Business ethics: social media and business

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ethics_has_me_spaced
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Business ethics: social media and business

Post by ethics_has_me_spaced »

Would you suggest that the ethical dilemma that is presented in social media and business is invasion of privacy? I am torn as to if invasion of privacy is an ethical dilemma at all. For example, companies monitoring employees social media behavior which is a great for companies to safeguard their reputation, or companies using social media as a source to recruit which is a great way to prevent negligent hiring and weed out bad apples, or data mining which can be helpful in collecting data to assist the others; but are these ethical issues that invades others privacy. First my question is the invasion of privacy really an ethical dilemma?
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Sy Borg
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Re: Business ethics: social media and business

Post by Sy Borg »

I worked in the privacy area for a few years and I think it is important, but doomed.

Testing a few privacy thresholds:

1. Would you be happy in a transparent house or bathroom walls?

2. Would you be happy for men to have an easy view into your young daughter's bedroom window? By the logic of the OP - is that doing her a harm?

3. To what extent would you be happy to have your medical records, business dealings or personal conversations open to anyone?

At this point we still physically need privacy; being under surveillance is stressful, but the type and degree varies from individual to individual. It's our physiology. Staring is an act of aggression in nature and being under surveillance is the technological equivalent to being stared at, so it is stressful. Certainly much stress has been reported by workers under strong and constant surveillance. You can't even pick your nose in peace! :shock:

You may also notice that requests for information are unbalanced. What of a little quid pro quo? Companies that disregard personal privacy often do not reciprocate to the public - and you will struggle to find out what percentage tax they paid, or how ethical or competent their decisions. When it comes to privacy and the sharing of information, it is ideally be reciprocal but in truth reflects power structures.

So individuals are becoming ever more transparent as institutional backroom activities become ever more opaque. This reflects the changing priorities of societies - from people to organisations (which people will probably one day call "AI"). Governments now govern for peer institutions, not for individual people. Policies have consistently favoured business over individuals everywhere this century.

Basically, institutions are the new humans and people are the new animals and, increasingly, individuals' privacy needs will be treated with all the seriousness we afford the privacy needs of the animals under our control.

Happy Dystopian Wednesday :)
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LuckyR
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Re: Business ethics: social media and business

Post by LuckyR »

To my view the problem is not a lack of privacy, it is the erroneous assumption that public postings are private.
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Steve3007
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Re: Business ethics: social media and business

Post by Steve3007 »

The proposition of the OP seems to be essentially that if we have done nothing wrong we cannot have anything to hide. Greta has presented some examples to show that you can strongly need and desire privacy without having done anything wrong.

On LuckyR's point: On the face of it this sounds fair enough. People should realize that when they put some information online they've lost control of it. The trouble is, we're increasingly used to the idea that everything is done online and, because we don't have an infinite amount of time available, we're used to the activity of automatically ticking the "I agree" box associated with the 1000 pages of terms and conditions, when presumably on page 467 it says that all the information we provide now belongs to someone else to distribute as they see fit. Happy ranting Wednesday!
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Re: Business ethics: social media and business

Post by LuckyR »

Psychologically it is easy to see that common folk will be swayed by the fact that they can't be physically seen and that they have perhaps chosen a pseudonym, to assume that they are anonymous.

Not anonymous. In fact the citizenry is much more traceable now than at any other time.
"As usual... it depends."
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Burning ghost
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Re: Business ethics: social media and business

Post by Burning ghost »

If somebody wants to know about you they can find out quickly enough if you have a large online presence.

The naivety of "youth culture" today shows how quickly and easily people will expose their personal details online without a second thought. This makes them easy targets for advertisements and harassment. I simple message to your friend or sibling, a harmless photo posted, can lead to all sort of personal information being exposed without you even realizing it.

The biggest shock I had was with mobile phones. Phone companies keep vast records of your location and movement, who you speak to, and can also track the people you speak to. Anyone can hack into this data and sell private data to advertising companies and no doubt we'll see people attacked and bribed left, right and centre. What is worse still is the social system is widely set up to snare people into having e-mails, mobile phones and using social media more and more.

I questioned someone recently who works in advertising about their moral obligations. They steered away from the question wishing only to "inspire people" even though they knew nothing about how their techniques would be used. The creation of bubbles in society of social media is creating more divisions, and now we're seeing corporations invading this space and imposing regulation of internet traffic ... it's looking dark.

The illusion of privacy is a concern as much as the illusion of a society of freedom. Once the national banks collapse (which they will eventually - maybe sooner than later!?) then the "governments" will be more and more puppets of the corporations. The future of "Government" is basically going to be a battle of social media control.

On the bright side of things cryptocurrencies will overwhelm the business field and take away the control of banks, and therefore give some social control over the economy, but the powers that be are trying to backdoor this move by imposing traffic regulation on the internet - they'll effectively shut down freedom of communication and likely strangle the only way out (cryptocurrencies: which are a HUGE threat to the current regime in place.) Regardless, I do see people always bypassing the traffic regulations. An example of this would be attempts to "shutdown" facebook in some countries - its just not viable because people will find away around all the blockades in cyberspace one way or another.

The ethical dilemma is with individuals not wanting to know what is going on in the world, and many people actively encouraging them not to care or using sensationalism to bend the will of the masses behind some warped ideological stance in the name of "freedom" set up to take away the freedom of others ... it is all a bit Orwellian, and there is likely no harder or difficult truth to accept than the famous FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, SLAVERY IS FREEDOM slogan. The best we can do is to rethink what we mean by "freedom" and "slavery" and put these terms to use in order to create human opportunity rather than human regulation.

Interesting times !! :)
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Sy Borg
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Re: Business ethics: social media and business

Post by Sy Borg »

Just wait until coins and paper money are superseded by card transactions (as China is working on). Without cryptocurrency, that move would give states absolute power over the people - each transaction will be known (too bad if you are buying a penis pump or a vibrating facsimile) and each point of sale. It seems that Bitcoin arrived not a moment too soon.
Steve3007
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Re: Business ethics: social media and business

Post by Steve3007 »

Where I live paper and coin money already has been pretty much superseded. I very rarely use it. The last bastion of paying with cash was buying small rounds or individual drinks in the pub. But quick contactless small payments systems now mean that you don't need cash there either now.

They say that when the smallest unit of bitcoin - the satoshi - reaches a non-trivial value, that's when it will stop inflating itself to its full size and start being a proper currency. But I still don't have the guts to buy any significant amount of it in case that's not true and it crashes. I seriously considered buying some last year when it was around US$500 per bitcoin. Shoulda woulda coulda.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Business ethics: social media and business

Post by Sy Borg »

I am old school; much more cash than card. The young fella picked up on it and invested, though, and is now paying close attention. Now that banks and nations are getting involved, its foundations are looking stronger to me, although in today's World of the Unprecedented, who can say?
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