Social Media Ethical Issues

Picture taken by Jonathan Acuña in Les Halles, Paris, France (2019)

Sculpture’s Name: L’Écoute by Henri de Miller

Social Media Ethical Issues

That matter when using it

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
Head of Curriculum Development Academic Department Centro Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano	Senior Language Professor School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Saturday, July 25, 2020 Post 350

Opinion Prompt

What are the ethical issues that concern YOU most when using social media?

In terms of a local media outlet use, it must be confessed that I am not a user fond of it. That is, from the moment Facebook stepped on the cyberspace stage, I never felt drawn to participate in it and its so-called sharing of thoughts and ideas. Though my children do use this media platform all the time, I went for Twitter after considering the possibility of creating an account that could give me access to teaching materials coming from renown publishing houses and experts in language teaching. However, when I embarked on using it, several concerns started to pop up in my mind: privacy, target advertising, and the tracking of posts (or social media engagement).

How private is your information in a local media outlet? Though there are some sort of privacy terms that must be respected by a social media platform as well by its users, the 2018 privacy breach suffered by Facebook just showed the tip of the iceberg regarding social media vulnerability. As reported by Isaac and Frenkel (2018), the “attack on [Facebook’s] computer network had exposed the personal information of nearly 50 million users.” And though Facebook claims that privacy control over users’ data was fixed and corrected, the fact is that nothing guarantees that another security vulnerability will take place soon. Hackers may eventually try to steal information from social media users and platforms any day, any time in the future. The job of cybersecurity officers sounds like tough work in my ears.

Another issue regarding social media that concerns me a lot is the artificial intelligence (AI) to track your history over the Web. The tracking of your online activity can be labelled as “target advertising.” Once a page like Amazon, Kayak, Booking, etc. is visited because one is curious to know about a given product or service, your browser gets infected with hundreds of ads with more connections to your browsing history and webpage visitation. As Pumphrey (2012) describes the experience of target advertising, back in the early 2000s “Companies began using browsing habits and other data collected from users to make ads more personalized, and promotions for shoes and all kinds of other products and services began following people across the Web.” All this makes me wonder how ethical and legal it is to use AI’s algorithms linked to my browsing history; is it OK to try to influence someone to buy products and services in this way? This is rather difficult to answer and more ethical debates around this need to be held with social media platform executives.

Social media engagement is my third concern. Tracking down your posts, whether these ones are “positive” or “negative” may have an impact on what others may think, buy, and feel concerned about. As Siu (n.d.) points out in an article about marketing, “one of the reasons marketers like social media so much is because it’s an easy tool to work with. Nearly all social media platforms come with helpful dashboards that lay out all the information you need in one place.” But where do all data come from? It gets to them from social media users who unwillingly give information without them knowing, and companies are backed up by the terms of use of the platform, which is the fine print no one gets to read in the end. Unethically or not, media engagement or the tracking of your posts can be perfectly used to influence individuals into action or inaction, like some kind of emotional contagion.

Social media ethics is by far an interesting subject to discuss. And probably there are more concerns that ethicists have already spotted and are discussing. But what is being done? Isaac and Frenkel (2018) reported that in congressional hearings in Washington “some lawmakers suggested that the government will need to step in if the social network is unable to get tighter control of its service.” And this includes moral supervision over users’ information, AI, and the use of engagement for marketing purposes.

References

Isaac, M. and Frenkel, S. (2018). Facebook Security Breach Exposes Account of 50 Million users. The New YorkTimes. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/technology/facebook-hack-data-breach.html#:~:text=SAN%20FRANCISCO%20%E2%80%94%20Facebook%2C%20already%20facing,the%20company's%2014%2Dyear%20history.

Pumphrey, C. (2020). How do advertisers show me custom ads? HowStuffWorks.Com. https://computer.howstuffworks.com/advertiser-custom-ads.htm

Siu, E. (n.d.). 10 Ways to Measure Social Media Engagement (Plus 7 Tools to Track It!). SingleGrain.Com. https://www.singlegrain.com/blog-posts/10-ways-to-measure-social-media-engagement/