When an Emergency Medical Technician recently posted photos of a murder victim from a crime scene he was called to work to his Facebook page, he was fired. Several months ago, two teenaged employees at a national pizza chain filmed themselves doing some rather unappetizing and unsanitary things to the food they were preparing in the restaurant and posted it to the video site, youTube. In another inci- dent, a freelance journalist was fired from a big name national business magazine; after which, he aired his complaints about the magazine and the magazine’s dirty laundry on his blog for all the world to see, raising questions about libel and sparking speculation and debate on journalism forums that the publisher and editor could initiate a libel suit.
The Internet, which has been building as part of our culture for going on two decades, has long sparked debate about what is and isn’t appropriate to post. however, the new and ever-growing world of social media has given employers other reasons to worry. What are your employees doing on your computers on your dime while at work? What are they doing on their own time? What are you allowed to censor when your employees are not on the clock? And perhaps the most difficult of all questions is: What can you do if your ex-employee sets out to burn you after they’re no longer employed?