In a money-driven capitalist society, it’s normal for power to have some sort of, if not an obvious, relation to wealth. Sure, it leaves a lot to be desired, such as inequality of income, and the unfair nature of the poor being subjugated to the rich, but since it’s also humanity’s best (laid) plan for sorting things out, safe to say that we’ll be stuck with capitalism for a while. In hopes of alleviating the dilemmas of our current economy, social media has been a great medium for people to act against immoral conglomerate actions. Yet, have these companies learned from their mistakes? What has allowed the change of tide in, previously what had been a helpless case of, consumer against conglomerates?Kicked Off from Flights A month or two ago, Facebook was bombarded with comical parodies of United Airlines’ violent actions towards one of their passengers to free up a seat for their staff. Regardless of whether the situation called for extreme measures, one should know that beating up a consumer is bad for business. After the incident was properly cleared up, it was found that United wasn’t even following their own protocols correctly; in an event where a passenger had to disembark due to airline inconveniences, they were supposed to increase their bid for personal expenses until a passenger volunteered to get off. Instead they ran an algorithm to determine a random person who would have to take a later flight since no one volunteered for United’s initial reimbursement fee. So naturally, this played havoc with their stocks (14 billion dollars’ worth decline) and they had to officially apologize to the passenger. The funny thing is, Delta Airlines followed a similar routine just days after this whole fiasco. Exploding Phones Last year’s September was a straight up nightmare for Samsung. Their latest flagship model, the Note 7, was prone to overheating which would even lead to explosions. The fact that a company, known for numerous upgrades in their models within a year, released a faulty battery that costed more than its predecessor was disappointing to say the least. The ordeal cost Samsung approximately 5.3 billion dollars since they had to recall all the Note 7s (which were reported to be more than 2.5 million models in total). However, while they suffered greatly in the short run, their quick acknowledgment of their wrongdoings and appropriate crisis management allowed them to get back to their feet. In May 2017, Samsung’s profit had increased by 48% compared to last year, and the company has changed its take on battery designs for the better part, as seen in the new S8 models.Das Fraduo Volkswagen was like a proprietor for the whole trusty German automobile image. Or that is it was until it got caught cheating in its gas emissions test for new models. In 2015, Volkswagen was caught using illegal software to adjust the results of gas emissions from their vehicles which allowed them to get away with emitting 40 times the original limit for air pollution. Once the news became official, they were met with lawsuits from all over the world, including the American government, resulting in about 2.5 billion dollars’ worth of loss. The company tried to clean up after its mess by employing various business strategies related to cutting costs; expanding to new markets and increasing its investment in electrical vehicles. While it’s hard to say whether the incident was a turning point, Volkswagen undoubtedly has learned from its screw up since it has overtaken Toyota as the number one car manufacturer in the world. As one can see from the previous cases, consumers are now able to portray social injustice by taking part in SNS activities – be it creating parodies or commenting about how one feels about injustices, consumers and conglomerates are now on an even level where a healthy cycle of creating quality products and receiving feedback is now the norm. While the actions of those online may seem petty, it’s those very small additions that make up a collective movement, which a step forward in making our inevitably flawed society a better one.
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