My view is I would tell companies to be conscientious of their social media approach. Of course it is only ethical for companies to treat ‘online’ people the same as they do ‘offline’ people, however for a company to understand the online disinhibition effect can be helpful. To some of us, this might seem obvious however, to others it might not.

In online communication you do not have visual or auditory cues that we have in real life. In person, we can see facial expressions, body language, and hear the tone of the persons voice. You can say the exact same phrase so many different ways in person, yet barely detect the difference in written form. How a person interprets a message depends solely on how THEY read it and wish to interpret it. Factors ranging from how you grew up, to your personality, to the mood you are in at the moment of reading the message will affect how you react back. We all know how conversations or arguments online can get heated and misinterpreted fairly quickly, where as they might not have in person.

The point to take away is that online communication has a lot more confounding variables that affect how we communicate. Sure the fundamentals are still there; yes it is a conversation, however, there is a bit more to it.

For example: A person writes an email with the intent of being kind and sweet, yet their reader thought they came across as condescending. Who’s fault is it? Neither.

I would agree with you and say be careful you don’t go too deep down the rabbit hole, however, it can benefit companies to keep this information in mind.

I will be writing a blog tomorrow about online conflict resolution for conversations that do go a bit sticky.

My advice that people are people still holds. Disinhibition, as you call it, gets more people into trouble than anything. If those overly dis-inhibited people had taken my advice and thought about the Internet as being equivalent to a conversation, they would’ve avoided posting that seriously career-limiting memo.

Companies, moreover, would be even more advised to treat their online social interactions in this way. You’re writing about marketing solutions on this blog. Would you advise your marketers to act without inhibition, or to treat people as people no matter the medium? Put another way, what do you think Seth Godin would do?

The disinhibition comes about when people allow themselves to forget that there is a person at the other end of whatever artificial meeting they’re communicating with, and it is often a mistake to allow yourself to go too far down that path.