My Social Dilemma (Part Four): As a Marketer, Am I Partially To Blame?
I kicked off this series asking myself an introspective question after watching The Social Dilemma. If social media is so bad…am I complicit as a digital marketer? Do I shoulder the blame for getting paid to play on these platforms?
I didn’t invent social media technology.
I didn’t design the mechanics that made screen time so addictive. My goal wasn’t to redirect people’s attentions away from the real world and focus instead of their news feed.
But I did make money on it. I built a livelihood knowing how the system worked inside and out. I helped some of the biggest brands in the world leverage it to increase their own bottom lines. My knowledge of how information spread across the internet helped other organizations get out of PR crises.
So how much blame or guilt should myself and other social marketers feel after watching The Social Dilemma? Are we responsible?
It kind of depends.
Not guilty…if you practice basic marketing ethics
Whether you are an agency practitioner serving client rosters or an in-house marketer working on their digital team, you have one primary obligation: to get a brand’s message in front of the right people in the most effective way possible.
In a lot of cases, that’s social media.
I mentioned in part two of this small series that it wasn’t always this toxic online. A lot of brands engaged in “surprise and delight” types of experiences. Some gave away unexpected free things to fans for no reason at all. Some turned a frustrated customer on Twitter into a brand champion by helping them solve a problem they may not have otherwise been able to. Some accounts (like Wendy’s) even go as far as roasting their followers in a way that makes your day.
A lot of brands have been able to leverage social media to better serve their customers. That helps the bottom line just as much (if not more) than any ad.
Do marketers need to have some understanding of how people consume information on their newsfeeds? Is a basic knowledge of human behavior when it comes to scrolling your phone a requirement to be effective? Not necessarily but it absolutely helps.
If you are using a social media platform for a marketing purpose and are not:
Misleading a user
Sharing information in bad faith
Promoting activity or ideas that are harmful or dangerous
…you’re not in a bad place .If you are helping your clients ethically achieve their goals and providing value to their customers at the same time - using social media - you’re dong your job well.
Marketers aren’t absolved of all responsibility
Even though we can technically sleep at night, it doesn’t mean we don’t have a role in the direction of [waves hands in the air] all of this. We have a responsibility to be good stewards of the platforms and find ways that add value to our clients/brands without contributing to the downward trajectory of civility online. That’s a given.
As noted in part two of this series, Edward Tufte quotes how the social platforms customers are called “users.” I would disagree with him on that. If we can agree that we’re not the customers but the product, then that makes the customers…well advertisers.
And capitalism has the potential be a persuasive voice.
We’ve started to see brand pushback to Facebook’s lack of action or care around hate speech and misinformation. These major brands withdrew their spend from Facebook as a sign of protest for them to get their act together.
Image via this story from The New York Times.
You may be thinking “great but I work for a brand that doesn’t have millions in ad spend. How can I make a difference?”
First, you should always do the right thing, even if it’s not going to move mountains.
Second, I think there is more value in small actions than we think. Smaller actions taken by a critical mass of marketers can ultimately make a much bigger difference than we realize. You may feel like you’re being about as effective as someone voting for a third-party in a Presidential election at the time. But doing something makes more progress than having an “it is what it is” mentality. Social platforms ultimately will have to meet the standards their customers collectively demand from them. Some of the most seismic reforms we’ve seen in our country have begun with grassroots efforts.
Side note: I realize this is a bit overly optimistic. Tech companies are almost too big, have somewhat held the publishing industry hostage, choked out some small businesses with a pay to play approach to reach. I also believe there will need to be some degree of government regulation on these companies at some point, however that manifests itself.
We do need to acknowledge that there are bad actors
While I believe most marketers are using social platforms to the best of their ability in as non-harmful ways as possible, there are indeed bad actors and I’d be irresponsible to gloss over that.
Microtargeting remains a troubling issue from an ethics perspective. ProPublica ran an experiment that found how Facebook would allow housing ads to exclude minorities from targeting. Google even allows for racially driven targeting, based on this Fortune article. Mozilla even talks about how microtargeting is disrupting our politics in a very negative way. While I don’t have a list of companies that have run ads like this, the fact that Facebook continues to allow it means they’re making money from it.
Even if there are limits from Facebook’s end on what ads they’re allowed to approve, there are bad actor ways to skirt around it that are potentially even more effective than ad targeting. Digital marketing agency Rally Forge was recently banned from Facebook for setting up a lot of fake Facebook accounts on behalf of Turning Point USA to help feign “organic engagement” (something the agency touts on their website….which I’m not going to link to). According to The Washington Post, “the inquiry led to the removal of 200 accounts and 55 pages on Facebook, as well as 76 Instagram accounts.”
How did they do it?
The group tapped a group of teenagers to share content on their behalf. This approach helped circumnavigate the guardrails tech companies had put in place around advertising. It’s much harder to get ahead of misinformation campaigns if they’re originating off the platform itself. The Verge gives more detail:
The people who participated shared a document with each other to coordinate the phrases they used to post to social media, and were instructed to edit the phrases to make the posts seem more real.
This is appalling on multiple fronts.
First, this is a pretty similar tactic used by foreign actors in their own disinformation campaigns…being used by someone domestically.
Second, they were using teenagers. Just think, if you were offered a few hundred bucks to re-share some content from a Google doc on Facebook as a 15-year-old, you’d probably do it. Easy money and your average high schooler isn’t going to be well versed in marketing ethics or FCC disclosure rules. This shady tactic cost the organization considerably less than an ad campaign would have, made the effort appear “grassroots” and was harder to be detected by those trying to actively stop it.
This is the type of marketing that makes social media (and the world) a worse place.
In short, don’t sacrifice your integrity for a quick win
Most marketers reading this have had this situation before: you have a client wanting results, quickly. There isn’t patience to let the long arduous work of brand building on social to play its course. You could even have a boss that’s this way, putting pressure on getting some big numbers quickly for that next reporting deck. In that process, a tactic may be presented. It’s something that may be a gray area. It may not be technically illegal. It may rub right up against the lines of terms of service. Or, maybe it does break a platform’s terms of service or generally understood ethical best practices…but you’re a small enough player that you’ll probably be able to get away with it this once and get the metrics you need.
It’s a slippery slope. Don’t do it, even if it costs you something. My old boss Mark DeMoss said it best:
“Even when it comes at a high cost, honestly is always a bargain.”
I believe marketers can and should continue to use social platforms for their occupations - but to just be responsible. We can continue engaging people on these addictive social platforms if we continue to hold ourselves to a higher standard. Even if that means holding ourselves to a higher standard than our clients - or even the platforms themselves - hold themselves. I promise, you’ll be able to sleep at night knowing you acted in good faith to the best of your abilities.