OPINION
r Just Mistakes
After recent viral posts, students debate if an employee's future should be determined by their past posts.
CON BY ERIKA SESLER WEB VIDEO CONTENT EDITOR
S "I don't think that what you put online should affect your employment because you can be one person around your friends and a whole different person in your work place." -sophomore Olivia Shively
"Social Media is a way to express yourself, but sometimes can be misinterpreted and manipulated for the better, or for the worst." - junior Maya Bair
ocial media has become a huge influencer in everything people do. If something happens, they want to put it on their Snapchat story. If someone goes somewhere or is hanging out with friends, they want to post it on Instagram or Facebook. Sometimes when a person posts you don’t really think about how someone could take it the wrong way, or how it could impact you later. Yet, companies feel that when someone posts something they think is wrong, they should take the most extreme route of consequence: firing them. It is excessive to fire people for things that they post on their social media profiles. Social media platforms are private companies, and can censor what people post on their websites as they see fit, according to Executive Director of the First Amendment Center Lana Nott. Most social media websites like Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram have strict rules on what will not be tolerated. For example, Snapchat says in its terms of use “Do not bother or make other people feel bad on purpose,” and there are no exceptions or limitations to this policy. If the website does not deem a post inappropriate, then the company shouldn’t make such big deal out of it. Some people just don’t understand that the statement or picture they shared was inappropriate, so firing them isn’t the correct way to handle it. A woman, identified only as Naomi H., lost her NASA internship in August because she tweeted something with profanity. People swear all the time in person, but as soon as it’s put on the Internet, people want to criticize it. The woman was talking directly to a fellow intern, but he wrote in a blog post later that he wasn’t offended by it and knew that she was joking. In situations like this, the public or others who aren’t directly affected love to give their input even though they have nothing to do with it. The woman’s superiors read her colleague’s blog post, and she ended up getting her internship back. In this day and age, people have to be careful on social media in consideration of their future. Colleges, possible jobs, sororities and fraternities carefully examine our social media. Before people had the ability to look others up on the Internet, the only resources they had were the people themselves. Now, if they find something they didn’t like on a person’s social media, they can judge and turn a probable candidate down just because they have new resources. It’s unfair and doesn’t allow some people the same opportunities they deserved
because the Internet and social media allow people to look deeper into our lives. Most adults who have matured know that just because you did one bad thing on the Internet doesn’t mean you are like that all the time. If someone posts something on social media that doesn’t apply to their job or affect anyone that they work with or work for, then they should be allowed to say what they want. People are allowed to say whatever they want until the social media platform decides it is inappropriate and goes against their terms of use. If the post is not censored, then a company does not have the right to fire the person who posted it. If there is no correlation to the company in any way in the post, they most definitely do not have the right to fire them. Sometimes people say things in person and they aren’t fired, so they should not be fired over a tweet or a post that says the same thing they could have said out loud and wouldn’t have been punished for. Of course it is not always appropriate to post certain things, but the companies should discuss their reasoning about wanting the post deleted with the person who put it out there on their social media. Then it allows them to have a civil conversation about it, and they may even convince the person that they should take the post down which solves the whole issue to begin with. The person who posted it might even learn why the post was inappropriate, which would prevent them from posting other bad posts in the future. In the instance of Lindsey Stone, who posted a picture of herself in front of an Arlington National Cemetery sign pretending to scream, if she had talked to someone about why it was offensive or if her boss had had a conversation about how he believed it would not benefit her, I believe she would have taken it down. If NASA had talked to the woman about why her tweet was inappropriate or asked her to take out the other NASA intern in the tweet, she could have kept the internship for the whole time instead of losing it and then getting it back because of a misunderstanding. All of these could have been solved with an informative conversation instead of firing them, and the context of the post could have been explained. If Stone was able to explain the context of her photo, she may not have been fired. There is always more to the story, and social media takes that away. With having conversations, people become more informed and allow everyone to be on the same page. SEPTEMBER 2018
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