NAME: AISA BANSAO

Ethics In Practice Case

Twitter Ethics in Business
Twitter is one of the most frequently used social media. It may be because it is so
easy and fast to use. Maybe it’s because tweets are so brief. Knocking out a few
tweets does not take much time or thought.

Twitter has been used for a number of nefarious and malicious uses. Though
most people who tweet do it responsibly, there are thousands of misleading,
deceptive, criminal, or maligned tweets that go out daily. Though young people
use social media more than anyone, Twitter has caught on in business too. Many
business people, especially entertainment and sports personalities, use Twitter
extensively. Regular business people and employees use Twitter also—often to
promote a product or a cause their employer wants to rally support for. Public
relations business people use Twitter often and they are business people who
ought to subscribe to some form of ethical behavior.

Angela Dwyer has suggested that there are at least four categories of tweeters
and they all face ethical challenges. First, there are Paid Tweeters. Sometimes
these are celebrities or sports stars that are paid by companies to tweet as a form
of advertising. They typically do not disclose that they are being paid to tweet.
The FTC has said that celebrities in this category should disclose their
relationships with advertisers when making endorsements but it is hard to
enforce.

Second, there are Company Tweeters. These individuals write reviews or tweets

about promotional offers for their own companies. Some company tweeters are
enthusiastic about their own companies and products and want the world to
know. Others are tweeting because their boss has asked them to do so or they
want to be viewed favorably come raise and promotion time.

Third, there are Out-of-Context Tweeters. Sometimes while attending events,

these tweeters tweet hurried reactions or impressions that contain unverified or
false information. Or, they do not present the context in which something was
said or done. In other words, they do not provide the big picture. Tweets such as
this have the potential to misinform or distort. To make matters worse, they are
often retweeted before fuller or more accurate information is given.

Fourth, there are Ghost-Tweeters. When someone is paid to write tweets on

behalf of someone else, the ghostwriter, or Ghost-Tweeter may put out
information without any confidence about whether the information is factual or
 accurate. Politicians, executives, sports stars, and other highly placed business
people may use Ghost-Tweeters who are simply following a script without
knowing for sure of the accuracy of its information.

In short, there are many opportunities and ways by which social media such as
Twitter may be abused, misused, or be implicated in questionable practices by
businesses and business people.

1. Are these forms of tweeting ethical? How do you draw the fine line between
ethical and unethical in each of these categories of tweeting? Which category
faces the most ethical challenges in business?
- As Angela Dwyer said all four categories of tweeters face ethical challenges so
they are not ethical.
- For Paid Tweeters, it is unethical when it starts getting over-the-top otherwise
Paid Tweeters are normal and acceptable. There were tweets circulating back
then about Senator Enrile paying influencers on Twitter to advertise him for of
the upcoming elections. These influencers were constantly tweeting about Enrile
and his achievements and when users started calling them out they aggressively
denied. For Company Tweeters, it is unethical when companies start engaging in
Deceptive Advertising. Deceptive Advertising can neither be deceptive or illegal,
they can also offend moral principles of human conduct in terms of bad intent
and effects. For Out-of-Context Tweeters, I personally believe that all Out-of-
Context tweeters are engaging in unethical behavior whether it is well-
intentioned or not. The problem with Out-of-Context tweeters is that they tweet
in real-time while the event is still unfolding, because of their excitement for the
event, at that point, they don’t bother thinking twice about what they tweet. This
always happens in Stan Twitter, which is a community of Twitter users that post
opinions related to music and social media. I myself only use twitter to check out
updates from the Kpop stan twitter and these Out-of-Context tweeters are
everywhere. Whenever there is a huge event involving a popular star, fans
obviously mobbed these events and start tweeting a lot of stuff and stuff that did
not actually happen. This has led to some agencies of these stars addressing
these false accusations when things start getting out of hand. For Ghost-Tweeters,
I think it is unethical on the part of the celebrities, politicians, etc. more than on
the part of the Ghost-Tweeters. These people pay Ghost-tweeters to feed tweets
to their admiring followers to give updates about their lives. Twitter is seen as an
intimate link between celebrities and their fans and celebrities churning out just
a few tweets for their fans is the least thing that they can do to repay them. Many
performers though are not willing to spend even the tiniest bit of their time on
their phones to tweet updates or communicate with their fans. The whole point
 of social media is to “stay in touch” with your friends, family, or fans. Fans want
to feel a personal connection to their favorite celebrities and Ghost tweeting has
the potential to detract from the authenticity.
- I think Out-of-Context Tweeters face the most ethical challenges in business.
Companies face needless problems because of Out-of-Context Tweeters. Because
Stan Twitter are mostly composed of teens who spend so much of their time on
social media, they can trend a hashtag in no time voicing out their concerns
regarding the false accusations that they themselves generated. These
accusations even reach the news sometimes further causing more problems to
the companies involved.
2. Are there other categories of tweeters you can think of? Do they face ethical
challenges?
- Catfish Tweeters. On the Internet, a "catfish" is a person who creates fake
personal profiles on social media sites using someone else's pictures and false
biographical information to pretend to be someone other than themselves. They
face ethical challenges because these "catfish" tweeters usually intend to trick an
unsuspecting person or more into falling in love with them. An example of this is
the Elon Musk crypto giveaway scams back in 2018. An account posing as Elon
Musk on Twitter, which had targeted followers of the billionaire and claimed to
be giving away cryptocurrency. The scammers went a step beyond the standard
fake Twitter profile and even linked an Ether address. They created a whole
website, spacex.delivery, which is no longer available. The hackers were able to
raise hundreds of thousands of dollars by posing as Elon Musk on Twitter in
order to trick people into sending them bitcoin. 
3. Some people may say “hey, don’t sweat it, it’s only a tweet! You need to be on
guard yourself!" Is this a reasonable response to business use of Twitter or other
social media? Who cares?!
- No, deceptive tweets are basically fake news and we know how destructive fake
news can be. It is very unethical even sloppy to immediately share around
information without verifying it first. All of us should always practice spending a
few minutes on Google to find out how accurate the news or information being
spread around before sharing it. Even if the news or tweet isn’t as serious we
shouldn’t tolerate them because no matter how small the inaccuracy that the
information or news being spread around holds, people’s perception can be
easily manipulated. One of the reasons why fake news can be very convincing is
that massive amounts of it could make it believable. If I wanted to say one bad
thing about a certain product, all I would need is another person to comment or
agree and this would make it sound true for most. Also, the sheer volume of
 content about one specific rumor makes it even more convincing to the public
eye. In addition to this, images are making it even more believable — the better
the image, the more convincing the story is.
4. Are there other forms of social media that business uses that are more ethically
challenging than Twitter? Describe them.
- Facebook. With all the scandals that recently happened to Facebook particularly
the whole Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal. I think it is the most
ethically challenging social media platform. The biggest issues with Facebook are
their extensive tracking techniques and them allowing companies to access data
of their users. The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal literally only
happened because of Facebook’s sloppy software design. It all started with an
app called "This Is Your Digital Life" which was provided to Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica in turn arranged an informed consent process for research
in which several hundred thousand Facebook users would agree to complete a
survey only for academic use. However, Facebook's design allowed this app not
only to collect the personal information of people who agreed to take the survey,
but also the personal information of all the people in those users' Facebook social
network. In this way Cambridge Analytica acquired data from millions of
Facebook users. The other concern which is their tracking techniques that allows
them to manipulate news feeds to gauge emotional reactions of users. A lot of
users have felt they were being treated by Facebook as “lab rats”.
5. Should companies that use Twitter have a code of conduct for guidance in
what represents ethical tweets? What key ethical principles should guide the use
of Twitter?
- Yes, at present where information whether true or false can spread so fast.
Companies should have a code of conduct for guidance when tweeting.
- Accuracy: Companies should use data-driven research when tweeting
about their advertisements. Companies should only put out quality tweets that
represent accurate information.
Truthfulness: If the company become aware that they have tweeted or
spread around something that turns out to be inaccurate, they should
immediately update it with a visible correction and issue an apology. If things get
out of hand, then the company should just delete everything and post a
retraction.
Bias: Businesses and marketers need to stay away from (negative)
political, religious, ethnic, or any cultural bias that could be termed as
controversial. A slight mistake can lead to a big PR disaster and people can even
loss their jobs just because of this small mistake (as marketer).
 Transparency: If companies are endorsing some product, idea or
personality; they need to disclose why they are endorsing it. Mentioning their
relationship with that particular product, non-profit entity, brand or political
entity in their tweets, campaign, handle, or bio is essential.
Impact: If companies are sharing some information through their twitter
which has been acquired from a third party source, they should give clear
disclaimers to avoid suspicions of conflict of interest. Moreover; they should be
very careful about their tweets and retweets. Public perception matters a lot. For
instance, they might retweet something a politician has said in order to spread
the news but some may view it as their support for that person. This can be very
tricky for their brand.

Sources:
 https://www.ccn.com/elon-musk-crypto-giveaway-scams-grow-more-
sophisticated
 https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/elon-
musk-bitcoin-scam-twitter-hackers-cryptocurrency-a8620436.html
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook
%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal
 https://www.networkworld.com/article/2235060/the-rise-of-ghost-
tweeting--the-tweets-you-read--may-be-written-by-someone-else.html
 https://medium.com/the-looking-glass/the-effects-of-fake-news-on-the-
philippine-media-and-the-economy-fa89c13b18ce