1. Software Engineering Code of
Ethics and Professional Practice
The Social Network
(Mark Zuckerberg’s creation of
FaceMash)
By Vishwa Patel and Fiona Strain
2. FaceMash
• In the film ‘The Social Network’, the protagonist Mark
Zuckerberg writes a program called FaceMash that lets
users vote who’s the hotter looking one in a pair of
female students at Harvard. This program, apart from
being incredibly sexist and misogynistic, also clearly
violated the principle below (1.04):
•
• 1.04. Disclose to appropriate persons or authorities
any actual or potential danger to the user, the public,
or the environment, that they reasonably believe to
be associated with software or related documents.
4. • This is a clear violation of that principle because the
program posed severe harms to the girls who, without
having given consent, were being judged on the basis of
their looks and the reason why that violates this specific
principle is because Zuckerberg did not inform these girls
let alone get their consent before he put up their photos
(which he obtained by hacking into the directories of
college dorms). This act put these girls in ‘actual … danger’
without Zuckerberg’s disclosure.
•
• Zuckerberg’s rationale for the violation of this principle was
that since his girlfriend ditched him (no surprises here) he
had a right to potentially destroy the lives of other women.
The outcome of him making this program was that it went
viral quickly and crashed the Harvard network which led to
him being put on probation from Harvard.