Slashdot Mirror
Social Networking Behavioral Agreements At Work?
r0nc0 writes "My company (a Fortune 15 company) has recently required everyone that accesses the company portal to accept or decline an 'agreement' that governs the use of social networking. It basically states that any discussion of the company or any of the work that you do, whether at the office or at home, must be governed by their rules of social networking. Naturally these rules are that you never say anything bad or negative about the company, nor do you say anything bad or negative about anything. It's presented like a EULA, but if you decline more than 3 times your manager is notified. Naturally I declined it each time until my manager complained to me about all the email he was getting about me not accepting the agreement, so I went ahead and accepted, knowing that anybody who cares would just post anonymously anyway. This is the first time I've run into a forced agreement about social networking, and the agreement is so broad that it can't possibly be enforced. I've tried pointing out that agreements like that only drive people away and aren't necessary anyway, but I might as well talk to a brick wall. Has anyone else out there run into social networking behavioral agreements like this?"
Working for a well-known retailer in the UK part-time while at University, one person I know lost their job because of (or at least partly because of, there *were* other factors) comments about the company and some people working for it on a social networking site. Shortly afterwards, the guidelines on computing were revised, and everyone asked to sign them, including a section on not posting negatively about the company or its employees "for example social networking sites or web-logs (blogs)"
The agreement covers his personal time as well. It's not that they let him loose on Facebook at the office, it's that they govern what he can do on Facebook at home.
I like music
In the 80s and early 90s, you saw quite a lot of real names, addresses, and phone numbers in peoples' USENET signatures. Of course most people had their accounts through school or work (or the military) and may not have had a choice of username, but it was definitely a different mindset.
My employeer(?) asks me to not mention who I work for on any kind of social networking site/chat rooms, but the reasoning for this is my work has implications which may lead people to believe that I am able to access things which I can't, and its a blanket request for the whole company, who I just happen to be covered with (I work in IT... lol, so unless its a request for data they are out of luck anyway)
I'm sure if people actually read their contracts this kind of thing is pretty normal/standard but sometimes presented under another light of "I wont do anything to make the company look bad, be it while I'm working, or while im not".
Even in my previous retail roles as a shop assistance all the contracts I've signed had this sort of agreement - covers them if you say something stupid/incriminating and they suddenly need you to "disappear" out of the company.
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
Shouldn't be too hard to guess.
1 Exxon Mobil
2 Wal-Mart Stores
3 Chevron
4 ConocoPhillips
5 General Electric
6 General Motors
7 Ford Motor
8 AT&T
9 Hewlett-Packard
10 Valero Energy
11 Bank of America Corp.
12 Citigroup
13 Berkshire Hathaway
14 International Business Machines
15 McKesson
From your "profile":
coolsnowmen (695297) is all alone in the world.
Slashdot does have a "friend" concept. I'm sure it's underutilized (and hopefully all dev time is spent elsewhere if that's true), but that gives it a social aspect. I've added a couple of people as friends because I've found things they said to be in line with my views and having a similar interest. I haven't really tried to contact them, but I will occassionally look to see what they are commenting on in case I missed an article that would be of interest to me.
That isnt how a signature works.
What matters is that you signed it, not what you signed.
If you sign your mortgage with your mother's name, you are still liable, not her.
No, the parent to your post got it right. It's not what you signed, it's the act of doing the signing that matters. A more detailed explanation can be found here.
I don't mean to be a grammar Nazi, but I think the word you're looking for is "omniscient". Omnipotent means "all powerful". Omniscient means "all knowing".
The FA of the US Constituition regulates the government, specifically the Congress but after interpretation the whole federal gov. The gov can't stop you from talking, especially about the gov itself. It has nothing to say about private parties, who can say what, where, when, and what the consequences are if for instance, you badmouth your boss while off work and he finds out about it.
Here is a decent summary.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
It just makes it more expensive to fight your suit against the megacorp. Since justice belongs to the party with the deeper pockets, megacorp gets away with it until some defense lawyer can carry the whole thing through, which reduces how many attorneys might take on what might be an otherwise open-shut case.