What is right? What is wrong? What is black? What is white? What is ethical to do and what is considered unethical?
In this age of technology, we often face a lot of issues when surfing the web. Privacy & Personal Data Protection is often hidden under the blankets. Fake news are all over the place that you need to think twice about the credibility in the source of information you just obtained.
Today we are going to discuss about the things that we experience on the web all the time, but don’t talk about – probably because it isn’t as much of an interesting topic to bring up. Well fear not, for the inner creativity in me will do my best to bring out these “gray” topics for discussion in as much of an interesting fashion as possible!
‘Influencers’ or ‘Influenzas’ ?
No… I’m not talking about the COVID-19 Pandemic…even though this something we should probably be talking about at this juncture, but hey, lets leave this topic for the news to write about (psst… they are probably more credible than I am when it comes to this topic, so let me just stay within my topic of interest!)
Lets put this into a Singaporean context, do we know of anyone who might have possibly bought some followers in their conquest to become “famous”? Well, lets not point names, but you might be interested this video I’m about to show you!
*Some coarse words observed and unfiltered, viewers discretion is advised*
In a bid to find out the secrets of becoming a social media influencer, Singaporeans are coming up with innovative measures to achieve it. It seems difficult to achieve, but all you need is some patience and a few hundred dollars to spare. Maybe that explains why almost half of influencers in Singapore are involved in the instagram followers fraud?
Living Fly? or Living like a fly?
Don’t get it? Let me explain. The former “fly” meant as a slang to describe people as being cool, amazing, and awesome. The latter simply describes a typical annoying housefly which everyone hates!
The person for discussion is non other than the infamous…
With a whopping 2 million followers on Instagram, Lil Tay might just be the youngest internet sensation for all the wrong reasons!
An illusion it might be, many of her followers still remain loyal to her simply because of the contents she posts – of all the luxurious properties and cars that she don’t own, topped with a personality full of attitude and ‘swag’. For a 9 year old, it’s quite an amazing feat to achieve such level of ‘success’!
The Game of Truth (not Thrones)
We’ve seen so many things happen on the internet, but how many of them that we unanimously like, retweet, and share to our peers do we truly know are fake?
Fake news, clickbaits, misleading articles, we’ve all seen them in some way or another. Are they considered ethical? Are there rules and regulations imposed on the web that can protect us from such damaging incidents?
Here is an article that helps identify fake news, and provides a guidelines as to how to deal with such situations.
Privacy or Piracy?
Saving your password in Google Chrome? Keying in your personal information on Facebook? Do you really trust that your credentials are well kept in their system?
Bringing Singapore back into context, even the mightest and well protected Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) and the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) has had dozens of their employee information leaked.
Our personal information might have been sold to big companies as marketing prospects. We don’t have much of a concrete idea what exactly they are doing with our information, since we agreed to the terms and conditions and willingly provided our information when creating our Facebook, Google accounts.
Well, here’s my question to you guys – how much is too much? To what extent that our information being released into major companies as prospecting data, is considered unethical? Let me know in the comments below.
The Digital Marketing Handbook 
hi Jason, thank you for the insightful post that pointed out some of the issues that are prevalent in today’s world. I was one of the victim who believed the tweet where the water became clear and swans returned due to COVID. I was really bummed out realising that it is fake.. With that, I feel that everyone has to do our parts to be more vigilant while browsing the internet. To the best of my knowledge, Singapore’s fake news laws, the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act, also known as PROFMA has came into effect on 2 October 2019. The objective of PROFMA is to eliminate false news or misleading facts on online and social media platforms. Persons or companies who breach the act will be liable to fine or imprisonment accordingly. With laws and regulations in place, I believe that online users will be more responsible and not to spread false information.
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Hello SP,
Thank you for sharing these valuable information with myself and the rest of the audience who read this post! It is really heartwarming to know that the Singapore government has realized this issue early and stepped up to initiate the PROFMA to better protect the interests of its people when it comes to handling fake news! I believe everyone should do their part in check for the credibility of contents, before they are being shared about, that would create a better community and a safer platform for all of us when surfing the net! 🙂
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I personally feel that collection of personal data in accordance to some websites are not unethical, especially if we consent to it. For example, if we are using a food delivery app, we would have to enter our address if not how do we ensure we will receive the food? Or if we purchase online and have delivery coming to us, we would also need to key in our addresses hence, personal data collection is needed for proper businesses. However, if our data is leaked out to dangerous hands, that’s when we should fear.
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I totally agree! There are many gray areas towards such occurences, but i guess at the end of the day, data security plays a huge part in protecting people’s information, and prevent them from being handed over to bad hands!
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I actually did not know about the Venice news until I saw your post about it, thank you! I believe I am one of those gullible few that buys into whatever he sees on social media, but your article has shed light on different perspectives that I would very much like to practice!
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Hey Jeremy!
I know right!! Not everything on the net can be trusted, nowadays people fish for fake news or contents just to gain engagement or attention, its so unethical. Regardless, thank you for the support! I hope you enjoyed the contents that I published so far! 🙂
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Hi Jason! I really enjoyed reading your insightful post. While the act of influencers buying followers to become “famous” is not something I would mind, I am still quite intrigued by the methods these influencers resort to — spending big bucks to gain fame. I am more concerned of the privacy issues we face as end-users of social media platforms. I do find it really upsetting that my personal information may have already be sold to third-party companies without my knowledge/permission. I guess it is also our duty to stay vigilant and provide our personal data only to websites that we trust.
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Very relatable post, especially in this time where netizens are very selective with the kind of information they are exposed to mainly because of their short attention span. Influencers and some media-related companies mainly tend to use click baits and misleading news to achieve the viral result. For the privacy portion, considering the charges that Mark Zuckerberg through the allegedly unethical privacy practices through Facebook. I guess at this time and age where information and data are exchanged so rapidly through social media, we can never know what the information we provide on our social media is being used for or even against us.
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In this new generation and society that we live in, fake news have gradually became a norm. This trend has became so common that people seem to just take it as it is. Many a times we all forward news articles which we did not bother to verify, or maybe even barely reading the headline – I too, am guilty of that, especially in this fast-paced world where news spread faster than wildfire.
But back to the question that you have posted, are they considered ethical? This really sets me thinking as the importance on the issue of ethics seems to have greatly decreased over the years.
Perhaps, we should take it upon ourselves to make a difference and be mindful of our actions by verifying the authenticity of any news before we forward it out. Only then, we can be part of the solution and not the problem. Thank you for your sharing Jason. It was a wonderful read for me!
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I just got to know that the tweet on Venice’s clear water is fake, how disappointing! Thank you for highlighting it in your article. We truly don’t know how credible online information can be nowadays, especially in difficult times like this where people spread information without any confirmation out of fear.
How safe are we in the digital world? I find your topic on online privacy really relevant as I was doing some reading on articles on digital security. Most of the time users accepted terms and conditions without knowing what they are getting into exactly and the platform would only allow access with user consent, hence rendering it unusable if users do not agree. I hope people can be more vigilant when using the net!
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