The increased use of technology and the interference of social media in people’s daily lives changed some aspects of relationships between employers and employees. While the country actively promotes free speech rights, people face multiple challenges when their personal opinion could have a negative effect on someone’s interests and wealth. The article discusses why Twitter as a social media network and the content people publish there for private purposes pose a potential danger to the employer.
One of the main ideas mentioned in the article explains why the private account of employees are now viewed as a threat by businesses and organizations. The article features an opinion from lawyer Rafael Gomes, who explains that employees reflect the inner values of the business that employs them. In my opinion, if association with the company is the sole reason for the employees’ dismissal, the problem could be solved by the company’s increased level of security and protection of employees’ data. Alternatively, the problem could be solved by improving the corporate culture and educating employees on offensive topics and adverse outcomes of relevant social issues, such as sexism and racism.
On the other hand, I believe that the issue is connected with social media’s harmful and toxic environment and the newly developed cancel culture. For unknown reasons, the audience of social media often wants to diminish all privileges and achievements from a person who made an offensive comment or has a mindset that does not suit modern standards. Lately, the social media audience has judged many famous actors and singers for their comments and tweets from more than ten years ago. In my opinion, all social media accounts have plenty of compromising evidence or statements that the public could interpret in a wrong way.
Therefore, I think that interference of social media in the professional aspect results from a much bigger problem of cancel culture. On the other hand, cancel culture resulted from increased amounts of personal information on social media. Thus, if companies and organizations do not want to carry the consequences of their employees’ actions on social media, they could develop comprehensive training on social media and privacy for employees. Creating such programs would allow employers to maintain employees’ social content and provide a legal chance to avoid public association with the employee in cases of issue.