Question 1 — Multiple Choice
15 points · 1 eachQuestion 2 — Short Answer
20 pointsQuestion 3 — Scenario: The Fitness-Tracker Data Sale
5 points
Scenario: Yousef is a data analyst at a small fitness-tracking startup. He discovers a way to
quietly sell users' precise location histories to a third-party data broker — the users' privacy policy
vaguely mentions "aggregated data sharing" but was never updated to disclose this specific practice. The
startup is two months from running out of cash, and this deal would generate enough revenue to make
payroll for its 40 employees through the next funding round. Yousef is the only one who understands how
easily the "anonymized" location data could be re-identified back to individual users.
Part A (1 pt) — Apply Kant's Categorical Imperative (1st Formulation) to
evaluate the maxim "I may sell user data without proper disclosure when my company needs the revenue
to survive."
Answer Key
Universalizing this maxim means every company facing financial pressure would sell user data without
real disclosure. If that became a universal rule, no privacy policy or consent disclosure would be
trusted or believed, which defeats the very purpose of having disclosures in the first place — the
rule is self-defeating. So the maxim cannot be universalized, and the action is wrong under the 1st
Formulation.
Part B (2 pts) — Explain how the Categorical Imperative (2nd Formulation)
applies to Yousef's decision.
Answer Key
The 2nd Formulation requires that we treat people as ends in themselves and never merely as a means.
By selling users' location data without real disclosure, Yousef and the company are using the users
merely as a means to generate revenue and save the company, without respecting the users' rational
ability to consent to (or refuse) that use of their data. Because the users never had the chance to
make an informed decision, they are being treated only instrumentally — which is a violation of
their status as rational, autonomous beings — so the action is wrong regardless of the good outcome
(saving jobs) it produces.
Part C (1 pt) — Contrast how Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism (the
Greatest Happiness Principle) would evaluate this decision.
Answer Key
Act Utilitarianism looks only at the consequences of this single act: since saving 40 jobs and the
company likely produces more total happiness than the harm to users from a data sale, an Act
Utilitarian could justify going through with it. Rule Utilitarianism instead asks what would happen
if the rule "companies may sell user data without real disclosure whenever they need revenue" were
followed universally — the long-term erosion of trust in tech companies and repeated privacy harms
across many users would produce far less net happiness, so a Rule Utilitarian would oppose the sale.
Part D (1 pt) — Using Social Contract Theory, discuss whose rights are at
stake and whether Yousef's company is honoring its obligations to users.
Answer Key
Social Contract Theory holds that users implicitly agreed to the terms of the platform's stated
privacy policy in exchange for using the service, and companies are obligated to honor that
agreement — no one, including the company, is above the rules of the arrangement. Because the actual
data-selling practice was never disclosed, the company is violating users' negative right to be left
alone (control over their personal information) that they reasonably believed the contract
protected, breaking the mutual trust the social contract depends on even though the deal benefits
the company's own employees.
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Review the answer key on each question above for anything you missed.
0/15MCQ
0/20Short Answer
0/5Scenario