AshleyMadison.com THE BUSINESS OF CHEATING AND LYING
According to the specialized website PsychologyToday.com marriage is “…the process by which two people make their relationship public, official, and permanent. It is the joining of two people in a bond that putatively lasts until death…”. I highlighted the word two, because this definition of monogamous marriage set the base of what represent a highly respected social institution in most countries, cultures and religions.
But times have changed, marriage is not what it used to be. Nowadays temptation is everywhere, and humans are slightly vulnerable to it. Here is where AshleyMadison.com takes part. Labeled as “The Match.com for adulterers” by Forbes columnist Kashmir Hill; the Canadian-based dating website is targeting married/committed people who want to have an off-relationship affair, in what they call a “discreet” way.
They came into business in 2001 as part of the group Avid Life Media that also owns another ethically doubtful online businesses. On 2011 on an article called “Cheating Incorporated” by Sheelah Kolhatkar for Bloomberg’s Business Week, Noel Biderman the company’s CEO said that “Next to Facebook, we are probably going to be the fastest-growing social network on the planet”. The same article reported that by that time, Avid Life had $20 million in profit. Most of it came from AshleyMadison.com.
A case study used by the University of New Mexico states that “Biderman was inspired to start the website after learning that a significant percentage of people using dating services were not actually single” the same case states that “it is estimated that 10 to 30 percent of online daters are already in a committed relationship”. With those statements we can see that the founder of the website found an interesting market niche.
“It is important to recognize a distinction between what might be ethical and what might be legal. The field of media law intersect with, but is distinct from, Media Ethics” Sanford (2014, p.6). The author presents us a dilemma, when is an activity legal and when is it unethical. The outrageous reaction that society had in front of this business exposure, make me think that even when something is not illegal people can reject it like if it is.
HOW DO YOU PROMOTE A BUSINESS THAT SO MANY PEOPLE THINK IS SO UNETHICAL THAT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL (EVEN WHEN IT IS NOT)?
For Ashley Madison, the formula was apparently easy: BIG, BOLD AND “FUNNY”. That is right, they did not try to make it discreet, they made it clear and concise, and they made fun of the institution of marriage and the circumstances around it.
When it comes to BIG, BOLD and FUNNY this case also implicates the excessive use of stereotyping.
Stereotyping is defined by Branston and Stafford (2007, p.142) as:
The social classification of particular groups and people as often simplified and generalized signs, judgements and assumptions concerning their behavior, characteristics or history
The authors also mention that some characteristics of stereotyping include:
…emphasis on some easily identified feature(s) of the group being stereotyped; an evaluation of the group is often, though not always a negative one…
Ashley Madison clearly use stereotypes as part of their ads and communications every time they portrait wives as “horrible monsters” that can scare you during the night. Even when tagging them as a mistake, the company uses the assumption that not only men married with woman who fit in the list they consider monsters, but also every marriage is at some point unhappy.
But with the characteristic of their business and the content of their advertising campaigns, the company cannot avoid consequences. According to Jane Wieczner “media giants like Facebook, Google, ABC and Fox went after his (Noel Biderman’s) businesses, refusing his ads, pulling his Super Bowl commercials and even blocking Facebook messages containing ‘AshleyMadison.com’ ”.
After seeing the ad that got banned there is no surprise, the reason seems to be obvious. The ad shows an image that objectify women, uses the phrase “WHO are you doing after the game” that can be really similar to one of the most used questions on Super Bowl weekend. But the simple fact of changing the word “what” for “who” gives the message a completely different context, a sexual one.
CBS Money Watch published an article in which they stated that “the company offered Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport $10 million to rename it Ashley Madison Airport”. The reporter pointed that once again they were “punished” and the city rejected the offer based on the nature of the company.
According to Kolhatkar’s article, the search engines companies won’t even let Ashley Madison buy keywords like “cheating” and “infidelity”. Most ads that come from this keywords are websites related to discover cheating spouses.
All the measures taken by different companies and institutions in order to prevent any kind of relation to the website’s activity is a clear reflection on what society thinks about it.
THE MAJOR GOOD
Biderman calmly suggested that because many members are in sexless marriages but don’t actually want to leave their spouses, the company “preserves more marriages than we break up”
He explained that in hard economic times, a lot of people who’ve been planning a divorce suddenly cannot afford one. The money-saving solution? Seek carnal comfort in others. He also made an analogy between his extramarital dating service and handing out condoms to teens
Some people say it promotes promiscuity,’ he said. “But if you don’t do it, you get behavior that’s way more harmful to society. Infidelity has been around a lot longer than Ashley Madison.”
The last statements are part of a report made by Meghan Daum the Los Angeles Time. In the extract we can clearly see a conduct that is behind Biderman’s work culture (he own 6 different ethically doubtful digital businesses) and his company communications. HEDONISM.
“Hedonism takes as its fundamental idea that the ultimate human good is happiness. The only state of being that is of value, in and of itself, is happiness or pleasure…” Honderich (1995, p.337)
Biderman clearly believes that his company is doing something good for society by keeping marriages to split and he will materialize his ideas and concepts no matter what it takes. Let’s think about this situation for a minute: A housewife who has been married for 10 years and see one of these ads. How can she feel? Of course, some doubts will pop up in her mind and can have awful consequences for her marriage. When you play with people insecurities, you can get good attention but you can also provoke some other bad results.
THE CONSEQUENCES
Every action has consequences, and when the clients trust you based on some security and privacy characteristics that you promote but don’t live up to, the results are disastrous. That is what happened when in July, 2015 AshleyMadison.com was victim of an attack. All the website’s database and information were stolen.
After some partial releases, the hackers leaked the data on the almost 32 million users on Ashley Madison (YES, this immoral and unethical site had 32 million users at the time). According to the UNM’s case study “this included transaction details that spanned from seven years before the incident. While many users used fake email addresses and pseudonyms on the site, credit card details that were posted gave clues as to the identity of the person. Included among the email dump were government-issued emails”
The leaking triggered a series of events that included divorces, lawsuits, fraud scandals and even suicide. At the end, Biderman had to resign his job as CEO of the company.
The scandal triggered an alarm and Ashley Madison started changing their approach to their communications. They started to use “more intelligent” advertising instead of their traditional sexual approach. And incredibly the website has now more users than in 2015.
AshleyMadison.com is one of the best examples of how a clear lack of ethics reflects in all the aspects of a business. When your business is not based precisely in moral values, how can you make the rest of it socially accepted?
References
Sanford Horner D. “Understanding Media Ethics” 2014
Branston G., Stafford R. “The Media Student’s Handbook” 1996
Honderich T. “the Oxford Companion to Philosoophy” 1995
UNM Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative, “Ashley Madison Experiences Fallout from Hacking Scandal” 2011, https://danielsethics.mgt.unm.edu/pdf/ashley-madison.pdf
Sheelah Kolhatkar, “Cheating, Incorporated,” Bloomberg Businessweek, Feb. 10, 2011, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-02-10/cheating-incorporated-ijyy3bm8
Meghan Daum, “Ashley Madison’s secret success,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 10, 2009, http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-daum10-2009jan10- column.html
Kashmir Ford, “Ashley Madison: Lessons in Promoting a Sleazy Business,” Forbes, Feb. 11, 2011, http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/02/11/ashley-madison-lessons-in-promoting-a-sleazy-business/
Steve Tobak, “Ashley Madison: Brilliant Business, Morally Bankrupt, or Scam,” CBS News, May 20, 2010, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ashley-madison-brilliant-business-morally-bankrupt-or-scam/
Jen Wieczner, “Can Google and Facebook Push Adultery Sites Off the Internet?” The Atlantic, Feb. 24, 2011, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/02/can-google-and-facebook-push-adultery-sites-off-the-internet/71634/
Marriage, Basic Terms,PsychologyToday.com, https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/marriage