Morifen said:
The Bucket said:
Morifen said:
So I just looked up Twitter. 230 million users. Over 7 billion people in the world. Why does anyone give a shit about what anyone says on some little site like that? It like getting fired for a conversation you are having with your friends at a bar. Has nothing to do with work, people should be entitled to say whatever they want outside of their job.
It doesnt look like he was fired for that, in my opinion at least. But his account was tied to his videos and content, it was linked on everything he put out (Not to mention it was straight up called the Moviebob). And sorry you haven't run into this before, but you totally can be straight up fired for how you conduct yourself on social media from most companies, its why so many of them are instituting guidelines about it as part of their contracts and giving training on it. That's the modern world
The modern world needs to change then, at least in the US. We are supposed to be a country of people sharing their ideas from all kinds of backgrounds, one of the reasons we have freedom of speech. It is going to be pretty hard to maintain a culture that is supposed to value opinions from different backgrounds when expressing those opinions can get you fired from your job. This reminds me of the McCarthy witchhunt of communists, but with a rotating wheel of who it is targeting, dependent on the whims of whoever happens to be executives of a company at that point in time.
First, we don't speak into a vacuum. Different situations will place different demands on speech. All of our rights, speech included, are balanced against all the rights of those we can affect in the excercise of those rights. Speech and expression, though sacred in the U.S., are not immune to context or consequence.
More to the point - consider. You are a server. What happens if you hurl explatives at the patrons to your restaurant? You are a teacher. What happens if you knowingly make a sexual remark at a someone who is under age on social media? You are the owner of a professional team. What happens if you insult an entire community of your own fans and fans of the sport in general, thus violating your league's contractual code of conduct? Lots of industries, enterprises, and individual businesses have codes of conduct to ensure they are represented professionally. Ever heard of a soldier being dishonerably discharged or even court martialed for conduct unbecoming? This can include speech.
MB's twitter account was none the less closely associated to the material he was contracted to produce for The Escapist. He, as a face of the media outlet, had a responsibility of professionalism - whether explicit in contract or implied by the nature of his service - to uphold. And in fact, as has been already mentioned, if what we are told by MB and The Escapist is to be believed, his social media communications had nothing to do with his contract being released. So that's kind of a moot point. But it very well COULD have been the impetus.
If this was some mailroom staffer in a megacorp like GE or something ranting about lightbulbs - probably no one in the offices would care much (though he/she still may be held to code of conduct contracts on condition of employment so they COULD care). MB, though, was a huge part of this site contributing a significant portion of the site's content; and he was mixing it together with his social media presence in a possibly unflattering way for the people paying him.
A lot of us that frequent this site, and engage in these discussions are in places in our lives where we have codes of conduct in our professions, or NDA's, or communications tied to contracts. It protects employers, it protects clients, it protcts the material of our professions, and in many ways it protects us in the context of our work. And we as mature, savvy individuals know what we are getting into when we seek such employment and sign our contracts. Some people handle these constraints with responsibility and maturity. Others do not. If those constraints are unexeptable to us we are free to go and seek employment without such constraints. And mature is the last word I'd use to describe MB as of the last year or so (Twitter completely aside).
McCarthy, nothing.
