Any tech-savvy person in a hiring position can pull up someone's profile, and see they have a nice family, some interesting hobbies, and a relentless hate for minorities. If someone's not only a racist, but a dumb enough of one to talk about it online, with their real name attached to their comments, they're probably not the best candidate for a position, in the company's eyes. By removing those posts, Facebook would be helping them look better to anyone that might be checking their profile for a professional reason.
I say, let their comments stand, and potential employers punish them.
I agree! It's also nice as even just a regular person when you're just getting to know somebody and you add them on Facebook for that first initial Facebook stalking. Makes it pretty easy to find out if you want to nope away from them or not.
Employers here aren't really supposed to check our social media. So many legal pitfalls because they're legally not allowed to ask anyone about marital status, children, sexuality, religion or that and snooping a facebook can give them all that information and open them to discrimination proceedings.
They would be able to argue that they are racist arseholes on their own time and it doesn't affect their ability to do their jobs.
I'm sure you've worked with people who have some shocking views about something or who make you question how they haven't been fired already they're so useless. I know I have.
Yes, but that's the penalty we pay for having good equality and employment law. I do think that's preferable to having prospective employers snooping without express permission.
No reason to remove racist posts, if it gets too awful consider removing the entire page instead and make the buggers start again.
yeah I hover between the notion that they should be left uncensored so everyone can see them and tell them they are wrong and creating a positive values echo chamber so that the racist taint doesn't get into the heads of impressionable people.
I actually never thought about that before, but it's a very interesting point. However, I'd argue that just because they're not supposed to check doesn't mean that they don't or won't, and thus the fact that they're not supposed to is kind of moot.
Also, you're telling me that out of all the people that have been let go for things they said on Facebook (And there are tons, just check Google), none of them came to that realization and filed a wrongful dismissal claim and won the right to their job back? These companies straight out tell people that they're being fired for something they said on Facebook. Couldn't they make the claim that because Facebook contains sensitive information that they're not supposed to ask, that they were fired based on discriminatory grounds? I've never ever heard of this happening.
Furthermore, checking your Facebook profile isn't "asking" you about your marital status, sexuality, or religion. It's up there for the public to see. I'd say it's more akin to straight up telling your employer that information, not being asked about it.
People have files claims like that - the problem arises in that the people haven't made those posts private and therefore shouldn't expect any reasonable claim of privacy for those comments. This is why Twitter isn't included in this whole thing, it's all public.
However if they employer is demanding access to your private Facebook you're more likely to have a case, if they have obtained private messages to a third party then you have a case. It's all about how you've secured your media. Also your lawyer needs to be good at online issues as they're still very loose and being hashed out.
On the other side we now have several cases in the UK where people are getting prosecuted for hate speech and incitement to violence and stuff for stuff on facebook and twitter. Again this is a very new thing and feeling out the laws are a long and arduous process.
And again to your last point - It depends on how you've gone about securing that information on your profile. You may not have stated that you're gay on your page but they could infer it from a picture a friend you have has tagged you in of you kissing your partner at an event you were at. That is certainly not you offering up that information to the world. You may not have posted you were pregnant on your social media but that one family member that doesn't know how the internet really works has congratulated you on some random post's comments (my MIL comments on anything to give me messages for her son @_@) which then explodes.
You may be schtum but other people don't usually get the memo. I have a bunch of friends I had to tell off and make delete posts where they'd "checked in" to my house showing it on the map to all their friends and sundry. I don't want my Address anywhere near facebook. All it takes is one well meaning but thoughtless person.
ETA: Forgot to say it's different again between already being employed and being an interview candidate
Hmm, I forgot about other people posting sensitive information about you, that's certainly true. Although, I believe Facebook privacy controls allow for this to be mitigated or even solved completely IE: you can control who can and/or can't post to your wall, you can control who can and/or can't tag you, etc. I've also noticed Facebook has been getting much better lately at informing people on how they can protect their privacy and adding more options to their already extensive repertoire of privacy options.
Who does the fault fall on if all of the tools to make sure an employer cannot read your private information are available but you still fail to do so and let it remain public? I think we've all had enough warning and high profile privacy scares (Especially on Facebook) and whatnot to know that privacy on the Internet is important and can and should be watched over closely.
Additionally, what with all of the multitudes of privacy scandals and NSA stuff that has been very high profile news for the past few years, I'd argue that there is and should never be absolutely any expectation of privacy on the internet (Unless, maybe, if you're encrypting said communications). It's comparable to having a very loud and very public conversation about private matters with your best friend in the middle of the street, and then complaining that someone was listening to you. Does anybody think that Facebook can't read any and all messages that pass through it's servers? There is no privacy there and only a fool would expect it IMO.
EDIT: Forgot to say I agree that if an employer demands for you to share your Facebook info with them then all bets are off, they are certainly invading your privacy at that point.
EDIT EDIT: Also, Schtum. That is a fantastic word that I've never heard before! I'm definitely going to try to add it to my vocabulary, so thanks for that :)
it's a good Brit/yiddish word :) I like that and Schlep ("i have to schlep over to the shops" as in a journey that's unwanted and tedious xD)
Yeah i dunno who the fault falls on, it's part of the process of feeling out these new rules for online cultures. Keeping in mind that the majority of the population still remembers a time when being on the internet meant no-one could use the phone and when the internet came on AOL CDs.
Edit: It's like when people discovered snapchats weren't as private and ephemeral as everyone thought they were. Hilarious
Hmm, I do like Schlep as well but where I'm from we just say "I have to drag my ass over to the shops" which I think I prefer :D
Fleshing out online rules and regulations is definitely a process, albeit one that I think needs to be started on and completed ASAP before some serious and irreversible damage is done to a lot of innocent and people that are ignorant to the implications that the new tech culture is bringing with it. It's actually kind of shameful IMO that we haven't figured this out yet and put a plan into action that would at least get us started on it.
And I think it's good that a majority of people were present for and remember the birth of the Internet. It makes us more informed on the matter (Or at least its history) and will hopefully allow us to make more informed decisions about it.
ah see i think the opposite given some of the bizarre legislation people are coming up with especially with regards to RIAA's war on piracy and the WikiLeaks kerfuffle. It's obvious to me that the people trying to regulate the internet and make these laws have absolutely no idea what is going on.
the whole thing to ban or otherwise negate encryption practises when it comes to the police or government is laughable and scary at the same time.
Coupled with the recent news story about that kid who was prosecuted and is a registered sex offender for having a picture of himself naked as a minor I am not at all confident in the current generation's ability to sensibly hash out the laws we need. It['s not shameful really though; tech moves so quickly! In just 15 years I've moved from a nokia 3210, with snake as it's game, ringtones I had to text a number off the tv to get or figure out and program myself, 2 or 3 lines of text and 140 characters per text message to a Lumia 920 which i can play the friggan Sims on, remote into my desktop and control (we can play ff14 this way, it's insane), i can browse the net, chat for free, take better pictures on it than i could on any camera i had previously owned. My ringtone doesn't even matter because everyone skypes me on my phone, i have my email there, I can use all of that stuff in the middle of nowhere (except my dad's ffs)
I didn't get a phone til i was 14, these days parents send their 7 year olds out with a phone just in case of emergency. Hell you can get phones now that only call 4 preset numbers and have no screens or anything especially designed for younger children in daycare (or to torture your teenager LMAO).
The main issue with us remembering the birth of the internet is "golden age" thinking where you tend to remember the old days as being somehow better and simpler. Wasn't life better and simpler when you had rotary dial phones? not really. I wouldn't trade my smart phone and fibre optic cables and my tablet for anything.
...
Jeezo we've gone so far off topic xD great discussing this with you though :D
Edit: Hell we can't even convince the government that the Internet should be a utility and not a luxury
Do you think that a racist person can just flick a switch and turn that part of their brain off when they get to work and turn it back on again as they're leaving? Or am I misinterpreting you on that?
In my opinion there is no excuse for racism of any kind and if I as an employer don't wish to hire people of that persuasion, that should be my right. Why would a potential employees right to be a racist pile of crap trump my right to not have a racist pile of crap working for me?
EDIT: By the way, your right to free speech only protects you from censorship by the government. Private citizens and corporations are free to use their freedom of speech to tell a bigot to STFU all they like, and it is in no way illegal.
EDIT EDIT: "It's when he choses not to hire someone because of skin color or mistreats someone different than him where it becomes a concern for the people." Why even let it get to this point at all? To give a bigot a chance to not be a bigot openly in a public setting? Why?
Something of a knuckle-dragging bigot himself, that commenter is only thinking here of how employment discrimination might affect him. As a bigot. Given that he considers his sundry and various bigotries ‘truths’ that he is brave enough to reveal to us all, the only thought behind this comment is for his own sake.
Peel away his rhetorical excuses for using racial slurs and making Three Fifths Compromise jokes, and all you’ll find is a snickering, bigoted troll. This is the same Snapzu user that has had so very much to tell us about how blacks as a race are criminals, how gays are ‘rampant' and, of course, how great and sophisticated he is, personally.
You’re right, then, to point out for him that bigotry is a major human failing that will affect the workplace just as it would affect any aspect of a bigot’s life. He doesn’t get that, and isn’t likely to figure it out, because he thinks of his bigotry as an insight he's been clever enough to have, rather than a personal problem.
That’s if you decide to take anything that commenter says as true, which I’m long-since done doing.
??? I feel like there's a story here. What happened? I quickly skimmed through his post history but I didn't see anything like you suggested (Possibly deleted?), and I wasn't taking away a racist vibe from him here at all, I just figured he was just arguing that peoples personal rights to work should trump an employers right to hire, and we were debating that.
Adelle has severly misinterpreted things I have said in the past, and even misquotes me
You’ve made yourself clear enough. Everybody’s racist one day, nobody’s racist another. It may not make sense, but it speaks for itself. As for quotes...
Oh for ducks sake. When is the gay fad going to end? They have marriage and rampant acceptance & are now eqaul in rights to everyone else.
Which is, unsurprisingly, as willfully ignorant as wrong. I can see why you forgot saying this, it was early this month ago. Maybe you and you-after-your-third-highball ought to compare notes sometime.
That yes, according to studies I have seen, the black community does have a higher percentage of crime than others.
Leaving aside whether you ever saw any study, here’s what you said to contrast the black community with whites:
Because the white community is not largely a self victimizing one that wants any excuse it can to distract people from the fact it is the most represented in the criminal statistics because it commits the most crime and produces the most criminals. If people would stop supporting the victim culture in the black community, they would take responsibility for themselves and then we could all focus on the real issue of police brutality.
Yes or no, were you wrong here?
Nowadays, when criticized, you’ve begun to equivocate, as here:
This can be partially attributed to what horrid things their fathers went through in the 60's as I've heard suggested
As great as it is that you’ve now heard of Jim Crow, you’ve made a definite point of ruling out any such depth of context before:
Black people tend to have a higher rate of crime produced from their communities, so they have more arrests. It's not that they are just being discriminated against, it's that they commit more crime. I don't deny racism having some part or that some police go after black people because they are black, but that's a very small percent of why the statistics are the way they are. Know who's responsible for statistics? Those who create them, not the people counting the numbers
Yes or no, were you wrong there?
Hint: Jim Crow is not, as you seem to now think, a specific one-time event sometime in the 1960s.
I do feel you make your own destiny & people should stop playing victim so much.
Is that why you delete so many of your comments and then complain when people have the poor taste to remember what you’ve said?
I find it sad that you couldn't be a part of that
Aren’t I?
I truly would like to make amends, but when I say these things to you I get no response.
If you ever wanted, you could’ve sent me a private message. Never have, yet.
You simply wait until I say something unpopular and controversial to drop by and insult me.
You mean when you start in again with your trolling, somebody might actually call you on it.
It sounds like you're defending bigots workplace rights to me, but in your last paragraph you say you fired a racist employee yourself for being racist at work. So if I'm understanding you correctly, you are arguing that it's ok for people to be racist at home, and if they leave it at home they should be allowed to work anywhere they wish to. Is that right?
You also said
It is absolutely your right as an employer not to hire someone of certain persuasion, but understand that gives employers the right to not hire you based on any degree of your personal life as I mentioned before. Gay. Political opinion. Things of that nature in most situations have nothing to do with how a person performs.
Why do you think that just because an employer can fire a racist person, they can also fire a gay person or based on any degree of somebodies personal life? Being gay and being racist are not only completely different things according to basic logic, but also according to the law. I don't know where you're from, so I'm just going to use the USA as an example here since it's where people generally are from in these communities:
In the USA there are protected classes which means you can't be fired for being a part of any of the groups listed on that Wikipedia article. Please note that list is not complete (I believe it is only listing protected classes that are granted that status by specific legal acts). LGBT are a protected class in the USA thanks to a Supreme court ruling. Freedom of religion is granted by the constitution and therefore any religious group is a protected class. Since freedom of speech is also guaranteed by the constitution, that means that discrimination directed towards a person by the government (And only by the government) is not legal. An employer certainly can fire you for your political views in the USA and they should be able to. For the government to force them to not fire you would be an infringement upon that employers own freedom of speech. It would be like if I met a racist, and they were openly racist to a minority right in front of me. I can choose to tell that guy to go fuck himself and never talk to him again if I want, as is my right. Businesses have this same right, except for when it comes to protected classes, a label that racism does not fly under.
Would you want to be fired for something you said in private on your own time?
No, I wouldn't. If I was, I'd look into filing criminal and civil actions for illegal surveillance, because if you actually said it in private nobody would ever hear it but you or the person(s) you are speaking to unless you were being listened to illegally. You keep bringing up privacy issues and the Internet and all that, so I also want to say that the Internet is in no way private, anywhere, at all, by any means. You do realize that anything you send here in a PM can be legally intercepted and read by Snapzu staff, right? If you were their employee, they could fire you for it too, quite legally and be quite morally justified in doing so, IMO. Facebook has perfectly legal access to anything you submit to their website, as does Youtube, Google, and Microsoft. They can even use it in advertising without your knowledge if they feel like it. You want privacy? Then get off the Internet, because you will find none here. And you even seem to admit that yourself, so I don't know why you say that in one sentence and then talk about how what you're saying on the net is private. The...
It sounds like you're defending bigots workplace rights to me, but in your last paragraph you say you fired a racist employee yourself for being racist at work. So if I'm understanding you correctly, you are arguing that it's ok for people to be racist at home, and if they leave it at home they should be allowed to work anywhere they wish to. Is that right?
You also said
It is absolutely your right as an employer not to hire someone of certain persuasion, but understand that gives employers the right to not hire you based on any degree of your personal life as I mentioned before. Gay. Political opinion. Things of that nature in most situations have nothing to do with how a person performs.
Why do you think that just because an employer can fire a racist person, they can also fire a gay person or based on any degree of somebodies personal life? Being gay and being racist are not only completely different things according to basic logic, but also according to the law. I don't know where you're from, so I'm just going to use the USA as an example here since it's where people generally are from in these communities:
In the USA there are protected classes which means you can't be fired for being a part of any of the groups listed on that Wikipedia article. Please note that list is not complete (I believe it is only listing protected classes that are granted that status by specific legal acts). LGBT are a protected class in the USA thanks to a Supreme court ruling. Freedom of religion is granted by the constitution and therefore any religious group is a protected class. Since freedom of speech is also guaranteed by the constitution, that means that discrimination directed towards a person by the government (And only by the government) is not legal. An employer certainly can fire you for your political views in the USA and they should be able to. For the government to force them to not fire you would be an infringement upon that employers own freedom of speech. It would be like if I met a racist, and they were openly racist to a minority right in front of me. I can choose to tell that guy to go fuck himself and never talk to him again if I want, as is my right. Businesses have this same right, except for when it comes to protected classes, a label that racism does not fly under.
Would you want to be fired for something you said in private on your own time?
No, I wouldn't. If I was, I'd look into filing criminal and civil actions for illegal surveillance, because if you actually said it in private nobody would ever hear it but you or the person(s) you are speaking to unless you were being listened to illegally. You keep bringing up privacy issues and the Internet and all that, so I also want to say that the Internet is in no way private, anywhere, at all, by any means. You do realize that anything you send here in a PM can be legally intercepted and read by Snapzu staff, right? If you were their employee, they could fire you for it too, quite legally and be quite morally justified in doing so, IMO. Facebook has perfectly legal access to anything you submit to their website, as does Youtube, Google, and Microsoft. They can even use it in advertising without your knowledge if they feel like it. You want privacy? Then get off the Internet, because you will find none here. And you even seem to admit that yourself, so I don't know why you say that in one sentence and then talk about how what you're saying on the net is private. The only way to have a reasonable expectation of privacy online is if you are led to believe that by the websites you visit (And none of them promise complete privacy) or to encrypt everything. Would you consider this conversation private? Why or why not? What if we took it to PMs, would you consider it private then? You should consider neither private, and I really suspect that you already do consider them not private by the way you speak of it.
EDIT: Forgot to mention your ISP can see all your internet traffic, and apparently routes it through NSA servers for the ultimate snooping experience. You can't tell me you don't know what's going on with the NSA, so knowing what you know, do you honestly actually believe that you have any expectation of privacy on the Internet, or are you confusing "I have privacy online" with "I should have privacy online"? Because if it's the ladder, I definitely agree with you on that one! Still doesn't change the fact that we don't, though.
I never said racism was okay at home, you will not twist my words sir.
You are right about that actually, I'm sorry. I don't know where I took that from, but I apologize for that. I realize now that you're defending their personal freedom, and not condoning their actions. I spent the prior 3 days running on about 6 hours of sleep total and I was not in a very strong frame of mind at the time I wrote that. I just woke up from a long and much needed sleep and am rested enough to think relatively clearly now :)
I still disagree with a lot of what you're saying both on factual and ethical grounds. For starters, if an employer wants to make what you do in your home life their business, that is their right and if you don't like it it's your own right to not work there. This is not only how it goes in the USA, but also how I feel it should work. Have you even known anybody that works on a police force? Police are basically constantly monitored and scrutinized by their employer, and if they slip up in many even small ways in their own private time, they can be penalized or even fired for it. And the police force should be able to do that. By your logic here, police should be able to go home after their shift, hang out downtown on the street smoking pot, drinking, doing lines of coke, and playing illegal poker, and then be protected from being fired from their job the next day because somebody reported them. In my opinion they should be fired for that, shouldn't they? Even though the events occurred on the police officers own time, and he wasn't in uniform, or acting under the authority of his workplace at the time, and it certainly doesn't impact his ability to do his job at all the next morning.
You seem to be confused as to what privacy or a private conversation is. You can't have a private conversation with your friend in the middle of a restaurant, because it's not a private setting. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy there. I would fully support an employer firing somebody if they did that in the middle of a restaurant, on the street, on Facebook, or in the bathroom urinal at the office. I would not support the employer if that same conversation took place between you and your friend, in the private setting of your home, or over the telephone, or something similar. Allow me to reinforce the fact that if you're in a public setting, anything you say or do is not private, it's public and therefore fair game for employers or anybody else in the world to use either for or against you. That's just how it is, how it always has been, and how it should be. What if the person that reported you in the restaurant was (unbeknownst to you) a customer of your employers, and you were just ripping them a new one with your friend at the restaurant because they pissed you off at work or whatever. Would you still support that employees right to keep their job? Remember, if somebody can hear you and you don't have a reasonable expectation that they absolutely can't, then what you're saying is public, and not private at all. Period. It's up to you to assert and protect your own privacy. If you fail to do so, it's fair game.
A quick side note: Because Facebook is public and not private, I would say that it should be an employers right to ask for your Facebook information if they wish, and it is your own right to say no. If that means finding a new job because you don't like the company policy of this employer, then keep looking because thi...
I never said racism was okay at home, you will not twist my words sir.
You are right about that actually, I'm sorry. I don't know where I took that from, but I apologize for that. I realize now that you're defending their personal freedom, and not condoning their actions. I spent the prior 3 days running on about 6 hours of sleep total and I was not in a very strong frame of mind at the time I wrote that. I just woke up from a long and much needed sleep and am rested enough to think relatively clearly now :)
I still disagree with a lot of what you're saying both on factual and ethical grounds. For starters, if an employer wants to make what you do in your home life their business, that is their right and if you don't like it it's your own right to not work there. This is not only how it goes in the USA, but also how I feel it should work. Have you even known anybody that works on a police force? Police are basically constantly monitored and scrutinized by their employer, and if they slip up in many even small ways in their own private time, they can be penalized or even fired for it. And the police force should be able to do that. By your logic here, police should be able to go home after their shift, hang out downtown on the street smoking pot, drinking, doing lines of coke, and playing illegal poker, and then be protected from being fired from their job the next day because somebody reported them. In my opinion they should be fired for that, shouldn't they? Even though the events occurred on the police officers own time, and he wasn't in uniform, or acting under the authority of his workplace at the time, and it certainly doesn't impact his ability to do his job at all the next morning.
You seem to be confused as to what privacy or a private conversation is. You can't have a private conversation with your friend in the middle of a restaurant, because it's not a private setting. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy there. I would fully support an employer firing somebody if they did that in the middle of a restaurant, on the street, on Facebook, or in the bathroom urinal at the office. I would not support the employer if that same conversation took place between you and your friend, in the private setting of your home, or over the telephone, or something similar. Allow me to reinforce the fact that if you're in a public setting, anything you say or do is not private, it's public and therefore fair game for employers or anybody else in the world to use either for or against you. That's just how it is, how it always has been, and how it should be. What if the person that reported you in the restaurant was (unbeknownst to you) a customer of your employers, and you were just ripping them a new one with your friend at the restaurant because they pissed you off at work or whatever. Would you still support that employees right to keep their job? Remember, if somebody can hear you and you don't have a reasonable expectation that they absolutely can't, then what you're saying is public, and not private at all. Period. It's up to you to assert and protect your own privacy. If you fail to do so, it's fair game.
A quick side note: Because Facebook is public and not private, I would say that it should be an employers right to ask for your Facebook information if they wish, and it is your own right to say no. If that means finding a new job because you don't like the company policy of this employer, then keep looking because this one is obviously not a good fit for you. If enough people refuse to work for a company because of asinine policies like that, then they will either suffer for it or change the policy. Simple solution.
I suppose a good example is I think that a child rapist should be Sorry, I have to snip this quoted text to make room for my post. Not trying to censor you or anything here, I just wanted to indicate what I'm replying too while still leaving room for myself. Max character count on Snapzu is seriously short haha.
Again I'm not so sure. Why does one scenario (The child rapist torture) inherently and automatically make another, possibly completely unrelated scenario okay? I will say that torturing anybody for basically any reason under the sun is wrong and immoral. If it happened regularly and/or was condoned by society that still wouldn't make it right or ok to do, nor would it automatically make other unrelated horrible things justified along with it.
While I appreciate your stellar knowlegde of laws and your superbly put together response, you my friend still seem to believe that laws bring about protection. This debate is beyond what the law allows, it's about ethics. Snip!
Laws on their own certainly don't offer any protection by themselves as they are just pieces of paper with information on them. You're absolutely right that people enforce the laws, but it is my opinion that laws are there to serve as a guide as to what the people are able to protect against and how they are able to go about doing it. Does this mean that every injustice or unfairness will be protected against? No, of course not. The system is not perfect, and neither are the people within it. Also not every law is beneficial to society. Thus it becomes up to us, the people, to decide what laws we agree with and which ones are harmful. There is a whole subset of these laws as it pertains to changing other laws, so if we don't think a particular law or set of laws is doing more good than harm, it is within our power to protect against those laws as well. This is the ground work laid out by our system of laws and I believe it works decently well (It's certainly better than nothing). Again, I'm not saying it's perfect or ideal, but it's what we have and we have to work with what we have. While it is certainly commendable of you to take a stand and fire that racist guy and hire the black dude, you were only able to do that because we as a society haven't decided that bigots are worth it to protect and made a law to protect them from those things just based on the fact that they are indeed bigoted. On the other hand, we have done this with just about every class of people that we've decided are deserving or in need of this protection. This is why I don't believe it is true when you say that if we open up the door for employers to fire a bigot just for being a bigot, that it will open up the door for employers to do the same to people that require our protection.
Oh, in regards to looking into criminal filings etc, come on dude. Snip snip snip
I may have a kind of rose-tinted view of this issue, coming from Canada, where we seem to be more fair judicially than the USA when it comes to private citizens. I won't say we're without our problems, but you're right, I honestly have never personally navigated the American justice system so I can't speak to the fairness of it.
And lol, you and I can strongly agree on the NSA bit. Snippity snip
I agree up until you say that it's immoral for employers to seek out personal character not pertaining to their job. Why is that immoral? I'd argue that it's ethically neutral at worst (Barring a few extreme circumstances that I'm sure exist or could exist but can't quite think of at the moment), but probably an ethical positive if they are removing elements that are immoral themselves, such as bigots and homophobics.
That's only going to benefit the racists, though.
Any tech-savvy person in a hiring position can pull up someone's profile, and see they have a nice family, some interesting hobbies, and a relentless hate for minorities. If someone's not only a racist, but a dumb enough of one to talk about it online, with their real name attached to their comments, they're probably not the best candidate for a position, in the company's eyes. By removing those posts, Facebook would be helping them look better to anyone that might be checking their profile for a professional reason.
I say, let their comments stand, and potential employers punish them.
I agree! It's also nice as even just a regular person when you're just getting to know somebody and you add them on Facebook for that first initial Facebook stalking. Makes it pretty easy to find out if you want to nope away from them or not.
Employers here aren't really supposed to check our social media. So many legal pitfalls because they're legally not allowed to ask anyone about marital status, children, sexuality, religion or that and snooping a facebook can give them all that information and open them to discrimination proceedings.
They would be able to argue that they are racist arseholes on their own time and it doesn't affect their ability to do their jobs.
I'm sure you've worked with people who have some shocking views about something or who make you question how they haven't been fired already they're so useless. I know I have.
Yes, but that's the penalty we pay for having good equality and employment law. I do think that's preferable to having prospective employers snooping without express permission.
No reason to remove racist posts, if it gets too awful consider removing the entire page instead and make the buggers start again.
yeah I hover between the notion that they should be left uncensored so everyone can see them and tell them they are wrong and creating a positive values echo chamber so that the racist taint doesn't get into the heads of impressionable people.
Which covers most of facebook of course. Can't legislate for stupidity and all that.
I actually never thought about that before, but it's a very interesting point. However, I'd argue that just because they're not supposed to check doesn't mean that they don't or won't, and thus the fact that they're not supposed to is kind of moot.
Also, you're telling me that out of all the people that have been let go for things they said on Facebook (And there are tons, just check Google), none of them came to that realization and filed a wrongful dismissal claim and won the right to their job back? These companies straight out tell people that they're being fired for something they said on Facebook. Couldn't they make the claim that because Facebook contains sensitive information that they're not supposed to ask, that they were fired based on discriminatory grounds? I've never ever heard of this happening.
Furthermore, checking your Facebook profile isn't "asking" you about your marital status, sexuality, or religion. It's up there for the public to see. I'd say it's more akin to straight up telling your employer that information, not being asked about it.
People have files claims like that - the problem arises in that the people haven't made those posts private and therefore shouldn't expect any reasonable claim of privacy for those comments. This is why Twitter isn't included in this whole thing, it's all public.
However if they employer is demanding access to your private Facebook you're more likely to have a case, if they have obtained private messages to a third party then you have a case. It's all about how you've secured your media. Also your lawyer needs to be good at online issues as they're still very loose and being hashed out.
On the other side we now have several cases in the UK where people are getting prosecuted for hate speech and incitement to violence and stuff for stuff on facebook and twitter. Again this is a very new thing and feeling out the laws are a long and arduous process.
And again to your last point - It depends on how you've gone about securing that information on your profile. You may not have stated that you're gay on your page but they could infer it from a picture a friend you have has tagged you in of you kissing your partner at an event you were at. That is certainly not you offering up that information to the world. You may not have posted you were pregnant on your social media but that one family member that doesn't know how the internet really works has congratulated you on some random post's comments (my MIL comments on anything to give me messages for her son @_@) which then explodes.
You may be schtum but other people don't usually get the memo. I have a bunch of friends I had to tell off and make delete posts where they'd "checked in" to my house showing it on the map to all their friends and sundry. I don't want my Address anywhere near facebook. All it takes is one well meaning but thoughtless person.
ETA: Forgot to say it's different again between already being employed and being an interview candidate
Hmm, I forgot about other people posting sensitive information about you, that's certainly true. Although, I believe Facebook privacy controls allow for this to be mitigated or even solved completely IE: you can control who can and/or can't post to your wall, you can control who can and/or can't tag you, etc. I've also noticed Facebook has been getting much better lately at informing people on how they can protect their privacy and adding more options to their already extensive repertoire of privacy options.
Who does the fault fall on if all of the tools to make sure an employer cannot read your private information are available but you still fail to do so and let it remain public? I think we've all had enough warning and high profile privacy scares (Especially on Facebook) and whatnot to know that privacy on the Internet is important and can and should be watched over closely.
Additionally, what with all of the multitudes of privacy scandals and NSA stuff that has been very high profile news for the past few years, I'd argue that there is and should never be absolutely any expectation of privacy on the internet (Unless, maybe, if you're encrypting said communications). It's comparable to having a very loud and very public conversation about private matters with your best friend in the middle of the street, and then complaining that someone was listening to you. Does anybody think that Facebook can't read any and all messages that pass through it's servers? There is no privacy there and only a fool would expect it IMO.
EDIT: Forgot to say I agree that if an employer demands for you to share your Facebook info with them then all bets are off, they are certainly invading your privacy at that point.
EDIT EDIT: Also, Schtum. That is a fantastic word that I've never heard before! I'm definitely going to try to add it to my vocabulary, so thanks for that :)
it's a good Brit/yiddish word :) I like that and Schlep ("i have to schlep over to the shops" as in a journey that's unwanted and tedious xD)
Yeah i dunno who the fault falls on, it's part of the process of feeling out these new rules for online cultures. Keeping in mind that the majority of the population still remembers a time when being on the internet meant no-one could use the phone and when the internet came on AOL CDs.
Edit: It's like when people discovered snapchats weren't as private and ephemeral as everyone thought they were. Hilarious
Hmm, I do like Schlep as well but where I'm from we just say "I have to drag my ass over to the shops" which I think I prefer :D
Fleshing out online rules and regulations is definitely a process, albeit one that I think needs to be started on and completed ASAP before some serious and irreversible damage is done to a lot of innocent and people that are ignorant to the implications that the new tech culture is bringing with it. It's actually kind of shameful IMO that we haven't figured this out yet and put a plan into action that would at least get us started on it.
And I think it's good that a majority of people were present for and remember the birth of the Internet. It makes us more informed on the matter (Or at least its history) and will hopefully allow us to make more informed decisions about it.
ah see i think the opposite given some of the bizarre legislation people are coming up with especially with regards to RIAA's war on piracy and the WikiLeaks kerfuffle. It's obvious to me that the people trying to regulate the internet and make these laws have absolutely no idea what is going on.
the whole thing to ban or otherwise negate encryption practises when it comes to the police or government is laughable and scary at the same time.
Coupled with the recent news story about that kid who was prosecuted and is a registered sex offender for having a picture of himself naked as a minor I am not at all confident in the current generation's ability to sensibly hash out the laws we need. It['s not shameful really though; tech moves so quickly! In just 15 years I've moved from a nokia 3210, with snake as it's game, ringtones I had to text a number off the tv to get or figure out and program myself, 2 or 3 lines of text and 140 characters per text message to a Lumia 920 which i can play the friggan Sims on, remote into my desktop and control (we can play ff14 this way, it's insane), i can browse the net, chat for free, take better pictures on it than i could on any camera i had previously owned. My ringtone doesn't even matter because everyone skypes me on my phone, i have my email there, I can use all of that stuff in the middle of nowhere (except my dad's ffs)
I didn't get a phone til i was 14, these days parents send their 7 year olds out with a phone just in case of emergency. Hell you can get phones now that only call 4 preset numbers and have no screens or anything especially designed for younger children in daycare (or to torture your teenager LMAO).
The main issue with us remembering the birth of the internet is "golden age" thinking where you tend to remember the old days as being somehow better and simpler. Wasn't life better and simpler when you had rotary dial phones? not really. I wouldn't trade my smart phone and fibre optic cables and my tablet for anything.
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Jeezo we've gone so far off topic xD great discussing this with you though :D
Edit: Hell we can't even convince the government that the Internet should be a utility and not a luxury
Thank you as well for a very enjoyable discussion :)
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