This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.
Facemash was the latest platform to take advantage of Harvardians’ willingness to judge — but, we promise, it’s far from the only one.
Over the weekend, the attractiveness rating site Facemash made a brief return to campus. Like the original created by Facebook founder Mark E. Zuckerberg, it asked webpage visitors to rank the attractiveness of various Harvard students. The copycat, constructed by a University of Texas at Dallas student at the annual HackHarvard programming event, was advertised as a “modern, ethical remake of the 2003 viral site.”
We disagree. While clicking through Facemash 2.0 might have been an amusing way to spend a Sunday afternoon, the project was uninventive and raised concerns about privacy and conduct. While tempting to exceptionalize the site for its ham-fisted approach to social dynamics, we should instead view the app as reflective of a broader issue: the ethical implications of social engineering all-too-often go ignored.
Top universities have become breeding grounds for prospective unicorn founders — those questing to slake society’s multibillion dollar thirst for the next big idea. In the modern attention economy, aspiring entrepreneurs are rewarded for creating the most disruptive, flashy, and viral projects possible.
In some instances, morality is traded in for virality. Up the Northeast Corridor, two University of Columbia students founded AI software to help students cheat during programming interviews. Despite the students facing disciplinary action for promoting a “cheating tool,” after dropping out and moving to San Francisco, the pair raised $15 million in Series A funding for an expanded version of the original product.
In others, wannabe entrepreneurs simply seek to maximize shock value: A Harvard undergraduate who exposed user data from the matchmaking site Datamatch, revealing the Rice Purity Test scores of college first-years, dropped out in 2025 and now runs his own AI startup.
These students benefited from a culture that prioritizes sequins over substance. In some ways, this noxious trend began at Harvard: Zuckerberg’s original transgressive game morphed into Facebook, providing founders with a blueprint. Do something that shocks people — sometimes irrespective of right and wrong — and profit.
If the ethics of the Facemash facsimile concern you, you’re not alone. In 2003, Harvard students were quick to snap out of their reward-attention haze and realize the site did more harm than good — it also violated multiple University policies. This board agreed.
We extend a similar unease in the present, now expanded to the many problematic social engineering ideas gone mainstream. Like Facemash, the dating app Tinder also used ELO rankings — an algorithm originally designed for chess that considers the strength of the opponent alongside win-loss data.
Social media algorithms are designed to suck us in and use everything they know about us to keep us there. Likes, notifications, and comments release rushes of dopamine we seek to replicate, physically altering our brain chemistry.
Hijacking peoples’ attention and abusing their data is highly lucrative, and fixing a problem as profitable as this one will not be easy. But Harvard can and should be doing more to intervene. More robust engineering ethics requirements, teaching consent-by-design, and promoting social impact within hackathons are just some of the ways the College and the students within it can begin to combat unscrupulous product design and harmful entrepreneurial culture.
By starting with the education of their own students, Harvard can directly influence the founders, tech-moguls, and policymakers of the next generation — impressing upon them the import of not valuing the bottom line over societal welfare.
Social engineering ethics? Hot. A short-lived, dull copy of Zuckerberg’s failed social ranking site? Definitely not.
This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.
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