Have You Seen an Online Comment Cause Professional Woes?
Recently, some management-side employment lawyers spoke up and recommended that as far as praising or panning underlings on LinkedIn, supervisors should stay neutral. As Mitts Milavec partner Carolyn Plump put it, if employers “say something negative, there could be a lawsuit. If they say something positive, there could be a lawsuit.”
But we’re interested in war stories. Have you ever known of someone who did their career—or someone else’s—some harm or even spurred a lawsuit over a LinkedIn review, a personal or work-related blog, or even just a comment on a blog?
Answer in the comments below.
Read the answers to last month’s question: Should There Be an Expectation of Permanent Anonymity Online?
Posted by Kathleen Bergin: “Should there be a ‘right’ to anonymity? No. Not for threats, defamation, incitement, harassment … I could go on. There’s a reason why some speech isn’t protected, and anonymity doesn’t give you a pass.
“Should there be an “expectation” of anonymity, yes, if that’s the culture of the blog. And it is on most law prof blogs that I’m aware of. In an age when even tenured Profs become the target of purge campaigns, its easy see why anonymity is so important to those who have yet to receive the holy grail. And that won’t change until the rest of us who make hiring and promotion decisions start behaving like the adults in the room.
“Until then, new profs who can’t blog anonymously won’t blog at all. Too bad, because some of them have pretty good stuff to say.
“And that’s our loss, not just theirs.”
