The political events in the last couple days have caused a firestorm of social media posts – some being quite extreme. I have heard reports of people being fired for their social media comments and a few organizations closely watching their employees for the same. Instead of my more heavily curated and edited posts, I wanted to talk about something more timely – not about the event itself, but about the importance of being careful with what we post online.
At one of my previous companies, some coworkers of mine decided to set up a Slack server for talking about both work and non-work topics. It was the online water cooler and was a lot of fun. It connected us together by giving us our own space that was much more free than the tightly controlled official one. But the organizers were later fired for talking badly about another coworker in that server in private conversations. In that same investigation, another was fired for leaking proprietary information. He had merely copy-pasted some small code snippets to request help, but since some members of that server had left the company, it was technically true, if quite a stretch. Yet another was fired for reasons no one could determine and who seemed completely innocent.
Being careful about what we post online goes beyond simply avoiding posting hot takes on social media, but being cognizant about anything we say anywhere, especially in writing. It is trivial to screenshot anything and send it to anyone else. It is also often not too difficult to link people’s real information with usernames, as we are rarely as anonymous as we think we are and the consequences of what we might post under a username may not come for a long time in the future.
I know this may seem to fall in the box of Things Everyone Obviously Knows, but that’s only true if you look at the surface level. The events of this week have caused many people to post some pretty extreme takes and we can feel like we need to join in to counter the narrative from the other side, but this feeling is being engineered by algorithms designed to make us feel this way to maximize engagement, because nothing gets the internet going like anger at perceived injustice. Knowing this is true does not make us immune to that effect, but when you post something online, you never know who’s watching and even when posting under a username, you never know if you’ve accidentally left enough clues that can lead angry users to follow the trail to your real self.
You have likely heard the best approach is to assume everything we say online could be made public, but it can go further than just what we say. The aforementioned coworkers also spun up a Discord server with a smaller sub-group that included a not-safe-for-work channel. That by itself was already a bad idea, but the choice to invite female coworkers to that server was immensely bad. Any one of them feeling uncomfortable would find immediate success with HR who would be more than willing to avoid a potential sexual harassment lawsuit. And without even posting in such a channel, merely being the owner of such a server, or possibly even just a member could be sufficient grounds for an HR that wants to go scorched earth.
The Pros and Cons of this Blog
One of the greatest joys in writing my blog posts is knowing people actually read them. I started this blog primarily for fun. I write when I feel about it on topics I am compelled to discuss, but because my only social media is LinkedIn, if that counts, and thus where I primarily link these posts, my readership mainly consists of my current manager as well as current and former coworkers. Former coworkers I have written about have told me they read the post and recognized it was about them, even though I was unaware they had ever seen anything I wrote. Current coworkers congratulated me on the birth of my daughter because they saw my blog announcement instead of the ones I made through our official channels. It can be surprising to see.
So far, this has been a great thing. I enjoy seeing comments and messages from you all and I write with the expectation that the people I write about will see the post and know its about them. I write with the expectation HR, or the CEO might come by. And I write what I have usually said publicly already, reserving the real hot takes for my wife and her infinite wellspring of patience to listen to me.
That means not only must I avoid controversial takes on political issues, but criticism towards my employer, current coworkers, customers of my employer, or details about internal operations that could technically be considered proprietary information. This may be my blog with my domain name – no moderators to avoid and no algorithm to feed, but posting safely requires quite an extensive list of things to avoid.
My situation probably isn’t yours, but the same rules apply – when the internet firestorm is raging, it’s best to stay away so you don’t get burned. This doesn’t mean we should avoid talking about difficult topics or self-censoring our identity because some part of ourselves has been deemed “political,” but consider this – if everything you ever said online, publicly and privately, was revealed to the world under your real name, would you still look okay?
Adam Lif 