Comments on: When Blogging Gets You Fired

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:41:45 +0000

AFTER being embarrassed by one of its employees on micro-blogging site Twitter, Telstra will today release a new policy governing how staff can talk about the company online, even in private conversations. Its so-called social media “guardrails” require employees to identify themselves as working for Telstra and to not say anything that might damage the company or its commercial interests.

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,25357606-15306,00.html

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 10:20:56 +0000

Saad, you mean you cannot reach http://www.sciencetext.com from where you are? Wonder why?

Try – http://www.atjob.info/ or see if you get anywhere with http://proxy.org/cgi_proxies.shtml

By: Saad

Saad — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:22:42 +0000

Hi I’ve Tried That Site Which You Gave Me .. That Site Is’nt Working Also .. Mostly site are restricted banned here in uae .. plz do some thing i would be very thanksful to you all . ktnx

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 13:18:25 +0000

Saad, you may want to check out our sibling site – Sciencetext.com – on which there is a post about side-stepping filters…

By: Saad

Saad — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:46:15 +0000

Hi I want to open orkut .. i’ve many friends there i m in uae orkut is banned here please help me do something kthx

By: Andrew Sun

Andrew Sun — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 11:25:48 +0000

@ Orange:
Morally speaking however, I support speech has consequence. But things get complex when subjected to careful discussion. My point is rather to ask ‘what consequence’, which seems not clearly defined enough legally so that both camps would act in a *balanced* way. ‘A blogger moans about his boss’ is never blessed of course but what David Bradley assumed in this post seems more than this. He is assuming ’someone blogged (at home) about something not related to their own work, but someone else took offence, told the boss, and the boss fired them’. Do you agree blogging in itself, of no matter what content, should put one’s employment or career in danger?

By: Orange

Orange — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 21:59:14 +0000

What “legal right” is that? It’s not a question of the government arresting bloggers, but rather of employers taking action. If the local paper publishes your letter to the editor complaining about the prominent company you work for, would you really expect the company to take no notice? It’s the same situation when a blogger moans about his boss. Perhaps the current boss won’t notice, or won’t object; perhaps that won’t be seen as a (legally valid) reason to fire the blogger. It might certainly affect his chances of getting another job, though – if he’s got a history of public complaints about company policies or his coworkers, rather than dealing with the situation directly, that certainly says something about his communications and interpersonal skills, if nothing else.

There’s also a difference, I think, between this and whistle-blowing, which *is* protected already.

Actions have consequences, and so does speech.

By: Andrew Sun

Andrew Sun — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:28:10 +0000

When I start a blog I am not going to hide it, otherwise I will keep a personal diary instead. The blog-induced-firing problem should not be (called as) an issue of privacy technology on the WWW, I think. It is an issue of how to protect the legal right of bloggers, a new group (new?) of writers.

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:33:08 +0000

Vern, this is similar to the case that inspired my original post. Someone blogged (at home) about something not related to their own work, but someone else took offence, told the boss, and the boss fired them. I've just posted an item about online privacy controls and software that is kind of related to this.

By: Vern

Vern — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 06:45:54 +0000

In Thailand a girl was just fired for blogging at her own personal blog - but not even during work! Thailand is in a weird state right now, but even this is permissable here. She was blogging at her wordpress blog about a guy she was seeing, and her boss at her teaching job took offense and canned her! This was not a Thai guy from from my understanding, but a fellow expat.