There is no doubt that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a wealthy and highly intelligent man. Whether you like him, or dislike him, you cannot deny his success. He has amazingly intelligent people working for him as well for example, his Virtual Reality 
Chief Rachel Franklin.
Facebook is not just about their original platform. As a publicly-traded company with millions in advertising revenues, they are constantly seeking ways to expand their business. They are also very involved in VR or virtual reality.
Facebook has a new virtual reality platform. On this VR platform which employs the live streaming Facebook Live video app that is called “Spaces,” you (and several friends) can insert a cartoon likeness of yourself and tour about a place. It is a cute technology, intended to bring people together, to network them to a place they might not normally visit. So if you want to have a virtual beach tour in the Bahamas with 50 of your closest Facebook friends and their cartoon likenesses, you can do so.
Welcome to Hurricane Maria
Not long ago Zuckerberg and Rachel Franklin decided to demonstrate the Spaces app by giving the Facebook minions a virtual tour of the devastated island of Puerto Rico. Each high-powered executive was “romping” about the devastated scene. Zuckerberg’s avatar was grinning and pointing out how “magical” their technology was, and in another scene the two avatars were giving each other the “high five” while standing in front of a flooded neighborhood. When they were bored with Puerto Rico, the Zuckerberg avatar asked the Franklin avatar where they wanted to go next, and they were off to California.
Social media blasted them for “high fiving” in front of the devastated neighborhood. The company quickly arranged a $1.5 million gift to hurricane relief organizations. It was not enough. The complaints kept coming. Several of the complaints alluded to the fact that Silicon Valley is in a giant bubble. It is an interesting point to ethically discuss.
I might start with the current tragedy that is occurring in California wine country. Wild fires have devastated the area, with loss of life and untold millions of dollars’ worth of damage. Will Zuckerberg and Franklin take their show to wine country now? I doubt it. Silicon Valley executives are “heavily invested” in the area. They travel there, swill wine there, know people there. I doubt Zuckerberg would use the death and destruction relatively close to his home base as a demonstration platform for his high fives and jokes. He knows better.
I might also point something out at this juncture which might raise the ire of many in Zuckerberg’s crowd: he is 33. He has seen little of death or destruction or heartache. Much of his journey has been in a bubble. Yes, he is a genius and he is extremely wealthy, what I question is his sense of ethics.
Expanding the scenario
I would be wrong to laser focus on Mark Zuckerberg or Rachel Franklin. They are merely figureheads, and representative of a much larger ethical debate in regard to technology. As an ethics speaker I get to see, on practically an everyday basis, executives across all spectrums of for profit, publicly-traded and nonprofit organizations who lack any ethical sensitivity to important issues. It is particularly true of those who over-rely, or (dare I say) are addicted to heavy social media use.
Despite all of the talk of the interconnectedness of society, we have become horribly disconnected behind “hashtags” and instant messaging. Issues are glossed over and virtually every important event is jumbled together with recipes, celebrity gossip, sports news and political rants.
Where does it lead? It leads to masters of technology more excited about the technology than the events such technology might be attempting to record, or help, or impact. This will become, in my opinion, a huge problem in the future where empathy is traded for money.
Mark Zuckerberg only saw his “audience.” His opportunity was to use the devastation of Puerto Rico as a backdrop for a virtual reality app. His need was to extoll the virtue of a new product, and thus to impact his product. His rationalization for doing so was the fact he was somehow advancing the cause of his product.
The setting for the demonstration along with the high five numbness was incidental. Puerto Rico is all the way “down there.” He would not have chosen to be “virtual” in the midst of a burnt-out vineyard only “miles away.” He still knows who butters his bread.
Far, far better the next hire for Facebook to be a Chief Ethics Officer. He or she should be over 60 and have a few wrinkles and life experiences.
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