When Social Media Goes Bad

On Monday, we covered a lecture regarding the social media situation that the food giant Nestle got into with Greenpeace, a activist group. The conflict revolved around the issue of Nestle using palm oil in its products which indirectly was destroying rainforests in Indonesia. Greenpeace got into a bitter fight with Nestle on their Facebook wall after tehy were told there comments regrading the issue would be taken down when posted on Nestles wall. Greenpeace fought back by launching a graphic viral video showing how eating a KitKat bar essentially was hurting the orangutan population due to the destruction of the rainforest. The information of this video traveled quickly and eventually was taken down from Youtube, ultimately creating more buzz about the video. This conflict took place over the spam of just 4 days and some would argue destroyed much of Nestles image and credibilty regarding the issue as well as their products. In the end, Nestle took a great hit from the situation but it wasn't without the help of social media. Had all the information not been posted on Facebook, who knows if Nestle even would have been targeted for what was going on? Perhaps the information would not have traveled quickly enough to make a significant impact.