Originally posted by monochrome 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.
The above is rife with privacy issues - the state law you reference notwithstanding. And I was just about to say something like:
Quote: 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.
We can bet that there will be statutes in place protecting privacy and even extending basic free speech legal protections into the public-private overlap that sort of falls into a grey area now - grey areas companies are willing to step into and enact their own de facto law. That's not gonna stand if it ever gets pushed, and I suspect it will, and not twenty years from now. People are going to start getting canned for incredibly silly reasons, and when that starts happening we'll see the legal lines get firmed up, and moved pretty far away from what you describe above.
I think the problem here is that social networking, blogging, etc is really still incredibly new, and these issues have barely been tested in court yet, so the companies/employers are free to take an overly aggressive stand.
But I hear what you say - until there is real protection, it's just personally not worth it right now to take the risk.
Quote: 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.
A great example of how the policy as stated allows an over-the-top interpretation and a completely inappropriate and damaging response.
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Last edited by jsherman999; 04-14-2012 at 08:05 PM.