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Theme: Behaviour Change
Technologies
Full Notes!
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,Moral and Ethical Dilemmas of Wearables for Health
and Wellbeing: Fitbit
Name (Student Number), Name (Student Number), Name
(Student Number), and Name (Student Number).
Introduction
Nowadays in our society, wearable devices are becoming more popular. The use of wearables
such fitness trackers, smart watches, virtual reality headsets is becoming more frequent.
Specifically, the wrist-wear products segment, which includes products such as Fitbit or
smartwatches, is dominating the market for wearable technology. They are designed to help
users improve their health and fitness. The wearable Fitbit tracks the user's daily steps, their
sleeping patterns and monitors their heart rate. Moreover, it can be used in combination with
the Fitbit app which collects and displays all the data that is provided by the Fitbit wearable.
Phase 1. Moral Problem Statement
What is the moral problem?
There are numerous advantages concerning the use of the Fitbit watch which include enhanced
mental and physical health. But however, there are serious issues regarding the misuse of the
application. The moral dilemma concerning Fitbit is the fact that there is a huge amount of
sensitive user data that is available to the company which is not only private to the user but also
could be harming if there was a data leak in the system. Hence the main moral problem is the
user's privacy. Although Fitbit does not share the user's data with other businesses or
organizations, it does use this data for their own benefit such as for advertising and marketing.
In the modern world we live in today, with the internet now readily available worldwide, using
personal data of customers for creating target advertisements to profit from those users is
considered as an unethical act which is frowned upon. Moreover, Fitbit transfers information to
their corporate affiliates, service providers, and other partners who process it for them.
Therefore, there are multiple acts/decisions that should be taken into consideration to avoid the
interference with the user's privacy.
Who has to act/make a decision?
The CEO of Fitbit, James Park, as he is the highest-ranking person in a company and is
responsible for the overall operations of the company.
The developers also play a role in deciding how data is handled. They, for example, must choose
between storing certain data locally on the watch or on their own services. Storing data locally
on the watch would be the most ideal for privacy, however this would not allow the company to
analyze any data on their end, possibly resulting in a worse user experience.
Lawmakers and the people that enforce the law play a role as well in acting upon the moral
problem.
Why is this a moral problem rather than a practical one?
A moral problem is a choice you have to make in a situation that will always end up
compromising some moral value. In this case the compromission is the mental and physical
health the Fitbit provides in comparison to the privacy concerns the Fitbit evokes. This is a
moral problem because you cannot have one without the other.
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,Phase 2. Problem Analysis
Who are the stakeholders and what are their interests?
The main interest of a Fitbit end-user is correctly tracking their activities and getting back
feedback based on their data to become healthier and fit while spending the least amount of
money.
Furthermore, an interest of the end-user, not as direct as the previous one, is to have their data
handled carefully. Since a lot of sensitive data is collected such as geolocation of the watch,
always giving the company access to the precise location of the user, biometric and health data.
All this information is personally identifiable, giving the company the ability to create an
accurate profile for each user. The user has no direct influence on how this is handled or with
whom it is shared. They can only agree or disagree with Fitbit’s terms of service when buying
and setting up the product.
In the end, the company is interested in attracting a greater number of users and clients that pay
for their services and making the maximum amount of profit from them. They do this by
providing high quality services and maintaining a sufficiently clean public image. Therefore,
they are also interested in carefully handling data to prevent it from ending up in the hands of
people that will misuse it.
Since this is a public case, politicians are involved in deciding on what the law must be. Their
interest is to get re-elected, and they must therefore satisfy the needs of the public as far the
public think something is important and ethical.
What are the relevant moral values?
One moral value that is relevant to the end-user is autonomy. This relates to how much control
the user has in choosing which data will be shared and with what parties. The user has some
autonomy over this. On the extreme end, the user can decide to not use the product. It is also
possible to disable some sharing of data like constant location monitoring.
Another moral value relevant to the company Fitbit is risk management. To keep a good public
image, they need to properly manage the risk of handling user data in a way that is within their
budget. There is a conflict within this moral value. The company wants to get as much use as
possible out of the data they collect, however they also need to find a way to do that in a
responsible way.
Fairness is also a moral value that belongs to the politicians. If they were to act upon regulating
what Fitbit might and might not do, they need to keep in mind both the interests of the
company, which is saving costs, and those of the users who want the best service possible.
The most important fact in understanding the moral problem is the way Fitbit internally decides
on how the data gets handled. It is possible to read this from their terms of service, however
external auditing would be necessary to confirm that they follow their own terms.
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, Phase 3. Options for Action
Actor: The CEO of Fitbit, James Park.
What are possible strategies for solving the moral problem?
As stated in the moral problem, the main concern is the user's privacy. There are multiple
solutions to enhancing Fitbit to ensure users privacy. To begin with the fact that Fitbit holds a
large amount of data, could lead to data leakage as a result of hackers hacking the system to
obtain private users data. To avoid this, Fitbit could invest capital in enhancing the security
systems and therefore not sharing users' data with any third party. This on one hand could
benefit the user as all his confidential information would be kept safe, but on the other hand
using the top results for advertisements would generate huge revenue for Fitbit. Moving on to
Fitbit itself sharing users results with multiple third parties for advertisements, this would of
course be only ethical if the user agrees for his/hers results to be shared to the public and as
mentioned above this would attract new users giving Fitbit and other third parties more data
and revenue. It is important to note that it can be beneficial to share data with specific third
parties such as healthcare professionals as this would benefit users even more, since Fitbit does
not give instructions on how to overcome deficiencies e.g., high cholesterol levels, it just states
that it is there. This therefore means that receiving medical attention from a professional would
help making the user more fit. To sum up, there are three main strategies than can be followed
in order to solve the moral problem:
Option 1: Not sharing their data at all, with any third party including not using their data for
advertisement.
Option 2: Sharing it with several third parties and using the user's data freely for advertisement.
Option 3: Sharing the data only with third parties such as health care professionals/
professional fitness trainers in order to guarantee a high-quality service and only using for
advertisement and marketing purposes the data of users which have given their permission.
Phase 4. Ethical Evaluation
Intuition
According to our intuition, option 3 is the best choice followed by option 1 and then option 2
which is the least favorable option.
Firstly, if the health of people using Fitbit can be improved by the sharing of data with
healthcare professionals, then this should always be done. Healthcare professionals/fitness
trainers could improve the quality of the services which Fitbit provides or even add new
functions. For example, providing guidance towards healthy eating or recommending certain
diets. All of this is beneficial and is only possible if the data is shared.
Secondly, people using Fitbit can choose whether they give Fitbit permission to use their data in
order to create new target advertisements. This gives rise to the possibility of attracting new
customers and generating a greater profit due to the personalized advertisements, and at the
same time respecting the user’s privacy.
Lastly, the user’s data is protected from a possible misuse because it’s not shared with other
third parties which are not health care professionals. This makes option 3 morally and ethically
correct and possibly gives a good impression of Fitbit towards the public.
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