On Employer Social Media Policies

On the one hand, I think it’s fair for employers to review their employees’ social media feeds, especially upon hiring.

Imagine a job applicant for a teaching position at a public school who has reposted racist, homophobic, or bigoted remarks. So number one, those attitudes don’t disappear when they go to work. They might discriminate against students or coworkers who are black, disabled, or gay. Even if they don’t, the appearance of bias and partiality is bad enough.

Number two, it creates liability and bad optics for the school. If parents find out about the teacher’s opinions, they might pull their student out of class, publicly denounce the teacher, or inform other parents. It could also damage the reputation of the school for the oversight of employing such a person, or open up the school to legal repercussions if the teacher is found to be discriminating.

So from the school’s perspective, it seems to be perfectly justified to reject the applicant in the hiring phase, or even fire them upon discovering such online activity.

On the other hand, I get the impression that employers these days are sometimes overzealous when it comes to social media policies. Not all positions in all workplaces need to be held to the same standards as a school teacher. We don’t want a society where anyone who shares fringe opinions or posts about taboo activities online can’t even find a job cleaning toilets. That creates a chilling effect on speech and behavior.

Although free speech laws may protect you from government censorship, you still have no free speech in practice if no one will hire you because of your speech outside of work, and you can’t survive without a job.

The fact that many people who have formerly worked in the porn industry can’t get hired in any other industry betrays a failure on the side of employers. Employers need to have some integrity and say “Yes, we employ employee X who used to be a porno actor/actress. Their previous work is not relevant to their ability to perform this job. If you have a problem with our decision to employ them, too bad.” and if they lose a few customers, then it is what it is.

I have had to confront this issue myself. I’m not a former porno actor, but many of the entries I’ve posted here almost certainly harm my employability should an employer find them. I’ve put a lot of thought into it, and concluded that even the worst-case scenario probably doesn’t look like me becoming unemployable. Even if this journal did result in me becoming unemployable, I’d rather that than self-censor.

I understand everyone might not make the same decision as me, but in order to weaken the chilling effect, I’d encourage people not to self-censor for employment reasons.