Originally posted by jsherman999 Well, wait a minute here... You can't have a "personal blog, identifiable by real name" or you can't blog about your industry or employer? Two very different things, and I'm fairly certain any companies that try to restrict the former will find themselves on the wrong side of the law if it ever gets pushed.
My company (huge, huge, and shall stay unnamed
) started to go down that route and was basically warned by legal that it couldn't hold up, and they would have to retract the policy at some point anyway. Posting specifics about your employer on these sites is an easy way to get canned, though - unless you are truly whistle-blowing, in which case you may still have a long legal road ahead of you before vindication..
There are various sets of rules and regs - the point being each of us is subject to review of our personal internet postings and subject to employment action for violating a set of reules that were imposed on us after-the-fact of hire.
Some of the group can have a personal blog identifiable by name but cannot post anything at all about the employer or industry. Some cannot have a personal blog identifiable by name, but can blog anonymously (but are counseled not to blog about employer). One is subject to continual review of social networking sites. One is regulated and the government would require the ability to subpoena every blog post and email of every employee at will - so that persona may not have any personally identifiable blogs at all, and may not list the employer or discuss the company or industry on Facebook or Linked-In. One of us has personal accounts at social network sites that are rubber stamps of corporate-generated posts. One of us is subject to review of friends on social network sites and subject to a union-endorsed limitation of who such friends may / may NOT be and what may / may NOT be posted - and there may be no personal messages (no DM) between the account owner and certain classes of members of the social network site -
in accordance with a state law. Most people in that industry statewide simply canceled their social network accounts rather than comply since anonymous social network accounts aren't permitted either and they didn't want the hassle of compliance.
Each of us has a supervisory or executive role in our entity and each has a public relations department at our entity.
All of us are subject to immediate, unconditional dismissal with prejudice (loss of conditional deferred benefits, etc.) for violations of these rules. In twenty years some Supreme Court case may be voted in favor of us, but none of us is willing to take the risk to make effing blog posts - and we'll all be dead before it is decided anyway.
In fact, given that I buy and sell here and PM individuals with my personal info to do that, I'm probably in violation of my employer's policy if the wanted to make an issue of it.