Does Facebook Have Any Principles?

Posted by Joseph Ng.

Within the article “Facebook moderators say company has risked their lives by forcing them back to the office” they mention several factors regarding business law. The main points of this article is that Facebook is forcing its employers to work during the pandemic in office spaces that are not safe due to COVID-19. The article mentions “ In several offices multiple COVID cases have occurred on the floor.” The position that is speaking out against Facebook are content moderators whose main purpose is to make sure all the post on Facebook does not have any graphic content such as self-harm, child abuse and more. This type of speech is not allowed even though the first amendment of the constitution allows freedom of speech however, this is unprotected speech since it violates criminal law, fighting words and defaming speech under constitutional law. Facebook requires these people as their software is not able to scan through all the post being posted daily so, they have looked to outsourcing companies to provide them with the content moderators.

The main business law topics that Facebook breaks are the ethical side of business. Facebook most likely wants the content moderators to work during this type to continue to generate profit. It follows the principles of utilitarianism and break corporate social responsibility which is that the corporation should have a responsibility to the citizens, employee, stakeholders and community to be ethically social and responsible for their decisions and is only concerns is about the outcome. They most likely has done a cost-benefit analysis where it takes into account around how many workers will get sick from working in the office and  how much it will cost to take care of them versus the amount of profit they will generate for the company. One worker wrote “After months of allowing content moderators to work from home, faced with intense pressure to keep Facebook free of hate and disinformation, you have forced us back to the office.” As you can see many of the content moderators are unhappy with the decision Mark Zuckerberg has made.

In my opinion Facebook should let their employees work from home as they have a lot of money and those workers are under a lot of stress. They have to view many disturbing content daily as part of their jobs to help keep the company from further legal actions such as, if they let this type of content be posted out it could influence  other kids to participate in those activities or, have a negative influence or, emotional disturbance causing emotional trauma and possibly legal actions such as a tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress. Facebook thirst for money could be its downfall as the company disregards their own employees feeling for greed. As the laws are relatively new compared to other laws due to the late explosion of the internet and social media platforms it is most likely that there will continue to be legal problems as they wander into new territory of the internet and legal system as they adapt to the changing times of technology.

Joseph is a biology major at Seton Hall University, Class of 2021.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/18/facebook-content-moderators-urge-mark-zuckerberg-to-let-them-work-remotely.html