Properly-used code of ethics can help prevent misinformation problems: Rashmi Dubé

It is designed to help organisations navigate the changing technological and political landscape in an ethical way. It is designed to empower stakeholders, including employees, to help ensure there is a healthy culture within the organisation and good decisions are being made for the stakeholders.

But can a set of mere guidelines created by organisations themselves actually prove to have any real benefit? Where are those who are supposed to police the matter? Where are the jaws with sharp pointed teeth to take a chunk out of the organisation for failing to comply with their own guidelines? There are none.

I began to wonder about all this this week, with more changes and moves happening at the headquarters of Twitter. It has lost its second head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, who was tasked with content moderation. This is on the back of Twitter disbanding its volunteer group at the end of last year which advised on such things as hate speech and of course, at the end of last month Twitter pulled out of the voluntary EU disinformation code.

How does this all apply to business?

There is overlap between a code of ethics and misinformation in that a code of ethics can help to prevent the spread of misinformation. For example, a code of ethics for journalists might require them to verify their sources and to report accurate information. By following these ethical guidelines, journalists can help to ensure that they do not spread misinformation.

Similarly, a code of ethics for software developers might require them to build software that is secure and reliable, and to disclose any known vulnerabilities or limitations.

By following these ethical guidelines, software developers can help to prevent the spread of misinformation or the misuse of their software.

More and more organisations are moving into a realm where, knowingly or unknowingly, there are a number of emerging ethical challenges.

This is not just with the supply chain but within the organisations and includes things such as discrimination, abuse of leadership/power, accounting issues and the navigation of when an employee is on the clock with social media and when they are off.

Ethics plays an important role in preventing the spread of misinformation.

By requiring individuals and organisations to follow ethical guidelines and to act with integrity, a code of ethics can help to ensure accurate and reliable behaviour and practices around how information is disseminated, and that harmful misinformation is prevented.

By organisations taking ethics into their own hands and actually practicing them, they will be in strong position to call others out.

Maybe we don’t need teeth for the code of ethics. Maybe we just need to not operate in the grey and shadows.

Rashmi Dubé is a partner at gunnercooke