International Business Machines Corporation — Ethics Grade C+

International Business Machines Corporation receives an overall ethics grade of C+ (58/100) on CancelCo's corporate accountability database. Sector: Technology. Market cap: Large Cap.

Category scores

• labor: 48
• privacy: 53
• consumer: 62
• environment: 75
• humanRights: 51

Documented incidents (3)

• Age Discrimination Lawsuit (high, 2022) — Internal documents released during litigation revealed top executives referring to older employees as 'dinobabies' and discussing plans to replace them with younger workers. This led to multiple class-action lawsuits and federal investigations regarding systemic age bias in layoffs.
• Facial Recognition Data Scraping (medium, 2019) — IBM utilized nearly a million photos from Flickr without explicit user consent to train its facial recognition coding. The dataset, intended to reduce algorithmic bias, sparked severe privacy backlashes from digital rights advocates.
• Alleged Surveillance Support in China (high, 2020) — Reports surfaced highlighting historical and ongoing provisions of advanced database technology to security apparatuses in Xinjiang, creating scrutiny regarding the facilitation of mass surveillance systems.

Documented good deeds

• Exiting General-Purpose Facial Recognition Market — IBM publicly announced it would no longer offer general-purpose facial recognition or analysis software, stating opposition to technologies used for mass surveillance and racial profiling.

Ethical alternatives

• Canonical Ltd. — Provides open-source Ubuntu OS with a stronger historical commitment to community-driven privacy standards.