NAME: AISA BANSAO

ELIJAH MAGADA

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. Harvesting social media raises legal and ethical issues that must undergo careful consideration
and risk assessment before the creation of a collecting program. Twitter approaches this uncertainty by
allowing users to file takedown requests for people who see others posting their content without
attribution.
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. Not all in the Twitter are legitimate, so we have to find and
to confirmed if it is a fake or real news.

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. Twitter data, in comparison with other social media
platforms such as Facebook, are more openly accessible and, for a proportion of tweets, can contain
valuable meta- data, including geospatial data, such as the precise latitude and longitude co-ordinates
from which a Tweet was posted.

-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
 https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/social-media-archives-toolkit/legal