Today I’m writing about the ethical issues concerning social media. When I think of social media, the last thing that I think of is it being ethical. I don’t automatically think of it as being unethical but the idea that it could be seen as an ethical platform has never crossed my mind either.
As social media is still fairly new, there aren’t many laws that tell us what actions are ethical or not. However, as I was reading articles online about this subject and the comments people made under them, I realised that there seems to be a lack of agreement as to what is and isn’t ethical to do on social media, especially for companies.
A common practice is that of tweeting under false circumstances as this article puts it. How do we know that the CEOs or brands with twitter accounts are actually writing their tweets themselves and not asking someone else, for example an external agency, to write their tweets for them? Should it still be considered ethical for a PR agency to tweet on behalf of their client, or is it OK as long as they tell their followers that this is the case? Although ghost tweeting seems dishonest, I don’t quite see it as crossing into the territory of being unethical – that’s if there even is a difference between the two terms. If anything it simply suggests that the brand is only on Twitter or Facebook to control their relationship - as opposed to building a relationship with its customers which I would imagine would have been their reason for joining a social network in the first place.
Plus people can easily choose whether or not to follow a brand online. What they have no control over however is businesses using social media as a means of spamming. It is considered unethical for companies to use auto friends software or spam boards in order to advertise their product or promote their company. Such businesses can end up being banned from social networks for doing so.
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