Ethics and Compliance in the Age of Fake News
*Adriana Sforcini Lavrik Esper
Man at birth receives from nature a hardware, however, he lacks a good software to operate it. This software is called ethics, a word of Greek origin(ethos), which means way of being or character. It is up to the human being, during his existence, to adopt and let himself be conducted by this software.
Ethics can be understood as the daily and constant practice of reflection on what we are going to do and the reasons that led us to take a certain attitude, given that freedom of choice and the vulnerability of the human condition are the bases of ethics.
The ethical issue has been debated since ancient times and has come to the fore with the passing of time in all sectors, including the corporate world.
Successful companies are those that have a strong sense of social responsibility, the result of ethical behaviour. Ethics and social responsibility go hand in hand. It is no wonder that our Federal Constitution includes in its fundamental clauses that property shall serve its social function (art. 5, XXIII).
Today the only morally acceptable profit is that obtained ethically. Ethical companies subordinate their activities and strategies to prior ethical reflection and seek to make decisions in a socially responsible manner (i.e. fulfilling their social function).
One of the pillars of compliance resides in the transparency in the conduction of businesses, which includes the commitment with the ethical principle of truth, basis of socially responsible decisions. The cost of not complying with the truth may be great and bring damages, many times irreversible.
When publicly issued a statement contrary to the truth takes on a particular gravity, examples are not lacking, such as the case of housewife Fabiane Maria de Jesus[1], who died after being beaten because of a rumour generated by a page on a social network.
Fake news did not come about with the social networks. In ancient Rome, for example, rumours were spread to praise some and denigrate others. But fake news needs a society willing to believe it.
Nietzsche, in the 19th century, said that truth and lies are constructions that arise from life in the herd and the language that corresponds to it. The man of the herd calls truth that which keeps him in the herd and calls a lie that which threatens or excludes him from the herd. Plato, who died in 348 BC, in his Allegory of the Cave also describes this fear of man seeing the truth and being excluded from his environment.
In today's connected world, news knows no boundaries, parodying Plato, the cave has been expanded. A simple access to the internet, through any device, exposes us to a wide range of information from various sources, reliable or not, with different views and purposes. And each one adjusts to this information according to their surrounding reality, which is why it is important to educate ourselves on the subject.
Research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has found that fake news spreads 70% faster than real news. A true post reaches on average a thousand people, a false one can reach 100 thousand people. If it is linked to politics the spread is 3 times faster.
The digital world has made it easier for disinformation to be spread on a large scale and this has generated many concerns. Some countries (e.g., Germany, France, Malaysia) are creating or improving regulations to curb the spread of fake news. In 2019, Brazil enacted Law 13,834 that punishes (including with imprisonment) the dissemination of fake news with the aim of affecting electoral candidacy. A Bill (PL 2.630/2020) is currently in Congress to combat the dissemination of false content on the internet.
Schools around the world are also incorporating in the education of their students the concept of news checking as a way to combat misinformation. The University of Cambridge (UK) has participated in the development of an online educational game, the Bad News Game[2], which aims to demonstrate the methods used to spread false messages.
In this constantly changing technological world, we have to remain vigilant and do everything possible to protect our societies and our organisations. And several initiatives, including self-regulation, have stood out in this regard.
In February 2018, a group of academics created in California the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation[3], with recommendations for the review processes of companies involved in the activity of content moderation in digital media, when removing content and/or suspending accounts.
Ethics needs to be at the foundation of digital transformation and will be critical to business survival. In this spirit, some companies are reorganising themselves to adopt more ethical strategies digitally, including the creation of internal committees and partnerships with universities to help them analyse the application of ethics in technology. And it's no wonder, as giants in the digital world such as Google and Facebook have already lost millions of dollars in market value after announcing they would be investigated for unfair practices.
And the network itself is in charge of denouncing companies that are not committed to the truth in the digital environment. Groups have formed on social networks in order to combat hate speech and fake news. One of them is the Sleeping Giants, which aims to persuade companies to remove their advertisements from the media that publish false news . The collective started its activities in Brazil in May 2020 and has already denounced several portals that disseminated fake news, as well as companies that used to advertise in these media.
Responsibility towards truth is not limited to not telling or repeating lies. It is also about not remaining silent when an injustice is committed. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) already said: "truth is corrupted as much by lies as by silence".
Digital ethics means user trust and the market will also keep an eye on this good practice. Disruptive technology has also brought us innovations in the field of ethics studies, including new disciplines, such as Data Science Ethics, which are starting to emerge worldwide. And this is very good.
We need to always and increasingly talk about ethics, only then the software that drives our hardware will always be up to date and maintain its excellence.
*AdrianaSforcini Lavrik Esper, is a lawyer at Miguel Silva & Yamashita Law Firm and a professor of Ethics and Digital Compliance
[1] https://veja.abril.com.br/especiais/linchamento-guaruja-fake-news-boato/, accessed July/2020
[2] Bad News Game, in: https://www.aboutbadnews.com/social-impact-game/, accessed July/2020.
[3] Santa Clara Principles, in: https://santaclaraprinciples.org/cfp/, accessed July/2020.
[4] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Giants, accessed July/2020