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Worker Rights Extend To Facebook, Says NLRB

Posted by timothy on from the ends-at-my-nose dept.

wjousts writes "American Medical Response of Connecticut had a policy that barred employees from depicting the company 'in any way' on Facebook or other social media. The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that this policy runs afoul of the National Labor Relations Act, which gives employees the right to form unions and prohibits employers from punishing workers for discussing working conditions."

36 of 340 comments (clear)

  1. US Employment Rights by Manip · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Frankly I'm a little surprised - since in my experience employees are more or less slaves in the US. The entire legal structure seems set up for whatever is easiest and cheapest for employers to do whatever they wish. Employees can sue, and that is often the de-facto suggestion whenever anyone in the US has a problem, but frankly a lot of situations could be avoided if they had a strong legal framework like every other developed country.

    No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc. It is like working in the third world. Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.

    1. Re:US Employment Rights by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Spoken like someone who's never worked in the US.

      Spoken like someone who's never worked somewhere better.

    2. Re:US Employment Rights by silentcoder · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Excuse me.
      I live in a third world country.
      We have mandatory minimum leave. We have a limit on hours worked (40 hours per week, max of 5 hours overtime - it's ILLEGAL to allow more, and if it happens you have to give the time back as time off in the SAME week to compensate), we have mandated 1-hour lunch breaks and mandated 15-minute coffee breaks at least once per 4 hours, we have complete health and safety coverage including a law that states that in the event of *any* injury on duty no matter how minor or severe the employer is legally liable for any and all direct and indirect medical expenses resulting from said injury (hence most employers have IOD insurance), employers are not allowed to discriminate (among other things this bans the creation of any rule that only applies to one gender, race etc), you aren't allowed to fire anybody unless they've had three written warnings, written warnings can only be issued after a hearing where the employee has the right to council...

      Sorry - but the US is actually WORSE than at least some third world countries when it comes to workers rights.

      Oh and in case you were wondering, our economy is growing and our corporations do just fine despite these laws.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    3. Re:US Employment Rights by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc. It is like working in the third world. Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.

      Dude, you want to pull that head out of your ass?

      No holiday time, no sick leave

      I'll give you the sick leave, but that's because almost everyone blows it on 3-day weekends, and never gets used for the intended purpose.

      no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations

      FMLA + OSHA, I'll let you look up those two. There are restrictions on hours worked and mandated breaks for non-exempt employees.

      can be fired without notice or reason

      Yeah, this sucks, and it's called at-will employment, but not all states are like this.

      can legally discriminate

      Really? REALLY? Just because it happens and people can get away with it doesn't mean it's legal.

    4. Re:US Employment Rights by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc. It is like working in the third world. Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.

      Huh? I live and work in the US. Never heard of anyone not getting holiday time or maternity leave. Sick time, I'm not as sure about.Agreeing to the hours worked and what you'll get paid for them is part of the hiring process. There are mandated breaks where unions are involved, outside of that, everywhere I've seen or heard of no one cares if you go out and take a smoke break or grab some water at the cooler or whatever once in a while. You're combining laying off with firing (which do have different legal implications, though I'm not sure exactly what they are, except that firing is far worse to have on your record). They cannot legally discriminate. Health and safety regulations are significantly higher than the third world, hence why so many companies want to outsource to India, China, etc. I mean, sure, maybe if you're working part time pushing baskets at the supermarket (or working through a contract in Michigan, like me), your benefits are going to suck. But "suck" is not the same as "You are forced to work 14 hours a day for almost no pay with no benefits at all ever!"

      Health insurance is screwed up here. Health care is fine, in fact, excellent, as long as you don't go to Dr. Bob's Illegal Corner Surgery or something. Costs are high, yes, but that's partially because of idiots abusing the system, and partially to help pay for the medical research and advancements that help the health care to be good enough to keep everyone living a long time despite the obesity and stupidity epidemics among the general populous.

    5. Re:US Employment Rights by silentcoder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >Spoken like someone who's never worked in the US.

      Yes we foreigners know that you get to try and negotiate such things in contracts - and if you're lucky enough to be going for a rare job you may get decent ones. We also know what it's like to have sane levels of these things set out in LAW, and negotiate for extras ON TOP OF that.
      My country requires every employer to give employees at least 14 days a year of holiday time. But I have 21 - I got to start negotiating above that, but even the factory janitor can at least get his 14 days.

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      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    6. Re:US Employment Rights by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      - Is an employee considered property, or an 'asset'?

      An asset. They cannot sell me to a different company without my consent.

      - Can an employee be forced to do labor?

      If it's part of their contract and "forced" here means "or you'll be fired"? Yes. It's called being expected to do the job you were hired to do. Not a difficult concept.

      - Does an employee who does not want to do said labor walk away?

      They can. But part of real life is sometimes having to do things you don't want to do.

      And now consider these questions knowing that the majority of people can't just quit his/her job (the ob(li)vious answer)... If 'running away' and living on the street is your only escape you are a slave by my definition.

      Everyone can "just quit" their job. Many choose not to because they need the money. Those who do not like their job? They search for a new job, and when they find one, quit their old job and move on. Seriously, what the heck do you want from a job? The ability to do whatever the crap you want, regardless of your contract? Sounds like you either want to live off the welfare system or in the auto worker's union.

      Also, while we're at it, a definition of slave:

      Slavery (also called thralldom) is a form of forced labour in which people are considered to be the property of others. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand wages.

      If I have to explain why that doesn't apply to employees, you're hopeless.

    7. Re:US Employment Rights by silentcoder · · Score: 5, Interesting

      What the hell are you on about ?
      How is labour laws that protect workers from exploitation (the ones who don't get those things in their contracts because there are plenty of other people who can do the job) equated to wellfare ?

      There are NO tax dollars spent on ANY of those things. Nobody is giving the poor money here. What we ARE doing is making sure that those people who do their jobs get a fair and decent wage, decent safety conditions, holidays (which ARE a health and safety issue) etc. by making laws that employers are required to comply with.
      If anything - those laws ENCOURAGE people to work. If your welfare check is better than the janitor job which is all you can get - of course you'll take wellfare. If the law makes sure that janitor job is better - then most people will take the job.

      It's easy to say only "lazy" people can't get "Good jobs" - right - would you like to live in a country where there are no janitors at all ? No factory workers ? Where all the MacDonalds' have closed because there is nobody left who would possibly want to flip burgers to feed their kids ?

      Sorry -but those people can't get your kind of benefits from negotiation - they have zero negotiating power, but they are still human beings and they deserve to have their human rights and human dignity protected by the state -that's the ONLY valid purpose the state has in fact ! This includes protecting those rights from unscrupulous employers. It also makes sound economic sense to establish labor laws that ensure employees will always be better off than welfare cases as it reduces your welfare burden.

      How sad it must be to live in a country with such a narrowminded selfish culture that you honestly seem to believe that a law saying if you do your job you MUST be given at least 2 weeks holiday and if they fire you a fair hearing with council and a notice period with pay to find another job in so you don't lose your house and end up on the streets unable to ever do so... that laws like this are indistinguishable from WELLFARE to you

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      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    8. Re:US Employment Rights by silentcoder · · Score: 5, Informative

      This would be the Republic of South Africa.

      What makes it a third world country is this: 43% unemployment, 76% illiteracy, 82% of the population living below the official poverty line (that is below taxable income, with welfare sustainance from the other 18% - who earn salaries comparable to Europe - in fact most of us work for European countries who find they can pay us solid market related salaries and still save truckloads of money because of the favorable exchange rate).

      We have massive poverty, massive problems of all sorts to deal with. But our government relies for it's vote massively on the unions who include most of that 82% poor people as members, if the unions ever tell their members to vote for the opposition - this government couldn't possibly survive an election.
      Result: damn good labour laws, regardless of whether you are in the rich 18% or the poor 82%

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      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    9. Re:US Employment Rights by vlm · · Score: 3, Insightful

      - Is an employee considered property, or an 'asset'?

      An asset. They cannot sell me to a different company without my consent.

      You are mostly correct, with this exception that I LOLed at. With very few exceptions, no employee consent is ever required as part of a merger/sale/takeover/bankruptcy.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    10. Re:US Employment Rights by dkleinsc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Spoken like someone who's never worked in the US

      ... in a white-collar office job like yours.

      If you want a significantly different picture from your own employment experience, read about what was going on in the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia before the big accident. Or the many workers who are killed or maimed in preventable industrial accidents. Or the retail workers forced to work longer than the hours they put on their time card. Or the workers fired for trying to unionize. Or the workers fired for complaining about safety regulation violations. Or even better, get to know some blue-collar folks and hear about their life on the job.

      Assuming you're a techie of some sort, your job probably involves sitting comfortably in an office thinking, typing, and discussing. Most jobs are nothing like that.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    11. Re:US Employment Rights by silentcoder · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >If employers have to provide more benefits to lower-level employees, that means they are spending less elsewhere. That displacement will likely come out of taxable commercial expenses, thus both taking tax money from the government and damaging the growth potential of that organization (reducing future taxable income).

      I've heard this argument advanced and I have two problems with it. Problem one: you are thinking like a typical American who believes the purpose of the economy is wealthy corporations. It's not. The purpose of economy is wealthy citizens. Now let's see what is the average country ratio of employers to employees ? 1 to 1000 doesn't sound unreasonable - which group should the government be protecting here ?
      Secondly - it's a false argument anyway. It's wrong on two levels. Firstly there is the mistake that if companies spend more on employees that's bad for the economy - it's not, it's not even bad for the company (except in the very short term) - increasing the buying power of employees means you have increased buying, consumption, purchasing- when all companies do that, they all benefit from each others employees buying their products more. Henry Ford understood that, and took it further making it a corporate policy to ensure that every single employee he has (including the damn janitor) can afford to buy his product. Result -damn near all of them did, that alone meant enough sales to cover the costs of those higher salaries, every sale there-after was a bonus. Sadly FORD forgot that lesson. The other reason is this: most of these other benefits are scientifically proven to increase overall productivity so in fact, they don't cost the employers anything, they all pay for themselves in increased production. Sadly that reimbursement doesn't show up on a balance sheet -well it is there but it's very nearly impossible to quantify and prove, which is why shortsighted management tends to ignore it. After all - by the time the productivity and morale hits an all-time low due to horrible working conditions, the employees are unionizing and you end up giving it to them anyway to stay in business, I won't be CEO anymore anyway - I'll have long since retired with more money than God.

      >Jobs like janitor/fry cook/night stocker are all great jobs for teens and college kids. They're terrible places to find yourself at 40.

      Not it's not -but not everybody is smart enough to get better. Like it or not - we don't all have the talents to be anything more than menial laborers, even if we did - education cost money - if your parents didn't have it, chances are you aren't going to have it either.

      > I wouldn't want to be part of society that encouraged people to spend 40 hours a week doing such menial labor when they're older.

      Of course it's good to encourage and promote education and reduce the number of people in that position - but a significant number of people will never have the option - they just aren't that smart. How would you reach this panacea you dream off ? Some kind of final solution to the idiot problem ?!?!?!

      >Lastly, severance benefits in the US typically amount to unemployment pay. I personally know people in the US who have been living off of unemployment for over 2 years. This is exactly the kind of thing you are arguing in favor of here, and the kind of "welfare mom" I feel is an unnecessary burden on the government.

      That happens here too - but why on earth are you taking ONE SINGLE labor law and then dismissing ALL labor laws because of the problems with that one ? How is making sure a pregnant woman can take maternity leave and have a job to come back to not GOOD for keeping people employed? How is making sure that if your child gets sick you can take time off to care for him in the same category ? How is making sure that before you're fired over bullshit you get a chance to explain your actions with council and a fair hearing remotely similar ?
      You're just throwing the baby out with the bathwater now.

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      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    12. Re:US Employment Rights by Twanfox · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unless my memory is faulty, holiday time and sick leave is an optional benefit that a company MAY provide, but is not required to. I'm not sure if maternity leave is codified into law, but there is the FMLA which allows for some UNPAID time off. To be honest, there really isn't any restriction on time worked. If your hourly, the company doesn't want to pay you overtime, but you could work it if they paid it (or if they're breaking the law and requesting it off-hours). Salaried folk I don't believe have an upper limit, and this is routinely exploited by employers. I was going to say mandatory breaks are set into law, but just a quick google search tells me that it isn't federal if it is, so it may just be my state. That and my state is an 'at-will' state of employment, which pretty much means yes, I could get fired for any reason (except for the rare case where you can prove discrimination).

      I hate to say it, but most of those points are actually accurate. Most of those things are not law, just common practice to provide. If an employer desired not to offer them (usually for factory-style positions), then they won't be held accountable in court for doing so.

      So did you actually work in the US too, or are you just assuming the benefits given to you are actually guaranteed, and not something nice the employer offered?

    13. Re:US Employment Rights by Notquitecajun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seeing those labor laws, I bet it's rather a big factor in unemployment. I know SA has a ton of other issues that are going to take decades to get out of, but some of those rules would be a BIG headache for an entrepeneur who cannot afford the overhead.

    14. Re:US Employment Rights by Notquitecajun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ummm...forced to do labor? What the heck am I getting paid for? Wait, not posting on slashdot...

    15. Re:US Employment Rights by ptbarnett · · Score: 4, Informative

      With very few exceptions, no employee consent is ever required as part of a merger/sale/takeover/bankruptcy.

      If employees own a substantial percentage of the stock, it's required.

      The purchasing company can also require that a high percentage of employees accept the offer to work for them before the sale is completed. And no, that's not hypothetical.

    16. Re:US Employment Rights by Twanfox · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How nice that your employer lets you take a vacation day when you have a migraine so bad that you can't even see the light of day. Tomorrow you'll be fine, but today, it's vacation. Get out and enjoy it!

      The reason for doing that is because they know that people will sometimes be down with a day or two illness, but be fine later. If they can burn up that pool of vacation time then, then they won't have to worry about the employee taking that time off later. The net result? I'm sure you probably have more people in your workplace with contagious diseases than would otherwise be if they were allowed to stay home that day and not infect the rest of the workplace. Great call on the employer's part. Now, instead of being down one person for a day or two, now they'll be down several people for several days as the illness runs its course through their workforce.

      While that scenario is overly simplified, it is probably far more common than to have someone need to take sick time for long enough that a doctor needs to be called.

      My employer has a different simple solution. They call it sick/personal time. You can use it at your discretion, but if you use it for personal days and then get sick, you get to take it unpaid, and that's really no fun. It allows us employees to meter when we need to take a day for our mental welfare and become productive again. It also has that hefty drawback that we, as employees, try to avoid.

    17. Re:US Employment Rights by Improv · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Screw those entepreneurs. The chance to use lower-cost workers may inspire them to hire people in poorer nations, but that should not be confused with allowing a race to the bottom when it comes to working standards. The whole world would be better off if rules like that were global. Let competition be over other things, with good standards for working conditions. Anyone, entepreneur or not, who runs a factory with inhumane working conditions belongs in jail.

      --
      For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
    18. Re:US Employment Rights by delinear · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What, allowing your employees to take holidays and regular breaks, taking responsibility if they get injured on the job and not being able to arbitrarily fire them without demonstrating poor workmanship or behaviour on their part? Yes, that must be really onerous. Hate to tear down your strawman, but we have all those rules in the UK and we don't have 43% unemployment (the last time it even hit 10% was almost twenty years ago, during the recession). Treating your employees with some respect does not, contrary to what appears to be popular belief amongst certain people, lead to the downfall of society.

    19. Re:US Employment Rights by Takichi · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The US isn't a dumptruck you can throw blanket assessments on; it's a series of states with their own laws that extend those set federally. Besides, I think the main issue isn't that there aren't laws setup to protect workers, it's that they are often poorly enforced. Enforcement is carried out by state and federal attourneys general, and by individual lawsuits initiated by the public. Perhaps other countries are better at enforcement, or maybe the public is less inclined to put up with unfair practices. But keep in mind, there is an active slave trade in all developed countries, so presuming the infallibility of a certain type of government or framework of law isn't realistic.

    20. Re:US Employment Rights by mcgrew · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you want a significantly different picture from your own employment experience, read about what was going on in the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia before the big accident. Or the many workers who are killed or maimed in preventable industrial accidents. Or the retail workers forced to work longer than the hours they put on their time card. Or the workers fired for trying to unionize. Or the workers fired for complaining about safety regulation violations. Or even better, get to know some blue-collar folks and hear about their life on the job.

      All those things are illegal, but the problem is the laws are laxly enforced when they're enforced at all.

      The mine "accident" was caused by an action by the company they'd been repeatedly fined for. The corporations consider these fines just a cost of doing business.

      Now, if a normal person breaks a law and someone dies as a result, they'll be charged with negligent homicide at the very least. I'm appalled that nobody in power at the mining company was criminally charged, but I'm not surprised.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    21. Re:US Employment Rights by s73v3r · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The corporations consider these fines just a cost of doing business.

      And that's the problem. If they don't want to do it, and if they can afford it, they just won't do it. Meanwhile, the workers suffer.

    22. Re:US Employment Rights by ultranova · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I know SA has a ton of other issues that are going to take decades to get out of, but some of those rules would be a BIG headache for an entrepeneur who cannot afford the overhead.

      If your business can't survive with this "overhead", then it never was profitable in the first place, except by shifting its externalities into the society at large - which made it a net loss for the economy, so good riddance. That's what this "overhad" is: the costs resulting from your business. It's only fair that you should pay it, and also a requirement for working markets.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    23. Re:US Employment Rights by s73v3r · · Score: 3, Informative

      Compare all those "benefits" to pretty much everywhere else in the developed world. You'll find the US is sorely lacking.

    24. Re:US Employment Rights by xero314 · · Score: 3, Informative

      I currently work 80 hours a week for two weeks straight, then take two full weeks off.

      Unless you happen to work in a job where a larger portion of your reported hours is time spent resting (e.g. On Duty Emergency Services personnel), then who ever is paying you is making a huge mistake.

      The 40 hour work week did not grow out of any workers rights movement, It came from a study in productivity. This initial study showed that productivity drop over the long run if employees worked greater than 36 hours a week. Since there have been many further studies showing that working higher number hours reduces productivity.

      In your case (with the exception listed above) you are working at less than 70% efficiency and possibly as low as 50% efficiency. Meaning your employer (even if you are self employed) is getting no more than 56 hours of actual productive work for every 80 hours you work. If your hours were cut to 40 hours and a second employee was added who also worked 40 hours (assuming the task can be partitioned as such) your employer would get at least and additional 24 hours of productivity per week.

      The situation gets far worse if you are a knowledge worker, such as an engineer, as you will actually reach negative productivity if your working long enough hours (You end up making costly mistakes rather than producing anything of value).

      You can start here for reference.

    25. Re:US Employment Rights by Improv · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's a false choice (between no work and low working standards). It's harmful competition that leads those areas that insist on reasonable standards to lose out to those that don't. Solid rules on an international scale prevent that.

      I don't expect everyone to start everyone in the middle class. That doesn't even make sense - even in the western world we don't have complete egality. What we do have is labour standards, won through difficult struggles by labour movements. These are not prizes we can afford to hoard for ourselves - they are inefficiencies that we treasure because they're the right thing to do, and by pushing other nations to adopt similar measures we both prevent them from hurting us in competition and better the lot of people everywhere.

      --
      For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
  2. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  3. Freedom of speech... by contra_mundi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    With that logic, North Korea has freedom of speech.

    "You can say/write whatever you want...just be ready to accept the consequences."

    The consequence just happens to be capital punishment or forced labor for years.

    1. Re:Freedom of speech... by RsG · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A distinction that's lost on many people is that "freedom of speech" in the US legal system applies to the government, not private entities. Put another way, North Korea is a bad point of comparison when talking about corporate policy.

      Now, should the protection of freedom of speech apply to corporate policy? I would say yes. In my ideal world, basic human rights would be encoded into the law in such a way that they cannot be circumvented by private entities in any way. But the law in reality does not say that this is the case.

      --
      Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
    2. Re:Freedom of speech... by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Shouldn't the concept of consequence be part of the checks and balances involved in making the moral and ethical decision on whether or not you carry out the act of speech?

    3. Re:Freedom of speech... by IWannaBeAnAC · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In virtually all Western Democracies, the state can't legally kill you either.

    4. Re:Freedom of speech... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I really hate people who completely fail to understand what freedom of speech is. It means the government can't arrest you for your speech. It does NOT mean you are immune from the consequences of your speech by anyone else.

  4. Re:Oh look by T+Murphy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not Slashdot that is giving Facebook-related stories undue weight, the ambulance service in the story specifically had a rule about Facebook and social networking (the article is unclear if they added 'Facebook' or if the rule explicitly mentions it). It seems people out there (making dumb rules) really do think something is exceptional because it happened on social networking sites.

    It is often mentioned how rules and laws have to catch up with technology, but in the case of social networking, the old rules generally apply perfectly fine- except it seems people don't understand that. If anything, Slashdot's angle here isn't "it's interesting because it's on Facebook", but interest in how society has trouble adapting to technology.

    --
    My webcomic
  5. Re:It Depends on the Forum by buckadude · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I believe one of the aspects the NLRB is protecting here is the right to complain and collaborate via email or other electronic means. collaboration is key here. You would not be protected in speech based on saying something like "My boss John Doe is an incompetent asshole" because there is no collaboration there... its just a statement. I could be wrong here, but as I understand it, you would need to add in something to the effect of " my boss john doe is an incompetent asshole and would anyone like to start a group or get together and talk about it?" The reason goes back to some basic things like the right to form unions with out being fired, threatened or physically stopped (this used to be very common (Pinkertons)). This is not a groundbreaking decision here... any labor lawyer could tell you that... the real headline here is that this is how it should be and soon the Congress will most assuredly do everything they can (short of blowing up the NLRB) to stomp this out of existence.

  6. Re:It Depends on the Forum by buckadude · · Score: 3, Informative

    that is exactly correct. it is called a concerted protected activity!

  7. Re:Oh look by DerekLyons · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If anything, Slashdot's angle here isn't "it's interesting because it's on Facebook", but interest in how society has trouble adapting to technology.

    That's Slashdot's angle. The OP was coming from the "oh look, it's popular with the masses and as a Slashdotter I'm too cool for stuff popular with the masses" angle. The Slashdot hivemind positively loathes anything popular with the unwashed, uncool, ungeeky masses.
     
    The Slashdot editors are correct in posting these stories, because Facebook (and MySpace, and Live Journal, and other such sites) are part and parcel of the 'net and are technology... The OP is an idiot.