Hello everyone. As today's topic has been decided to be about our social media life, I have a few things to say here. Especially these things that I have seen firsthand. Both in real life and on the internet. So what we have always believed is that our social media and our online lives are also as personal as our real lives. We get to choose on what we need to show or we want to talk about and what we want to believe in. But recently, there's a trend of major companies and organizations to have a sway on the social media life of their employees. Which is probably standard practice in his world but it doesn't seem to be merited.
So I've seen that in our own university, The teacher and other employees adhere to certain regulations regarding what they can talk about and what they can share opinions about on the internet. And apparently they are regulated, and monitored. And I have seen some of them face scrutiny over this.
There are more impacting stories in the world regarding such issues. A few months ago, I wrote a piece regarding Meta employees getting fired or suspended because of their stance in solidarity with Palestine on the internet. Also, when they did not agree to censor Palestinian posts, The first scrutiny from their superior officers. So here we're seeing people getting fired, suspended, and also getting scrutinized in the workplace, because they chose to say how they feel on social media. And as much as they talk about upholding the company image, most of the time it gets above and beyond that. And then it doesn't even remain about company image, rather becomes personal spite.
I don't think I could live with that in an ideal world, but at the same time, I think I cannot maneuver this thing. The company may take my social media handles and monitor them all they like. But the reality is, I will be maintaining a duality, if it really comes to that. If I really get that dream job and they want me to hand over my social media handles and they expect me to follow some certain set of guidelines then okay, no problem. I'll have an ID that will follow all these regulations. And then maybe I'll have a private account or I get to do what I want. But this is all far-fetched. The even bigger truth is I am not very active on social media at all. I barely check my messages, and that's about it. Unlike many others around me, I don't like spending time while mindlessly scrolling through tiktok, Facebook, Instagram, whatever.
So I don't think it will be much of a problem for me to be a bit more reserved with my socials because of a certain company image. But still I think this is an ill practice because if you're really so much into your employees about what they talk about your company, and if they really do want to talk bad about your company, then it isn't necessary that they will do it on social media. They could do it elsewhere, they can do it in real life. Our social media are just an extension of what we actually live. So I believe any external control over that should be considered as an invasion to privacy and these practices should be stopped.
