Comment on Topic 4: Ethical issues raised by educational and business uses of social media by Sam Eslinger

Hi jazz,

Your references to other concise helpful articles are embedded really well into the flow of your blog.

In the Nestle article the author writes that having a profile picture as an ‘altered company logo is a compliment (and a very common online practice), not intellectual-property theft’. I disagree with this assertion as their logo is copyrighted and I think they initially had good intent in banning people from doing this (stopping people impersonating the company/ misleading in replies), they just went about it in the wrong way -really bad customer service being so rude and antagonistic!

Also, the idea that social media reviews are often be falsified by the companies I agree is unethical. The ‘world of mouth marketing association (WOMMA) promotes full disclosure in marketing campaigns in their ‘social media marketing disclosure guide’, stating it is marketers duty to ensure that false and misleading information is not given. Although they don’t specifically mention this type of misleading content I think the principle definitely still applies.
http://thereciperedux.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/WOMMA_Social_Media_Disclosure_Guide.pdf
However, the power social media provides to some may use this negatively, reviews may contain false information for that reason. This could be particularly detrimental to small businesses and there’s not really a way to police reviews on social media. Is it as wrong if a business does false reviews to rectify the damage of other false reviews?

Lastly, I agree an initial risk assessment for social media within business seem a good idea to provide some basic principles to bear in mind in the fast paced social media environment.

Sam