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Ethical Issues in Social Networking

Research · October 2015

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.4289.6080

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 GIFT University Gujranwala

Ethical Issues in Online Social Networking

(Term Paper Submitted to Mr. Zeyad Amin during the course of Professional Practices)

Researched by

Ameer Ahmed Khan

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 Table of Contents
Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................................... 2
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3
Statement ................................................................................................................................................. 3
What is Online Social Networking? ........................................................................................................... 3
Use of Social Networking Sites is Staggering. ........................................................................................... 3
Why choose this topic? ............................................................................................................................. 4
Ethical Dilemmas........................................................................................................................................... 4
Invasion of privacy .................................................................................................................................... 4
Spamming ................................................................................................................................................. 4
Public Bashing ........................................................................................................................................... 5
Dishonesty and Distortion ........................................................................................................................ 5
Improper Anonymity and Distorted Endorsements ................................................................................. 5
Misuse of free expertise and contests ...................................................................................................... 5
Opportunism ............................................................................................................................................. 6
Challenges related to Business Ethics ........................................................................................................... 6
Integrity risk .............................................................................................................................................. 6
Recruitment practices ............................................................................................................................... 7
Duty of Care .............................................................................................................................................. 7
Advertising and marketing practices ........................................................................................................ 7
Unavoidable Ethical Questions ..................................................................................................................... 8
Utilitarian perspective............................................................................................................................... 8
Rights perspective ..................................................................................................................................... 8
Fairness perspective ................................................................................................................................. 8
Common good perspective ....................................................................................................................... 8
Virtue perspective ..................................................................................................................................... 9
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 9
Suggestions ................................................................................................................................................... 9
References .................................................................................................................................................. 10

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Introduction
In this millennium generation technology, machinery is evolving at daily basis there are
a lot of things being effected with this evolution. One of which is our practices of social
networking which is largely shifting to the internet causing a lot of ethical issues which were not
faced before these online social networking practices. In this research paper, first of all there is
a brief description of the background and scenario, second thing to be discussed is the Ethical
dilemmas in online social networking which are being faced these days. There will be a section
covering the issues related to the impact of unethical usage of online social networks in
business industry. There are also some unavoidable questions which are highly debatable but
because of the nature and boundaries of this paper those questions will be raised leaving them
undebated.

Statement
What are the Ethical issues in Online Social Networking that we are facing at this very
moment while using most of the online social networks.

What is Online Social Networking?

Online social networking is the use of dedicated websites or application in order to
interact with other people who also those social networking sites having same interests or
knowing you from other circles, groups or communities. Social networking is the basis of a
society and it was always possible in person but in this era of high speed data transmission
social networking has evolved through internet and has added different colors and flavors
according to the needs of time. There are plenty of features being offered by social networking
sites (SNS) which include making your profile, finding people with mutual interests, sharing with
your circles or groups, interacting with people in your groups and getting the information
shared by other people.

Use of Social Networking Sites is Staggering.

The use of social networking sites is staggering and has become a very common practice
of daily routine of a lot of people now a days. The most famous www.facebook.com started in
2004 and was used as a mean to connect students at Harvard University (1). Now the website
is having more than 200 million active users who upload 850 million photos collectively and 8
million videos to this website every month (facebook.com). Moreover, according to Kaiser
Family Foundation 71% of 15 to 17 year-old Internet users participate in chat rooms (2).

These days people belonging to different age groups and different fields of life are
actively using social networks to connect to the people they know and to find new people to
connect with. Spending a lot of time there, has increased the need to ethics in social networks
as they are required in real life.

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Why choose this topic?
The reason for choosing this topic is that we all are have extensive experience of using
online social networks and while using them we have to face some kind of ethical issues. So,
this is the best time to spread awareness about the ethical issues being noticed at social
networking websites.

Ethical Dilemmas
With the rise of Online Social Networking, the ethical dilemmas are growing in number
including violation of privacy, misrepresentation, bullying and creepiness. When the consumers
are getting the facility of relatively unrestricted social communications they are becoming more
vulnerable to deception and scams too at the same time which has become the reason of
attention for Social Networking Ethics. Few ethical dilemmas faced when different people use
social networks are given below:

Invasion of privacy
If the actions that break the law or terms of privacy of any user of social network harms
that individuals personal or professional credibility should be considered unethical. The
invasion of privacy would include any non-permissive approach taken to get any kind of
personal or any other kind of information about an individual which can harm him or affect him
in any sense.

While discussing social media ethics, behavioral targeting is a questionable area to

consider. The advertisers tracking our shopping behaviors and click through patterns to use that
data in retargeting campaigns. The positive point is that the viewers may appreciate the
relevance of the material being advertised to them but this is a kind of invasion of privacy.

A very similar situation occurs when marketers give their email lists to Facebook to use
custom audience feature. They match those lists to the emails which are registered with them
for targeting.

Spamming
Over-publicizing unasked promotional messages is also considered as an unethical act
based on how this is being done. In spamming users are usually bombarded with some kind of
information which does not interest them or even if it does, it is too extensive to be swallowed.
In this situation, the user’s relative information which he may be needing gets under the pile
and may get ignored because of that useless pile of spamming which is obviously unethical
from user’s perspective.

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Public Bashing
While using social networks people think that they are private and they can express
anything they want to but they are not as private as they think. Disparaging your competitors in
SNS (social networking sites) is considered unethical because of its broad range of negative
impacts. Once you have posted something, it is not yours anymore and it can go viral as fast as
a fire in the forest without asking for your permission which then can’t only affect your
reputation but also the person or company you were disparaging about, so much. This kind of
cases can also raise a risk for legal lawsuits.

Dishonesty and Distortion

There is no fair enough method to validate the honesty and authenticity of social
networking activities of users. The intensions of social media usage include transparency of
communications and other activities posts through SNS. It is unethical to be dishonest about
anything even on social networks. So, if you will make dishonest claims about yourself or
anything else or go on commenting offensive material, it is going to affect yourself or your
company at the end. By doing such activities you are jeopardizing your personal reputation and
your company’s name. So, we should all keep ethics in front of use even while using social
media.

Improper Anonymity and Distorted Endorsements

If one represent himself with wrong affiliations, credentials or expertise, it is unethical
to become anonymous but showing yourself to be someone different than you are. There are
people who provide companies with their anonymous feedbacks which are not true and it has
caused a lot of damage to companies by the stories of consumers of their products by fake
stories.

Hiring people to comment your favorable or fabricated stories about your company or
your products are also considered unethical. Some employees are also found guilty of
exaggerating competitive deficiencies.

Misuse of free expertise and contests

With the increasing extensive use of Facebook contests and other crowdsourcing for
soliciting design ideas, the participants have the risk of making their secrets open with no
reward. Most of the times, design ideas are rewarded to the most profitable partners of the
social network sponsor leaving many with unrewarded work. This abuse is especially unethical
if the sponsor knowingly gathers superior design ideas from contestants they have no intention
of compensating.

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Opportunism
In the objective of providing the communities of social networking sites with
contributions to their cause, the social media marketers provide content that subliminally walks
the user at a self-serving path. These actions can be regarded as unethical or may be
unprofessional based on their extent of deception.

Challenges related to Business Ethics

Social media is having a lot of unique characteristics when compared to traditional
media forms. These characteristics create ethical challenges for business when employees use
social media on behalf of company and use for their personal representation too.

Integrity risk
In an IBE survey of large companies (3), 6 of 7 respondents identified integrity risk as the
main ethical challenge with regard to social media. When an employee uses social media in an
irresponsible way either on behalf of the company or through their personal social media
account, it can undermine the company’s commitment to ethical practice and expose it to
integrity risk.

The case of Nestle provides an example. In March 2011, an employee who was
managing content on the company’s Facebook Fan Page posted offensive comments in
response to negative remarks by fans. The employee’s behavior violated the company’s
business principle of integrity and their commitment to “avoid any conduct that could damage
or risk Nestle or its reputation” (4) and provoked a consumer backlash. Amidst calls to boycott
Nestle, members of the general public also joined the Fan Page specifically to criticize the
Company (5).

Alternatively, employees might post negative comments about the company on their
personal social media profile. This is harder for companies to control. The DLA Piper survey
found that one third of employers had disciplined staff for inappropriate comments about the
company on social media sites (6).

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Recruitment practices
A 2011 survey of 800 recruiters and human resource professionals found that 64% make
use of two or more social networks as part of their assessment practices when recruiting
employees(7). There are also specialist organizations that provide social media employment
screening services. This raises ethical challenges for employers around employees‟ right to
privacy and fairness. Is it ethical or fair to judge an individual’s ability to fulfill their employee
responsibilities based on information about their personal lives, gained from their social media
profile? In some cases the information may relate to past activities in a job candidate’s personal
life. An Ethikos article cited a case where an individual was denied a job due to his activities
posted online 20 years previously (8).

Duty of Care
As highlighted previously, social media blurs the boundaries between personal and work
life. When personal opinions expressed through social media (either on a personal profile or an
online forum) refer to a company, it raises an ethical challenge. It is unclear what control, if any,
the company has over comments communicated in this way and what action it can/should take.

The blurring of personal and work life boundaries can make it difficult for companies to
uphold their duty of care to employees. For example, it is hard to monitor cases of „cyber-
bullying‟, particularly where employees use their personal social media account. One in ten UK
workers believes that workplace cyber-bullying is a problem (9) and a fifth of employers have
had to discipline staff for posting nasty comments about a colleague online (10). The same
survey found bullying and harassment and discrimination were two of the top five risks of social
media for the workplace.(11) The challenge for companies is identifying acceptable levels of
monitoring employees‟ personal use of social media, without being seen to limit their freedom
of expression.

Advertising and marketing practices

The scope and speed of social media make it an effective medium through which
companies market themselves and their products/services. With any form of marketing,
companies have a duty to market responsibly. The interactive nature of social media provides
companies with the ability to engage with customers more directly than other forms of media.
This poses new ethical challenges. It has become common practice for companies to create
profiles on social networking sites to advertise their goods and services.

A company’s ability to meet fair competition guidelines can be jeopardized by

employees using social media on behalf of the company; for example, if an employee, whilst
representing the company, takes matters into their own hands‟ and uses social media
unethically, to discredit the reputation of their employer’s competitors.

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Unavoidable Ethical Questions
Utilitarian perspective
The recent hacking of Petaluma High School student MySpace accounts and the posting
of threatening messages highlight some possible harms of social networking. MySpace,
FaceBook, and other sites have been the scene of cyberbullying and online predation. But the
same technology allows people to connect with others they might never have met and form
meaningful relationships. How do we balance these harms and benefits, reducing the one and
increasing the possibility of the other?

Rights perspective
Do social networkers have a right to privacy? More and more users of Facebook and
MySpace are finding that prospective employers are perusing their sites, despite the fact that
they may conceive of their online presence as personal space. Also, what is a private person’s
right to control the images and information about them available on line? David Weisbrot,
president of the Australia Law Reform Commission, which has been investigating online privacy,
comments, “Laws designed to protect privacy in the outside world struggle to cope with the
issues raised by online communities. For example, online publication of photo-graphs, which
may be sensitive and revealing, raises new challenges in relation to consent.”

Fairness perspective
Some people believe social networking sites offer the ultimate in egalitarianism. When
we interact with others online, we have no real way of knowing whether they are white or
black, male or female, fat or thin, young or old. Will this disembodied quality of the online
world lead to greater fairness, or will we lose the ability to engage concretely with others, and
therefore truly overcome differences?

Common good perspective

Pope Paul IV described the common good as “the sum of those conditions of social life
which allow social groups and their individual member’s relatively thorough and ready access to
their own fulfillment.” Certainly, many people turn to social networking sites to connect with
social groups that share their interests and values. What would the common good look like in
this context? Does fulfillment have the same meaning online as it does in the “real world?” Are
there ways to structure online communities so that they better promote the common good of
their members?

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Virtue perspective
Many of the interpersonal virtues we value evolved in the context of face-to-face
communication. Honesty, openness, and patience, for example, are honed in the negotiations
we must manage when we meet people in person. What impact will digital media have on
these virtues? What, for example, would honesty mean in the context of a world where people
are represented by avatars? Will other virtues emerge as more important in social networking,
where we can be constantly connected to a large reservoir of others and can shut off
communications easily when we are bored or encounter difficulties?

Conclusion
This discussion concludes that where there are numerous benefits of social networking
sites there is an increasing challenge of ethical issues which are being faced on social networks.
There are some issues which can be considered under legal lawsuits, while others are issues of
pure ethics. These ethics should be properly defined and spread over to all the users of social
networks. There should be some struggle to spread the awareness of these ethics.

Suggestions
It is suggested that the social media ethics should be properly written and their
awareness should be spread. Users of SNS should be promoted to follow those ethics and to
exercise them should be affiliated to some kind of incentive to attract people towards it.

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 References

(1) Stone, Brad. “Facebook.” The New York Times 7 December 2007. 11 November 2008.
(2) https://www.lagrange.edu/resources/pdf/citations/2009/10Cornerstone_Williams.pdf
(3) Survey of 7 companies with 2,000 employees or more, IBE, 2011
(4) Nestlé, Code of Business Conduct, 2007. Available at:
http://www.nestle.com/Investors/CorporateGovernance/
CodeOfBusinessConduct/Pages/CodeOfBusinessConductHome.aspx
(5) Nestlé hit by Facebook "anti-social" media surge, The Guardian, 19 March 2011.
Available at: http:// www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/nestle-facebook To view
some of the correspondence on Nestlé‟s Facebook page, see: What other companies
can learn from Nestlé‟s Facebook page, Digital Inspiration, http://
www.labnol.org/internet/nestle-facebook-page/13208/
(6) DLA Piper, Op cit
(7) New Tools Cast a Wider Social Network for Recruiters, by Rita Pyrillis, Workforce
Management Online, August 2011
(8) Social media monitoring raises disturbing questions: An Ethikos interview with Kansas
State‟s Diane Swanson, Ethikos,
September/October 2011, pp.7-9
(9) See: ACAS Research Paper (2009), Workplaces and Social Networking: The implications
for employment relations, pp.28, by Andrea Broughton, Tom Higgins, Ben Hicks and
Annette Cox, The Institute for Employment Studies
(10) DLA Piper, Op cit
(11) Ibid, pp.7
(12) www.ibe.org.uk

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