Electric Free Speech: For and Against
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, 12 October 2011 08:10
- Written by Caterina Aldera & Nyasha Kandadara
Government and employers should be allowed to regulate what we sayon social media.
FOR: By Caterina Aldera
With Twitter and Facebook on the rise, it’s increa singly easy to communicate, even with complete strangers.
While governments face the challenge of regulating citizens, companies are struggling to manage their brands amid the chaos of employees’ private comments on social networks.
We’ve recently seen in the news @PigSpotter, or just “Cliff,” a South African who started using Twitter to notify other South Africans of roadblocks and speed cameras. It’s clear that Cliff hasn’t thought about why the cops do roadblocks and trap speeding cars.
His latest tweet resounds with irony: “Pork pulling at corner De Korte and Jorrisen str as usual just beware fasten your seatbelt and adhere to speed limits, as always.” Come on, if it was “as always,” why would people need to know where the cops are?
At the same time, @PigSpotter tweets about accidents and traffic jams. This is fairly useful. However, surely that just encourages people to use their cellphones while driving? How else would they get that information off Twitter and why else would they need it? After years of complaining about the police presence in South Africa and the increasing crimes rates, we should be grateful that they finally seem to be doing their job.
The government has a responsibility to regulate what people say on the internet if certain citizens are putting others in danger.
When police tried to arrest @PigSpotter for “obstructing or defeating justice,” they found it was no easy task to locate someone by only a first name.
On the other hand, employers have found themselves in a legal minefield when it comes to firing employees posting defamatory comments about them on their personal Facebook pages.
Since most companies don’t yet have a social media policy, they can’t legally stop employees from posting comments that might damage their brand in their community. Of course employees should be allowed freedom in the private sphere, but to what extent are Facebook and Twitter really private?
Depending on your privacy setting, anyone can read what you write on Facebook, particularly potential employees and consumers.
Perhaps what it comes down to is a little bit of consideration. If you were an employer, would you like your reputation tarnished at the drop of a hat? And as for you, Cliff, I hope that when a speeding drunk driver hits your car one day, the Pigs are there to help you out.
AGAINST: By Nyasha Kandadara
“Sam is ditching work to go to the pub!”
Nyasha Likes this status. If the boss doesn’t see this status and Sam has finished at the very least most of his work, whose business is it? What we do on social media sites is not our
employers’ business.
I don’t mix business with pleasure, therefore I wouldn’t make my colleagues my friends unless I trusted them. Since I trust them, I will go about saying and doing whatever I feel comfortable with around them.
Makes sense, right?
You were born into this world alone, and you will die alone. Why should your company loyalties go further than your pay cheque? A company only has so much loyalty for their workers. When you die, there will be an advert for your position next to your obituary. So after a long day’s work, I don’t see why I should remain silent after being overworked and underpaid.
Where is the room for me to rant without my employer retaliating over invisible fine print? It’s not Nonhle Thema’s fault she is a materialistic wannabe-celebrity who blabs about how “little” she earns on Twitter. Rather, it’s Dark & Lovely’s fault for hiring her to be the face of their product, and then firing her with such haste, when she smeared their name to the twitteratti.
I think it is quite intrusive for employers to be the judge of what you say on the internet. It’s bad enough that corporate cultures transcend work: onto the dinner table, into the bedroom and onto children’s playgrounds. And now onto our social networks.
In the recent London riots, government employees were jailed for four years for trying to incite street violence through Facebook. What happened to freedom of expression and association? What happened to the freedom to just be?
Over in Egypt, social media were used in the Arabic revolution, a key factor which was fundamental in organising protestors and meetings that would soon lead to the fall of Mubarak.
If social media poses such a public threat, surely the rules of social media should be addressed in the constitution before they start shoving us in jail cells?
And if you censor the social media, then we’ll have nothing left but reminders of the awful times when we did not have the right to express our more colourful side.