize happiness in yourself and other people. Its goal is to maximize happiness for all affected parties and to minimize unhappiness for all affected parties. In other words, Utilitarianism can be described as ‘pleasure and the absence of pain’. Ultimately, Utilitarians consider the costs and benefits of actions for all affected, not just the company or one individual. If we are to consider the pros and cons for the stakeholders then the entire deal has been mishandled and has harmed every stakeholder, and the employees have been harmed by the lack of security and reassurance. With the sudden changes and creation of a precarious work environment, the surviving members of the workforce still haven’t recovered from the experience as well as the poor environment that has been put in place by the new CEO. The second stakeholders are the families of the former twitter employees and distributors of twitter. As stated before the families of former employees are directly affected by the exorbitant layoffs happening and are extremely at risk of losing their livelihood as a result, and the distributors who are seen having issues communicating with Twitter’s internal customer support (mainly because it doesn't exist anymore), the extent to which this fallout will be is unknown as of now, but it can be said that the worst is still yet to come, with Elon Musk reported being hemorrhaging money because of this deal. It is still yet unclear if the company and social media platform will declare bankruptcy and how that will also affect the stakeholders.

Kantianism

Developed by Immanuel Kant and focused primarily on rationality and Good Will. Kant says that it is wrong to manipulate and exploit people for their advantage. The four basic principles of Kantianism are defined to act rationally, helping others make rational decisions, respecting people, and to be driven by Good Will, and looking to do the right thing because it is right. In this theory, the Categorical Imperative is a test that decides whether an action is permissible or impermissible. One of the main formulations of the Categorical Imperative is The Formula of Humanity which states that it is wrong to use people as a means to get what you want because it exploits them.

If we follow this line of thinking it is clear to us that Elon Musk is in clear violation of his ethical obligation to his newly found employees, although he is acting rationally trying to cut expenses being dealt with by the company, the lack of clarity and falsities with internal reports to employees about layoffs clearly shows exploitation and manipulation of the employees, that and new reports stating that the workers who are still left are being told to do 70 plus hour work weeks show us that the new CEO, or “Cheif Twit” as he has referred to himself as is fallen out of good ethical practice for his new company.

Virtue Theory

Virtue Theory was developed by Aristotle. Virtue Theory focuses on rationality and whether a person is virtuous or not. The 4 main virtues include courage, honesty, temperance, and justice. Aristotle said that rationality is what differentiates the characteristics of people. So, people need to be rational to live a virtuous life. Aristotle also said that people need to be rational to function well and said that if a thing achieves its function then the thing is happy. Therefore, people who function well will live virtuous lives.

Looking at Mr, Musk’s actions through this lens, it becomes much harder to discern what is ethically just, on certain aspects it is clear that the takeover was very badly mishandled. As stated previously Mr. Musk has not had clarity with his employees thus making him in violation of the virtue of honesty. It is also clear that he violates the virtue of temperance.

Temperance is setting reasonable expectations for employees. Which we can see is not being followed as shown by his telling employees to work 70-plus hour weeks, with so much chaos happening around them. In happenstance, the creation of such a hostile and unreasonable work environment makes it impossible for Mr. Musk to pass the Temperance Virtue.

The virtue of justice is described not as bringing justice in the workplace but as acting in a just and reasonable manner that makes rational sense that can be followed without major issues, which again is shown to not be followed. We have seen that many of the layoffs were trying to be retracted with letters stating that people were laid off that weren’t supposed to be and Mr. Musk reportedly meeting in person with many of the former employees trying to bid favor and bring them back into the fray. The Justice virtue has been violated because of this back and forth of, giving a statement and then retracting it a day later, to where it seems there is no clear rationale for who is and isn't being put on the chopping block, the only clear thing about the whole ordeal is that people are being fired to cut costs, the employees just can never tell who.

The last virtue to discuss is courage, courage seems to not be violated solely because of the complexity of the situation. And the lack of opportunity to be violated, to violate this there would need to be a clear and established history of trust between employer and employee, but because of how recent the case is (it is still ongoing as of writing) there is no allowance for the Virtue to be violated.

Going through the 4 virtues, 3 of the 4 virtues are violated, and the 4th isn't even affected, therefore we can conclude that because any of the 4 virtues are violated Mr. Musk is not working within his ethical boundaries.

Evaluation

Now we have gone through, our journey of several different ethical theories, we can determine whether or not Mr. Musk has mishandled his newly acquired company and how he could've done better. According to Individualism, the argument could be made that he was within his purview of the law to cut ties with a large portion of the workforce without prior notice thanks to § 639.9 (b) of the WARN Acts. but according to all other views he has been in a clear and direct violation of his ethical responsibility to his employees and their families. Utilitarianism would argue that because of the lack of morality with judgments that have taken place, its core values of maximizing happiness haven't been followed. Kantians would also agree that the ethical boundary has been crossed stating the Categorical Imperative was not followed. It is also stated by Virtue theory, that because 3 of the 4 virtues; honesty, temperance, and justice, were not followed that Mr. Musk wronged those who were let go.

Unfortunately, hindsight is 20/20, and what has happened can't be fixed. The correct path to have taken would have been to give the employees 60 days' notice and begin to cut costs in other ways while the layoffs were to occur. The question then arises, “How would we rectify the situation now ?” The most obvious answer would be to give a stipend for the influx of money that has been lost as a result of the layoffs. The odds of that happening are slim to none, however. The option that then brings itself to the forefront would be to settle this dispute in a class action lawsuit that would be able to allow an accord to the workers so that they may air grievances and work toward a settlement that is beneficial to their issues.

Closing Thoughts

In my closing thoughts, I feel I should also come to say that even though this writing is in an attempt to stay neutral to the situation, I do feel that my own thoughts will seep into the writing of the paper. I do stand with the workers as I feel everyone should in this situation. However, there is an argument to be made that this was the course of action that was going to be made regardless of ethical boundaries. I should note that the situation was poorly handled at best and that even if layoffs were to happen the WARN Acts should have been followed better and the workers should have been given much more clarity on what was to happen when the transition between the two different boards was going to happen. I also feel that the Board of directors spearheaded by the former CEO Parag Agrawal is not innocent in the events that lead up to the mass layoffs, in many ways they sold out their employees and left them with many questions and concerns without instilling confidence or a sense of security, it is just as much the board's job to ensure employees that they have security, as it is the board's job to please shareholders.

Overall the entire takeover was a poorly mishandled mess that every party involved had a hand in dealing with. Much of the blame is on Mr. Musk, and we have taken a look at this through many eyes. The takeaway here should be, since each decision matters, it's important to pause and think about the impact your decision or action will have on yourself and others. Weigh the potential consequences of each decision, including positive or negative outcomes that may occur immediately or in the future.

References

Salazar, Heather. The Business Ethics Case Manual: The Authoritative Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding and Improving the Ethics of Any Business. Print.

Ashley Belanger - Nov 14, 2022 4:28 pm UTC. “Twitter Lays off 5K Contractors in Surprise 2nd Wave of Cuts, More Mods Lost.” Ars Technica, 14 Nov. 2022, https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/11/twitter-lays-off-5k-contractors-in-surprise-2nd-wave-of-cuts-more-mods-lost/.

“Code of Federal Regulations; PART 639 - WORKER ADJUSTMENT AND RETRAINING NOTIFICATION.” www.govinfo.gov, 1 Apr. 2010, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2010-title20-vol3/xml/CFR-2010-title20-vol3-part639.xml.

Feiner, Lauren. “House Republicans Demand Twitter's Board Preserve All Records about Musk's Bid to Buy the Company.” CNBC, CNBC, 22 Apr. 2022, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/22/republicans-demand-twitter-board-save-records-on-musks-bid.html.

Hays, Kali. “Elon Musk Calls for Remaining Twitter Coders, Engineers to Meet Him.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 18 Nov. 2022, https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-remaining-twitter-coders-engineers-email-2022-11?amp.

Mac, Ryan, et al. “Resignations Roil Twitter as Elon Musk Tries Persuading Some Workers to Stay.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Nov. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/technology/twitter-elon-musk-ftc.html.

O'Sullivan, Donie, and Clare Duffy. “Elon Musk's Twitter Lays off Employees across the Company | CNN Business.” CNN, Cable News Network, 9 Nov. 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/03/tech/twitter-layoffs/index.html.

Siddiqui, Faiz, and Jeremy B. Merrill. “Musk Issues Ultimatum to Staff: Commit to 'Hardcore' Twitter or Take Severance.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 18 Nov. 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/16/musk-twitter-email-ultimatum-termination/.

Vinocur, Nicholas, and Vincent Manancourt. “EU Privacy Enforcer Puts Elon Musk on Notice as Twitter Melts Down.” POLITICO, POLITICO, 18 Nov. 2022, https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-twitter-privacy-helen-dixon-eu-privacy-enforcer-puts-on-notice-as-twitter-melts-down/.

Meta Incorporated: 11,000 Employees Left Jobless After Layoffs (2022)

ETHICS CASE CONTROVERSY 

The four cofounders of Facebook

On February 4th, 2004, “The Facebook” was launched by four college students at Harvard University – Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, would become one of the largest social media platforms in the world, amassing three billion user profiles in 2021, the most it has ever seen, half of which were using the site every day to share photos, post status updates, and for the promotion of businesses and political campaigns.

Every large company has its fair share of problems, and for Facebook, privacy issues were one of the major ones that often-caused users to question the platform’s credibility. One large scandal that put Facebook in the headlines for privacy concerns was the Cambridge Analytica Scandal in 2016. Facebook had exposed the data of close to 87 million Facebook users to Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm which worked for the Trump Campaign. A Russian-American researcher who worked for CA at the time, engineered an app using the Facebook App that allowed users to take a quiz that would expose their data to CA but also the data of their friends when CA discovered a loophole in Facebook’s programming interface. This, in addition to many other privacy incidents have caused many users to delete their accounts and stop using the platform parent platform Facebook, and Instagram, another social media platform that was acquired by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion. 

From the start of the company, no one could have predicted the magnitude in which Facebook would grow. Zuckerberg made company history in October of 2021, when Facebook Incorporated changed its name to Meta Platforms Incorporated to reflect an emphasis on their newfound mission towards building the “metaverse,” which would eventually allow users to interact in virtual reality environments (Rodriguez, 2021). The company has made it clear that augmented and virtual reality would become a key part of its growth strategy in the upcoming years. With this being an extensive and costly project for the company, we begin to see it encounter massive hurdles that make the public and their shareholders question whether there is a company for this once high-flying company. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic, every person was forced to move online, and that meant increased time shopping online, thereby significantly boosting e-commerce, and more time browsing social media for hours on end – Meta and other platforms like it took full advantage of this. Over the course of the pandemic, the company underwent a massive hiring spree. The rationale for this was because the pandemic pushed everyone to accelerate online activity and the company had predicted this trend to be permanent. Because of this, not only did Facebook want to recruit and retain the brightest talent, but so did every other large company who followed Facebook in doing so – namely Twitter and Amazon. Facebook in particular needed to invest in numerous personnel to oversee everyday operations with work-from-home jobs and moderation for their platform (Frenkel, 2022). Over the course of two years, Meta continued to hire without deeming it necessary to do so. Little did they all know, Meta had miscalculated big time believing that this trend would be sustainable. 

This miscalculation would cost Meta, and many others big time, In October of 2022, Meta’s stock plummets after having a “dismal earnings report” (Yang, 2022) to end the third quarter, yet again. This caused Meta’s capitalization to be wiped off more than $65 billion by investors when it finally joined the economic slowdown. With rising competition from short-video platforms such as TikTok, falling sales and users, and rising costs, the company’s net income in the third quarter fell by 44% to $4.4 Billion, below analysts’ estimates for $5 billion with revenues also falling by 4%, depicting the slowest growth pace since going public in 2012 (Murphy, 2022). This caused low faith from investors and shareholders, as they all had a hard time seeing the vision for the Metaverse turning things around for the company. 

In September of 2022, Meta Platforms had amassed its largest ever number of workers, totaling 87,314 people – this is where they realize they would need to make major changes amidst the rising economy before they are unable to recover. On November 9th of 2022, Mark Zuckerberg announces layoffs and job cuts for 11,000 individuals, making up 13% of their workforce – a number that made history. Zuckerberg announces that the company is also taking steps to become leaner and cut spending as well as enacting a hiring freeze through the first quarter of 2023 (Vanian, 2022). Although these layoffs were made across all departments and regions, most of them affected areas like recruiting and business teams. Less engineers were affected as they are an essential part of building up Zuckerberg’s vision of the “Metaverse.” 

STAKEHOLDERS 

Mike Schroepfer, former CTO of
Meta and top shareholder

The layoffs came amid a tough time for Meta and with the projections for fourth quarter earnings announced in late October of this year, investors were “spooked”, and this caused their shares to sink by nearly 20%. Investors have raised concerns about Meta’s rising costs and expenses, which jumped 19% year over year in the third quarter to $22.1 billion (Vanian, 2022). Analysts and investors are both losing confidence in the company because despite their decisions for cost cuts and hiring freezes, expenses in 2023 are expected to reach an all-time high at $96-$100 billion, a large sum compared to 2022’s total expected expenses, totaling $85-$87 billion. During this period, Meta was facing intense investor scrutiny for spending so heavily on the Metaverse project – Zuckerberg's vision of building an “avatar filled world” (Murphy, 2022). Zuckerberg continues to reassure them by warning that these promises of efficiency will take time and patience. Wall Street Analyst, Brent Thill sides with investor concerns and says: “There are too many experimental bets versus proven bets in the core.” Needless to say, investors are worried about Meta platforms and rightfully so, but according to Zuckerberg, these efforts will be “of historic importance” to create a basis for an entirely new way for humans to interact with one another and “blend technology into our lives” (Yang, 2022). 

INDIVIDUALISM 

Milton Friedman, an economist and a Nobel prize winner for economics rose to prominence in the 1970’s. His theory of Individualism states that a business’ only goal is profit. Therefore, the only obligation that a business has is to maximize profit for itself and its shareholders within the law. Generally, this theory holds true with some exceptions, some of which are the social identity of the company and of the leaders. There are many investors, customers, and employees who wish to be involved with socially responsible businesses meaning ethically sound businesses and those who profit within the law, seeing as social responsibility can generate profit. Just because something is legal, does not make it ethical and this is emphasized by Tibor Machan who believes that the direct goal of profiting may need to be met by indirect goals that are not aimed at profiting. Businesspeople may have other goals and social objectives but must prioritize profit-maximizing strategies. 

Under the circumstances, Meta was reporting growth rates at all-time lows since going public and declines in revenue and net income. These declines are dismal to their shareholders and the company’s growth, especially one of this magnitude. The aftermath of the layoffs was mixed – some former employees were glad and wanted to explore the next chapter of their lives, while others were devastated and immediately went searching for new opportunities, seeing as the cost of living only continues to rise, especially in highly populated areas in the country, where many have relocated for their position at Meta. Mark Zuckerberg and Meta set certain goals for the company, and to achieve those goals, this was the decision he had to make. There is no denying how empathetic and apologetic he was during the announcement of the layoffs, and he was saddened to let his talent go under these circumstances. This is ultimately the decision he had to make to maximize his company’s profit as expenses are only going to increase. This was in the best interest of his company and stockholders. 

UTILITARIANISM

What makes something good? When we think about something that is good, we are typically searching for some intrinsic value. Our attitudes and preferences influence our happiness and usually, all actions are aimed at something good and will bring us happiness. Utilitarianism, founded by John Stuart Mill emphasizes that we should bring about happiness and pleasure in all beings that can feel it. When there is a perfectly imperfect mix of egoism and altruism, we get utilitarianism, an ethical concept that wants humans to maximize happiness for ourselves and for others. Meta heavily contradicts this theory, as the company could have avoided a lot of the adversity that is currently being endured by his former employees. 

Meta layoffs provided a good example of ends not justifying the means – it is hard for utilitarianism to hold true in all cases, no matter how much we wish it could. Under these circumstances, the Meta layoffs could have been avoided if Zuckerberg wasn’t blinded by the social media boom amid the pandemic. The CEO should have looked into the future and considered his employees’ futures during his rapid hiring spree rather than making rash decisions dictated by greed. The employees that were hired at this time and were laid off, would have been better off finding a more permanent and stable career elsewhere. According to Mill, this decision was highly unethical and selfish of the CEO and shareholders, who should have found a middle ground with their employees, which would have been making other cuts outside of employment and provided employees the option to sever their relationship with the company peacefully rather than being forced to unexpectedly without warning. 

KANTIANISM 

Immanuel Kant was a German Philosopher and was one of the primary thinkers of the Enlightenment. The basic principles Kantianism consists of rational decisions through consistent behavior, and respect for individual autonomy, needs and differences. He pushes humans to evaluate whether certain actions are coming from good will. In the business context, this theory implies that businesses and businesspeople have an obligation to treat everyone with respect, and this treatment is an obligation regardless of one's goals or missions – meaning that the desire to make profit or for any other outcome cannot be a reason to treat people without respect and fairness. To help individuals reason with their decisions, Kant created the Categorical Imperative. The Formula of Humanity is one of the most prominent moral formulations within the categorical imperative which states that exploiting and using others in order to fulfill a desire is unethical and may involve manipulation tactics that deprive them of their rationality (Salazar 2014). 

In the case of the Meta layoffs, it was clear that there was a discrepancy between what Zuckerberg did, and the Formula of Humanity. In this case, we see that the intention behind the massive hiring spree that Meta underwent during the pandemic was so they were able to acquire the biggest and brightest talent – talent that they could use to get ahead of competitors. But the layoffs make it evident that these employees were dispensable, and their talents were utilized but once it became a burden to the company to pay them for what they’re worth, it was quite easy for them to just cut ties with these employees and because of this, there was a clear violation to the Formula of Humanity. There is a motive behind every business decision, whether the motive was to intentionally do damage or not, decisions that businesses like Meta make such as these layoffs will impact every component associated with the company. In the case of the Meta layoffs, the apology that was released by Zuckerberg to his employees and the CEO’s general reputation showed that there was no real intention to do any harm to the affected individuals here. Although, it would be difficult to argue the moral permissibility of Meta’s actions considering the former employees were not allowed to vouch for themselves so therefore, there was no respect for these individuals’ autonomy and rationality. 

VIRTUE THEORY

Snippet of Mark Zuckerberg from leaked 
video call where he apologized to those
affected by the layoffs.

When we take the time to think about our personality, we should take the time to ask ourselves if there are traits within our personality that positively contribute to our growth and our social responsibility. In an ideal world, we would all want to avoid viciousness or unfavorable traits. This virtue theory differs from the previous three ethical theories but lay the foundation for a business’ ethics and moral code. This theory is comprised of four main virtues: courage, honesty, temperance, and justice. 

One of the virtues that Zuckerberg demonstrates is honesty. Once he himself was able to come to terms with the fact that his company numbers were declining. Though, there is a gray area where we are unsure if Mark Zuckerberg only came clean about his company’s numbers because he couldn’t run from it, or if he genuinely wanted to be transparent with his team, shareholders, and users. Regardless, his display of transparency gained him and Meta a sum of respect, but unfortunately didn’t mask the decline in Meta’s numbers. 

Another virtue displayed by Zuckerberg is courage. He apologizes in the letter announcing the layoffs: “I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here. I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.” By doing so, he demonstrated that he had the ability to take accountability for his own actions without placing blame on others. This is a trait of a exemplary leader, which he possesses. 

In addition to this letter the CEO attempts to make things right post layoffs for the individuals affected, demonstrating justice. Zuckerberg did what he could to make this time as easy as possible by offering impacted employees 16 weeks of pay along with two additional weeks for each year of service to Meta. Plus, health insurance will remain covered for six months (Vanian, 2022). The CEO is aware of what this decision has done and how it would potentially affect his former employees, and he attempts to reconcile these wrongs. 

Although Zuckerberg demonstrates a majority of the four main virtues, he does not exemplify temperance. There was a lack of self-control throughout the course of two years leading to the layoffs. The CEO’s overambitious behavior ultimately led him to burn bridges with many people—his former employees, shareholders, many Meta users. The potential that he sees in the future of Meta and the formation of the “Metaverse” blinded him and motivated him to make decisions that were irrational and impulsive. Because of this lack of temperance, there are now 11,000 individuals fighting for their livelihood. 

JUSTIFICATED ETHICS EVALUATION

In retrospect, it is quite easy to shame Meta and Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook parent company, Meta for laying off so many employees. These employees are people who do work to make a living and are very dependent on their careers in the company. We look at Meta and how long they’ve been a prominent social platform, one that almost all of us use or have used at one point and it’s difficult for us to wrap our brains around the fact that they couldn’t keep the 11,000 people on their payroll. The reality is the state of the economy proving to carry rising expenses and costs will make this almost impossible for Meta to sustain while remaining in business. 

Meta’s active user count has been steadily decreasing for quite some time now and we are all aware of where Zuckerberg wants to take the company – to the Metaverse. This requires the company to invest as much time and finances into the project as they can sustain in order to execute this vision that Zuckerberg has for his company. When we have a vision for what is essentially our livelihood, we want to do what we can to help it come to fruition and this is what Zuckerberg did. In this case, it was evident that the CEO did not want to burn bridges with the people that contributed so much to his company’s growth and success.

After the layoffs, there is no denying that his decision has paid off. There were signs of growth instantaneously as Meta’s stock rose 5.2% by end of day November 9th, the day of the layoffs and closed at $101.47. While there is a huge deficit the company still must reconcile, it continues to persist and analysts, while skeptical, attempts to put their faith in the power and potential that Facebook holds. Not only was the CEO struggling, but there would be losses for his investors and other shareholders if he didn’t make this executive choice – Zuckerberg did so compassionately and with transparency. Therefore, his actions were ethical and justified. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Chang, Alvin. “The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica Scandal, Explained with a Simple Diagram.” Vox, Vox, 23 Mar. 2018, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17151916/facebook-cambridge-analytica-trump-diagram. 

Frenkel, Sheera, et al. “Meta Lays off More than 11,000 Employees.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 9 Nov. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/09/technology/meta-layoffs-facebook.html. 

Kelly, Jack. “Meta Lays off 11,000 Workers-How to Cope with Being Downsized and Prepare for a Difficult Job Market.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 10 Nov. 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/11/09/meta-lays-off-11000-workers-how-to-cope-with-being-downsized-and-prepare-for-a-difficult-job-market/?sh=5ca637862a80. 

Murphy, Hannah. “Meta's Value Plunges More than $65 Billion amid Falling Sales, Rising Costs.” Ars Technica, Financial Times, 27 Oct. 2022, https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/metas-value-plunges-more-than-65-billion-amid-falling-sales-rising costs/#:~:text=The%20company%20estimated%202022%20total,costs%20and%20freeze%20most%20hiring. 

Vanian, Jonathan. “Meta Laying off More than 11,000 Employees: Read Zuckerberg's Letter Announcing the Cuts.” CNBC, CNBC, 9 Nov. 2022, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/09/meta-to-lay-off-more-than-11000-thousand-employees.html. 

Yang, Mary. “Facebook Parent Meta Is Having a No-Good, Horrible Day after Dismal Earnings Report.” NPR, NPR, 27 Oct. 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/10/27/1131705422/facebook-meta-earnings-stock-price-fall-metaverse#:~:text=via%20Getty%20Images-,Meta's%20tumble%20in%20share%20price%20on%20Thursday%20was%20the%20market's,the%20Facebook%20parent's%20bottom%20line. 

Capoot, Ashley. “Meta Shares Pop 5% as Wall Street Rallies around Layoffs.” CNBC, CNBC, 9 Nov. 2022, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/09/meta-stock-up-as-wall-street-rallies-around-layoffs.html. 

Hall, Mark. “Facebook.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 18 Oct. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Facebook. 

Ingram, David, and Rima Abdelkader. “Meta Employees Post about Layoffs after More than 11,000 Jobs Are Cut.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 9 Nov. 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/meta-layoffs-lay-offs-mark-zuckerberg-jobs-employees-how-many-rcna56425. 

Rodriguez, Salvador. “Facebook Changes Company Name to Meta.” CNBC, CNBC, 29 Oct. 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/28/facebook-changes-company-name-to-meta.html#:~:text=The%20new%20name%20reflects%20the,playing%20in%20a%20virtual%20world. 

Salazar, Heather. “The Business Ethics Case Manual: The Authoritative Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding and Improving the Ethics of Any Business.” 2014.

LinkedIn Fake Profiles (2022)

Pictured: LinkedIn profile pictures recognition for better results.

Ethics Case Controversy

LinkedIn is one of the country’s biggest and most helpful online services when it comes to seeking employment and professional networking. They are known to bring users to real employers and help them with career success in a very safe way. At the beginning of 2022, this changed drastically when it was found that many profiles that were being used on LinkedIn were fake accounts. Not only do these fake accounts violate LinkedIn’s policies, but it also makes it an unsafe environment for users who can have their identity stolen and tricked into thinking they are legit accounts. LinkedIn is now taking action to delete many accounts and has removed more than 15 million since the beginning of 2021 (Bond, 2022). This is just one step further to removing all these accounts and LinkedIn is working hard to try to delete them all, but new technologies are making it more difficult.

At the beginning of 2022, a veteran researcher, Renee DiResta, had noticed something off from one of the profiles she had gotten a message from on LinkedIn. The first thing she noticed is that the profile picture looked like it was very fake. For example, the profile that went by the name of Ramsey had a picture that was missing an earring on one side, had hair blurring into the background, the placement of the eyes was exactly centered, and the background was blurry. With a combination of all these details, it showed DiResta that she was dealing with a computer-generated AI profile picture. DiResta told one of her colleagues, Josh Goldstein, about her findings and worked with Stanford researchers on an investigation to find more fake profiles. After doing this they ended up uncovering more than 1,000 LinkedIn profiles using what appeared to be faces created by artificial intelligence (Lusina, 2022).

LinkedIn has acknowledged and has been committed to removing these accounts. They have done so and have removed millions of fake accounts from when the problem arose. Although they made great efforts to remove the accounts from the Social Networking website some accounts have now adapted and are relatively genuine and difficult to decipher from a true user. There are some common things that LinkedIn Consultants Trainers (Goodman) tell the users to look out for. Particularly things that include, profile pictures that look too good to be true, receiving multiple invitations from the same company, a suspicious work history (Look for endorsements from the employers or employees they may work with), and profiles with too many connections can be too good to be true are all possibilities and things to look out for. Many users receive messages that they are qualified for the offers.

Pictured: Users receive a message that the sender has an offer for them.

After more research about the fake accounts was done, it became prominent that the technology being used to generate the fake profile pictures are Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). This technology uses real pictures to create fake AI humans which can be indistinguishable from real humans. Out of the 1,000 accounts discovered by DiResta that used GAN, 70 of these accounts linked back to real companies (Slater-Robins, 2022). When they reached out to these companies to ask about the fake profiles, many of them had no clue about them and stated that they hired other companies to help with finding potential customers. One of the companies that had accounts was called RingCentral. They had many fake profiles that said they worked there but the company claimed that they never worked there. RingCentral said they had hired other people to help with finding potential customers and one of these companies used GAN (Bond, 2022). Many other companies had the same response showing that this is a big issue that LinkedIn must find a way to deal with.

There are a lot of CEOs for companies that are unaware of the fake accounts saying they are associating with the company as they believe they are truly real accounts. They believed that they were real people and that they were just trying to connect with the company to obtain opportunities, not deceive the real users trying to obtain opportunities. A lot of fake accounts have become skilled and advanced in deception. Many people as stated by NPR have said the fake accounts seemed to be of someone familiar not knowing that the photo was generated by a computer and is completely fake. Many people don’t even know they are connecting with these fake accounts and are under the assumption that they are truly real. “LinkedIn removed more than 15 million fake accounts in the first six months of 2021, according to its most recent transparency report. It says the vast majority were detected during signup, and most of the rest were found by its automatic systems before any LinkedIn member reported them.” (Bond) LinkedIn is committed to trying to keep its Social Networking platform safe and accessible to all users. But AI is becoming so advanced that it is making it difficult to detect all of the fake accounts they have been plagued with over the years.

Stakeholders

There are various stakeholders in this case of the LinkedIn profiles which the fake accounts are affecting. Beginning with the actual user. It is a security risk to the everyday professional who is just trying to build their network and create opportunities for themselves down the road. It is difficult to do so when those networks are manipulated and taken advantage of by fake accounts. Next would be employers trying to access new connections. Employers need to be careful as they may be connecting with fake accounts and that may hurt their reputation. Those fake accounts could deceive and manipulate someone who is truly interested in working for the company. There are about 645 million users who are currently seeking job opportunities, and most of them are LinkedIn stakeholders. Whenever someone creates a new account on LinkedIn, he or she is actually investing his time to create a profile and putting his or her personal information so the employers can see their information and contact them or based on their skills and experience. If one person experiences getting into fraud by the fake users on the social media platform, he or she will be afraid to use that platform. Ring Central’s image was also hurt by this, having they were exposed for authorizing the use of fake LinkedIn profiles to get into contact with consumers and misleading the users of LinkedIn. Air Sales and Renova Digital were talked about in the article as well, being they were just two of the many different companies using fake profiles.

Individualism

The ethical theory that will be discussed for this ethical based issue is Individualism. This includes Friedman’s Theory and Machan’s Individualism. Friedman’s individualism theory is, “The only goal of business is to profit, so the only obligation that the business person has is to maximize profit for the owner or the stockholders within the law or the rules of the game.” (Salazar 11:10) Friedman’s Individualism theory explains that businesses need to do just what needs to be done to keep the business running so long that the business profits. This view is extended to if any action is taken without considering profit, then that is stealing from the owner of the company. It is a very persuasive view. Overall, the points of view are outdated and not aligned with today's social and ethical norms. Next is Machan’s Individualistic theories. His theories involve, “The only direct goal of business is to profit, and the primary obligation of the business person is to maximize profit within the law, but: 1. The direct goal of profiting may need to be met by indirect goals not aimed at profiting. 2. Business people may have other goals and those goals may at times be prioritized over the goals of profit-maximizing.” (Salazar 24:00) These goals are aligned slightly differently from Friedman’s point of view. Friedman’s focus is profit, whereas Machan has a slightly different approach in which the main goal is profit but this may be by completing indirect goals. This can include social-economic or environmental goals that can improve the image of the company as well as bring in profit for the company.

         How does Individualism apply to the issue that LinkedIn is focusing on maybe a little tricky to decipher? From Friedman’s perspective, LinkedIn may be operating for a profit which is against the law and the rules of the game. The lack of user privacy would be the factor that is being violated in an individualist’s mind. These fake accounts are a danger and risk to professionals across the world. The individualistic approach would look at this case to be impermissible. This is because the company is not doing everything, it possibly can to protect the privacy of its professionals. This is hurting their image as these fake accounts continue to deceive and mislead the professionals trying to make a living and open new doors or opportunities. “A recent study found faces made by AI have become "indistinguishable" from real faces. People have just a 50% chance of guessing correctly whether a face was created by a computer — no better than flipping a coin.” (Bond) It is almost impossible for those just looking quickly at the profile to distinguish it from real or fake. Most people’s minds will gravitate towards believing that it is a truthful account or maybe even someone that looks familiar to them. The Machan Individualist would look at this the same way. LinkedIn cannot get a good read on what accounts are fake and what ones are real because of how advanced Artificial Intelligence is getting. They try to detect all the fake accounts they possibly can at the creation of the account. But because AI is so advanced now it is difficult for them to detect all the fake accounts. To a modern individualist, LinkedIn would be ethically responsible for wasting money by not doing enough to protect their user’s privacy, as well as portraying a bad image and losing important relationships with their professionals on their Social Networking website.

Utilitarianism

A utilitarian would view LinkedIn’s way of handling the situation as a good, ethical way to do so. In utilitarianism, it states, “Happiness or pleasure are the only things of intrinsic value” (Salazar, 6). This means that from a utilitarian point of view if whatever is being done creates happiness, then that is the right thing to do. On the contrary, if something makes somebody not pleased or unhappy then it is the wrong thing to do. In this case, happiness is in the process of being maximized for mostly all the stakeholders.

LinkedIn (Company): After this case is resolved and LinkedIn takes care of all the fake profiles and accounts then they will be both negatively and positively impacted from a utilitarian point of view. Now they are most likely making users unhappy which causes them to also deal with the stress of making the website safe and living up to the policies they have. Once all of this is dealt with then they will be happy again to have gotten rid of the false information and fake accounts.

LinkedIn Users: Similarly, to the company, LinkedIn users are most likely upset and negatively impacted at the moment because they are getting a lot of spam accounts and messages. They also must deal with the risk of accidentally getting their information leaked and their identity stolen. Currently, this situation goes against a utilitarian point of view, but once LinkedIn continues to delete accounts and make its platform safe again, this will ultimately make the users happy again as well.

Companies Using Fake Profiles: Currently, these companies are very happy with being able to use many fake profiles. This gives them a lot of advantages such as saving money, reaching out to more customers, and getting a boost in sales. This could change once LinkedIn deletes more accounts because then they might be held accountable for using these fake profiles even if it’s because they hired a company that set them up for them.

Future Shareholders: Depending on how this situation unfolds and how LinkedIn handles it can affect how the future shareholders stand on the situation. For example, this could well with utilitarianism because if LinkedIn fixes the situation fast and shows that it is a reliable company, more people might trust it again and join which could help improve the stock. On the contrary, if more and more spam and fake accounts start to exist then this could negatively affect LinkedIn which would also cause unhappiness among the shareholders.

Future Prospective Employees: In the state that LinkedIn is in the future prospective employees might be unhappy because of how difficult it is to find jobs using the platform. Also, they must avoid any fake accounts and make sure they do not leak their information. Once things are resolved they will become a lot happier.

    It is evident that LinkedIn’s actions were ethical in a utilitarian view. Many of the stakeholders are either happy at the moment or will be happy once everything is finally dealt with. Fake profiles are an apparent thing on most applications and websites of this nature. The way that LinkedIn is currently dealing with it shows promise of not letting this happen again and how they really follow all their policies and want to guarantee safety and real people on their platform.

Kantianism

Kant’s ethical theory is based on his conceptions of human worth. Kant believes that everyone has the right and his own decision to make not just himself happy, but others feel the same way as well. When we apply Kant’s ethical theory to the LinkedIn fake profiles, Kant’s theory will go against this because Kant thinks that when you decide what to do, you should act in a way that your audience can accept your decision and agree with you. Treat others as you want yourself to be treated by others. In Kantianism, when you never want to hurt yourself, your decision can also be not based on principles that can hurt others. If others accept your will, you are good in the eyes of Kant. Kantians will see that fake profile creators have been raised to long for the short-term rewards of response on their posts, but not to show the truth and reality to others from their own will, but to get others' likes and become famous in the eyes of others. When you lie on social media by either creating fake profiles or giving wrong information, lying is wrong whatever reason you have for the lie in Kant’s point of view. Trusting your communication and building relationships are supported by Kant.

When LinkedIn officers provided many statements to prove themselves correct that their company has many policies against the users who break their policies, but the policies are not implemented practically. They have breakage in their system that they hide from social media, so their consumers are not reduced because thousands of professionals have premium memberships that they pay monthly fees. LinkedIn did not help the public detect the scammers, but to keep their profits growing. “There are still ways by which you can reduce the magnitude of the risk” (Kumari). Identification of the thefts on any social media platform is very crucial as people have their personal information uploaded on those platforms. Security for any platform is very necessary to keep the audience engaged and trustworthy. Many of the videos can be watched on other platforms to keep yourself protected from those fake profile creators and scammers.

There are many social media platforms that have complaints about the creation of fake profiles and giving false information to users. When the right actions and the right people are hired to detect the scammers, the illegal actions can be reduced. When you will not give your personal information to anyone regardless of the social media platform, a number of cases of spam can be detected. LinkedIn has to implement its policies on its largest professionally growing platform to help consumers safely contact and remain engaged with their employees or digital community. Kantians do not act inconsistently in their own actions, so based on the formula of humanity, Kantians will respect others as they respect themselves. When Kantian will look at the fake LinkedIn profile accounts, he will complain to the officials because he does not want others to be scammed as it is the formula of humanity in the eyes of Kantians.

Virtue Theory

Virtue Theory essentially can be determined based on whether it works or not. For example, do fake profiles work in what needs to be accomplished? You would have different answers depending on which side of the situation you are on. The people who are being contacted by the false profiles would say that it does not work, while the other side, the people who are hiring the fake profile bots, would say they are successful in obtaining the requested information. Virtue theory is limited based on our perspective on what the purpose is. Virtue theory comes down to 4 virtues of character: courage, temperance, justice/fairness, and honesty. The virtue of courage means that a person is ok with taking a risk and is willing to take a stand for the right ideas and actions. For example, if employees of the companies that were using these false profiles knew about them and their shady practices, in order to be considered courageous, they would be the ones who would take a stand for the company to stop using them. The next virtue of character is honesty, an honest person is someone that is truthful to others. “The virtue of honesty certainly does have instrumental value, since others will trust an honest businessperson and be more likely to do business with him”(Wittmer and O’Brien) For example, if a company wants to be considered honest and want to gain trust with their consumers, they would not be using false LinkedIn profiles to lure in potential customers. The next theory of character in business is justice or fairness, which means that individuals should be treated the same unless they differ in ways that are relevant to the situation. For example, LinkedIn users should not have to try and differentiate real people from AI, while the blame can be put on the companies that are using the false profiles to obtain personal information, as it is not fair to the consumer to have their data being collected without their knowledge. The final virtue is temperance, temperance essentially means to do things in moderation, for example, if the company that is hiring these false profiles uses them to collect thousands of people’s data, this is not showing temperance, as they are overusing the services that are unethical in the first place. If a business wants to be considered virtuous, it must be willing to have all 4 of these characteristics. The virtue of character that is most in question in this article is honesty. Are companies that use this method of an advertisement being honest with their consumers? A company that has to lie to potential consumers to get their data is obviously doing something wrong, whether they are lying for the potential benefit of the consumer does not matter as being honest to the consumer is a large part of operating an ethical and virtuous business.

LinkedIn User: As a LinkedIn user, you expect to use the website for authentic business connections, and when a fraudulent account connects with you and takes your information, this is not what you intended to happen. This is considered a vice, a vice is something that is lacking virtue, and having your information taken for an unknown purpose is not what the consumers intended. If consumers wanted to give their information to these companies, they would not be using LinkedIn, especially if they knew they were being misled. Honesty is one of the main components of virtue, and when we are being tricked into believing that the other person is real, how could we ever choose to trust the business?

Fake Profile Purchaser: As someone that wants to increase their marketing, a fake profile would seem like the way to go. You could reach a certain area of people by searching what job they currently have and using fake profiles to get information like their names, phone numbers, and emails. You could then use this data collected to further market your product. From this side of the Virtue Theory, you could almost argue that it is acceptable, being that it satisfies your goals. The main goal of the false profiles is to collect data, so you are able to market your product to people of a certain demographic. But it is not virtuous, as you are conflicting with one of the main virtues of character, honesty. Being dishonest with your consumer base is not how you want to attract them to your company, as they will have reservations about your intentions from the start.

Overall, Virtue Theory would assess the use of false identities as morally impermissible, as it goes against one of the main virtues of character, honesty. If companies were to hire real people with real names and real jobs to promote their product, that would be considered permissible, but until then they should stop hiring these artificially created people to try and promote their product. The workers of the companies that are using these false profiles need to be more courageous and speak up and take a stand against their companies for using artificial intelligence, as this is considered morally impermissible. The companies also need to be more temperate, and not be greedy with their data collection. These AI can collect thousands of users’ data very efficiently, but they are not doing this in moderation, they are trying to get as much data from consumers as possible, while the morally correct way would be not using fake people and collecting the data a normal way through ethical resources. Finally, this is not justifiable or fair to the consumer, as these companies are misleading their potential customers from the very first point of contact, their consumers are being led on and not being given the facts. If the business that uses these false profiles were to work on these 4 virtues of character in business, they would be considered morally permissible, but until they change what they are doing, using false profiles will continue to be morally impermissible and should be stopped by both LinkedIn and the companies that are using the software.

Action Plan

The current issue at stake that LinkedIn is dealing with is that many fake profiles are being used on their platform which violates their terms of service and can potentially affect the current users. There have always been some fake profiles but recently they have gotten a lot harder to notice if a user did not know what to look for and a lot more have arisen. Many users have noticed that these fake profiles use profile pictures that are generated by a computer software program called Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). Not only do these fake profiles violate LinkedIn’s terms but in some cases also steal users’ information. To resolve this current issue LinkedIn should keep track of every account to check and balance the movements of users. When people search for other users, LinkedIn should know why the users are searching for them. Many users with fake profiles send others offers to steal their personal information for any reason. Some ways that LinkedIn as a company can remain profitable is through the implementation of such strict policies for all users, the creation of new softwares, and hiring people with high cyber security skills will diminish the fake profile of users. If LinkedIn is able to rid its website of all fake profiles, it will appeal safer and become a better overall platform. All users should provide their identification cards to verify their identity when creating a new account on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is committed to trying to keep its social networking platform safe and accessible to all users.

Pictured: U.S. security agencies issue advisory on Russian cyberattacks on infrastructure.

Authors

Evan Langille

Connor Crump

Shazal Zaheer

Timothy Restall

References

Bond, S. (2022, March 27). That smiling linkedin profile face might be a computer-generated fake. NPR. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from https://www.npr.org/2022/03/27/1088140809/fake-linkedin-profiles

Lusina, A. (2022, March 29). Researchers say linkedin is overrun with fake, ai-generated profiles. PetaPixel. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from https://petapixel.com/2022/03/29/researchers-discover-more-than-1000-ai-generated-linkedin-profiles/

Goodman, Melanie. “How to Spot Fake Profiles on Linkedin.” LinkedIn, LinkedIn, 5 July 2021,

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-spot-fake-profiles-linkedin-melanie-goodman/

Slater-Robins, M. (2022, March 28). LinkedIn has a problem with fake profiles. TechRadar. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from https://www.techradar.com/news/linkedin-has-a-problem-with-fake-profiles

Salazar, H. Individualism and Business Ethics. N.d.

Salazar, H. Utilitarianism and Business Ethics. N.d.

Kumari, R. (2020, April 10). LinkedIn has fake profile problem AND So do you. LinkedIn’s Mission Statement. Retrieved April 15, 2022, from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-has-fake-profile-problem-so-do-you-rakhi-kumari/

Wittmer, Dennis & O’Brien, Kevin (2014). The Virtue of “Virtue Ethics” in Business and Business Education. Journal of Business Ethics Education 11:261-278.

ESSCA, https://ethique-des-affaires.essca.fr/en/the-role-of-the-virtue-of-temperance-in-business-ethics