Twitter Ethics Twitter was created in March of 2006 and launched in July of that year. Since the beginning, it created its so called “Twitter Rules” for monitoring content and behavior. Many users vent out in twitter and in many occasions the comments could be vile, hurtful and disrespectful (Mintz, 2017). Or simply lies that go unverified or uncensored but were issued as if they were statements of truth. Nevertheless, only recently in the second trimester of 2020, twitter decided to become more proactive in applying its rules flagging two of President Trump recent tweets. This was despite of the fact that Pres. Trump has been tweeting as a private citizen since 2009 and produced thousands of tweets as President since 2016. Many has voiced their concerns and disapproval of Twitter selective process of very late intervention and wonder if the ethics of the company are really balanced. In the first flagged tweet Pres. Trump said, without any evidence, that mail-in ballots are fraudulent. Twitter placed a label on it that allowed people to get the facts about mail-in ballots (Allyn, 2020). The second flagged tweet was related to protest against police brutality (Schroeder, 2020). In its official comments, a twitter label on the most recently flagged tweet reads “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public's interest for the Tweet to remain accessible" Apart from the capability users have to report tweets; twitter is increasing its use of artificial intelligence (AI). One of the ways Twitter uses artificial intelligence is to determine what tweet recommendations to suggest on users’ timelines with the goal of highlighting the most relevant tweets for every individual (Marr, n.d). Prior to this shift, Twitter would show its users tweets in reverse chronological order. Today, the algorithms scan and score thousands of tweets per second to rank them for every user’s feed. The social media platform also deployed AI to fight inappropriate and racist content on its platform as authorities in the UK and Germany increase measures and fines to prevent hate speech, fake news and illegal content on social media. In the first six months of 2017, Twitter took down nearly 300,000 terrorist accounts which were identified by its AI tools; in fact, 95 percent of suspended terrorism-related accounts were identified by algorithms rather than human users (Marr, n.d.) As Twitter continues to refine its algorithms, it has to balance the speed as well as quality of the algorithm’s review process to meet the requirements of the platform for real-time updates. In addition to the speed and quality of predictions, algorithms are assessed on their resource demands and maintainability over time. Now, optimizing the algorithm - in other words fine-tuning to improve identification or rejection of content – and accepting or rejecting tweets will be done by the same company and employees who were in charge of creating and monitoring such regulations. Sabelo Mhlambi the computer scientist and researcher whose work focuses on the ethical implications of technology, stated in an interview that “As we observe the actual discriminatory effects of AI and technology on segments of society, often historically marginalized people, intuitively we know something is wrong with its underlying assumptions” (People + AI Research, n.d.). Adding to the voices that connect ethics and personal behavior; Steven Mintz mentioned that “Social media ethics is no different than workplace ethics. Good ethics, is good ethics, and it does not matter whether you are tweeting at home or in the workplace. The core values of honesty, truthfulness, respect, and responsibility form the basis of social media ethics. (Mintz, 2017) Write a 1-2 page paper answering the following: 1. Identify the ethical issue for twitters management based only on the case. 2. Conduct research on Germany and the US on rules governing posting on twitter. Make a recommendation to twitter management as to whether they should use a global strategy or localized strategy when coming up with the rules. Ensure that you cite a tleast five sources from reputable journals/papers/websites to support your analysis.
Twitter Ethics
Twitter was created in March of 2006 and launched in July of that year. Since the beginning, it created its so called “Twitter Rules” for monitoring content and behavior. Many users vent out in twitter and in many occasions the comments could be vile, hurtful and disrespectful (Mintz, 2017). Or simply lies that go unverified or uncensored but were issued as if they were statements of truth. Nevertheless, only recently in the second trimester of 2020, twitter decided to become more proactive in applying its rules flagging two of President Trump recent tweets. This was despite of the fact that Pres. Trump has been tweeting as a private citizen since 2009 and produced thousands of tweets as President since 2016. Many has voiced their concerns and disapproval of Twitter selective process of very late intervention and wonder if the ethics of the company are really balanced.
In the first flagged tweet Pres. Trump said, without any evidence, that mail-in ballots are fraudulent. Twitter placed a label on it that allowed people to get the facts about mail-in ballots (Allyn, 2020). The second flagged tweet was related to protest against police brutality (Schroeder, 2020). In its official comments, a twitter label on the most recently flagged tweet reads “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public's interest for the Tweet to remain accessible"
Apart from the capability users have to report tweets; twitter is increasing its use of artificial intelligence (
The social media platform also deployed AI to fight inappropriate and racist content on its platform as authorities in the UK and Germany increase measures and fines to prevent hate speech, fake news and illegal content on social media. In the first six months of 2017, Twitter took down nearly 300,000 terrorist accounts which were identified by its AI tools; in fact, 95 percent of suspended terrorism-related accounts were identified by algorithms rather than human users (Marr, n.d.)
As Twitter continues to refine its algorithms, it has to balance the speed as well as quality of the algorithm’s review process to meet the requirements of the platform for real-time updates. In addition to the speed and quality of predictions, algorithms are assessed on their resource demands and maintainability over time. Now, optimizing the algorithm - in other words fine-tuning to improve identification or rejection of content – and accepting or rejecting tweets will be done by the same company and employees who were in charge of creating and monitoring such regulations.
Sabelo Mhlambi the computer scientist and researcher whose work focuses on the ethical implications of technology, stated in an interview that “As we observe the actual discriminatory effects of AI and technology on segments of society, often historically marginalized people, intuitively we know something is wrong with its underlying assumptions” (People + AI Research, n.d.).
Adding to the voices that connect ethics and personal behavior; Steven Mintz mentioned that “Social media ethics is no different than workplace ethics. Good ethics, is good ethics, and it does not matter whether you are tweeting at home or in the workplace. The core values of honesty, truthfulness, respect, and responsibility form the basis of social media ethics. (Mintz, 2017)
Write a 1-2 page paper answering the following:
1. Identify the ethical issue for twitters management based only on the case.
2. Conduct research on Germany and the US on rules governing posting on twitter. Make a recommendation to twitter management as to whether they should use a global strategy or localized strategy when coming up with the rules. Ensure that you cite a tleast five sources from reputable journals/papers/websites to support your analysis.
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