Gloria Goodale quoted me in Who’s that selling at your (online) door?, a piece in today’s Christian Science Monitor that looks at social media ethics and consumer manipulation:

“The Internet functions on trust,” says Joel Postman, a corporate communications specialist and founder of Socialized PR, in Boulder Creek, Calif. “As more and more people do business in the digital world, more consumers than ever need to know who they can rely on to tell the truth.”

The piece also includes a nice audio clip Gloria did on astroturfing, regulatory and other efforts, and consumer awareness, concluding “The best protection against being fooled is being an alert and savvy consumer. Trust, but verify.”

Tags: christian science monitor, gloria goodale, astroturfing, social media ethics, trust, joel postman, socialized pr

I posted yesterday about new U.S. legislation that would ban anonymous online commenting. As I think about Twitter, I realize that in its simplicity, it is somewhat opaque, and is one of the few places that actually permits anonymous posting.

It’s difficult and sometimes impossible to tell the affiliations of those posting, and therefore their biases, without clicking on their profiles. And even then, some profiles are incomplete.

This is easy to solve with a couple of non-invasive feature updates as follows:

• Add to Twitter Terms of Service: “If your use of Twitter is in any way associated with your profession, and/or you post on topics related to your work, you most fully disclose your professional affiliations in your profile, and comply with all state, federal, and international laws prohibiting anonymous posting.”
• Add feature to Twitter interface to display profile text of all parties with mouseover on tweet

Providers have an obligation to get ahead of emerging legal and ethical trends in social media, instead of waiting for a user revolt or a lawsuit.

Tags: Social Media Law, transparency, twitter, ethics, astroturfing

My March Talent Zoo column — in which I suggest social media is not really to blame for the rash of astroturfing and other deceptions committed by corporate America — was published today. Rather, the wave of social media-based deceipt continues simply because some people are slime.

“Some in our profession claim to be confused about the rules for using blogs and other social media in marketing and public relations. ‘This is unfamiliar territory. We’re on the frontier of communications. The rules are being written as we speak.’ Bullshit. New media does not require new morality. Most of us know right from wrong, and just because we’re using a blog or an online forum doesn’t release us from our responsibility for ethical behavior.”

Read more…

Tags: ethics, social media, astroturfing, edelman, wal-mart, target, whole foods, john mackey