Social Media Ethics

Prior to reading the article Social Media Ethics and Disclosure Best Practices, I was not aware of all of the ethical issues that deal with social media. The article is not proposing new industry standards; rather the checklists it goes over “are open-source training tools designed to help educate employees on the appropriate ways to interact with the social media community and comply with the law”. At first many members of the social media community saw the toolkit as a matter of opinion or intellectual debate but with “the FTC’s October 2009 release of the Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials Advertising, it’s clear that proper social media ethics are a matter of law, not personal preference”. The article addresses many scenarios including disclosure of identity, truthfulness, compensation and incentives, policies and training, creating flexibility, and general best practices.

I looked up the FTC’s (Federal Trade Commission) Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials Advertising. One of the things that it mentions is that the “endorsement message need not be phrased in the exact words of the endorser, unless the advertisement affirmatively so represents. However, the endorsement may not be presented out of context or reworded so as to distort in any way the endorser’s opinion or experience with the product. An advertiser may use an endorsement of an expert or celebrity only so long as it has good reason to believe that the endorser continues to subscribe to the views presented. An advertiser may satisfy this obligation by securing the endorser’s views at reasonable intervals where reasonableness will be determined by such factors as new information on the performance or effectiveness of the product, a material alteration in the product, changes in the performance of competitors’ products, and the advertiser’s contract commitments”. An example of this is included within the document: “A film critic’s review of a movie is excerpted in an advertisement. When so used, the review meets the definition of an endorsement because it is viewed by readers as a statement of the critic’s own opinions and not those of the film producer, distributor, or exhibitor. An alteration in or quotation from the text of the review that does not fairly reflect its substance would be a violation of the standards set by this part because it would distort the endorser’s opinion”. This is a specific part of endorsements and it shows the amount of detail and depth the law goes into. This information was quite overwhelming, because it covers so many different topics. I found this part of social media ethics to be very interesting.

What concerns me most is the awareness organizations have of these ethical standards, and more importantly, legal standards. It is important for organizations that use social media to be aware of these standards and laws. These organizations must make sure that they themselves (along with their employees) are in compliance with the standards and laws.

I came across this interesting clip on socialmediaethics.net: