Unethical Use Of Technology

These days technology has become part of every business. Whether a business tracks its customers using cookies, struggles to keep consumer data safe from hackers, or monitors the market and consumer trends, technology is embedded in most organizations’’ business models. There are some ethical issues involving the use of technology by businesses. The unethical use of technology to grow businesses, or force governments to establish protocols that favor the company’s product in the market, is on the rise by altering consumer trends. We will discuss that companies have the power to unethically use technology to influence market trends.

Consumer and market trends are crucial aspects of business that can affect the success of a product. Market trends are anything that alters markets where organizations operate. This might be roughly as broad as machine learning, as irregular as customer behavior, or as slender as new business laws. It is almost assured that many markets and consumer trends are presently affecting your business at the same time. Staying on top of customer behavior is critical for all types of marketing. The term trend refers to underlying ideals that push people toward some goods and services and are distant from competitors, rather than specific brands or designs that may be popular in Hollywood today. According to this definition, consumer trends are now the habits and behaviors that are now prominent among customers.

Consumers' mobile phones follow them as they shop at retailers, allowing them to infer when and where they vote. Firms can use commercial data-based algorithms to sell consumers things they think they can purchase while avoiding selling them goods they cannot. Drones gather information while keeping an eye on people's neighbors and delivering drinks to fishermen in fishing in a frozen lake. The information collected by this drone can often be used unethically by businesses. Businesses may take this information and create adverts that promote their products making them appear familiar in the market. Technology has consequences, puts standards to the test, changes what people do or can do, acts on their behalf, and makes biased verdicts.

Businesses and consumers may suffer undesirable outcomes as a consequence of their usage of technology. Individual liberty can be threatened, privacy privileges can be dishonored, and people might be financially and physically wounded as a result of technology. Digital marketing and social media platforms are constantly being updated to inform and shape public opinion. The Cambridge Analytica incident is a popular example of unethical marketing practices used to influence voters, such as customer profiling and targets associated with social media info. Consumer and market trends are strongly impacted by such approaches.

Technological progress can also be morally problematic because it "forces profound reflection on personal beliefs and societal standards," impacting what people buy, use, and advocate. It indicates that since technologies make some behaviors simpler or more challenging, or even vary substantially for dissimilar groups of people, they have embedded values or politics. Technology has political consequences by regrouping positions and duties in the world and inside administrations, often with inconsistent results. Businesses can use these political positions to persuade politicians to pass laws and regulations that advertise their business, influencing consumer patterns in the process.

Piracy of digital media is common unethical conduct involving computers that companies use to influence consumer trends. The illegal broadcasting of music, shows, books, and other academic media is referred to as piracy. It is always hard to find pirates on the internet since it is such a huge network. Piracy is the unlawful violation of copyright owned by media owners. When a corporation employs a popular track for an educational or marketing video clip without getting the rights or ensuring appropriate credit, this is an illustration of media infringement. When this form of unethical action is carried out people who love the stolen music or YouTube videos will get adverts for products they were not looking for. This is unethical because the company is using piracy to promote its products. The unethical issue mainly come up after the product gains popularity among the consumers. The company may be sued for gaining profit without acknowledging the help the popular track or video played in helping their product development.

Companies can also use technology unethically to change consumer trends by bribing consumers to provide products that are not worthy in the market. For example, a soap company can be guilty of producing soap products that affect consumers’ bodies. The company may approach famous individuals or influencers and pay them to say that the products are medically tested and they are the best on people’s skin. This can lead to the product’s sales rising and consumers developing health issues. The idea of using influencers to promote products using technological means is efficient. It allows businesses to conquer markets, gain customers, and establish market positions. It is unethical to pay them to sell positive messages about products with the aim of changing consumer trends.

Businesses can also offer consumer trends using technology to create addictive designs ways by the help of technology, businesses are able to create product designs that enhance maximum addiction to a product. The results of the product consumption can be destructive to the individual but their will to stop consumption has been taken away. Also, if many people utilize the product and become addicted it is most likely the product will begin trending. People in the Gen Z and millennial generation will want to try the product since they also want to become trendy. Once they try and they become addicted. Overall, it results in changing the consumer trends regarding the product.

Manipulation and endangered individuality are examples of unethical uses of technology by businesses to change consumer and market trends. This is accomplished by targeting consumers using aggregated customer information. Data aggregators may often gather enough data about customers to deduce their problems and aspirations, and then utilize that information to target adverts more narrowly and precisely. Customers can be exploited in ways that weaken individuals' capacity to make varied decisions by combining diverse information on their behavior, such as geographical data taken from a phone and Internet surfing habits tracked by information brokers. An organization that purchases this data is considered an unethical use of technology.

Trust, understanding, confidentiality, and personal autonomy are some of the ethical challenges that are directly linked to the use of technology by enterprises. On the contrary, these difficulties become even more concerning when the technology in question is funded solely based on profit.