By Shanieka Perrier |Staff Writer|
I think the Social Media Privacy Act is great because it will protect employees and students from being terminated from work or school as a result of their Facebook activities.
On May 2, 2012, the California Assembly Committee of Labor and Employment unanimously passed Assembly Bill 1844. The bill prohibits employers from requesting personal social media user names and passwords from employees, according to the Daily 49er.
The Social Media Privacy Act was also approved a week before by the California Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee. It prohibits colleges from asking for prospective students’ social media user names and passwords, according to the Daily 49er.
Within the last couple of years, people have been terminated from their jobs because of their Facebook accounts.I think the number of incidents of employees being fired for so-called inappropriate behavior is absurd.
In the state of Georgia a teacher was fired because she had a picture of her holding a glass of wine. Apparently, the student’s parents felt that she was displaying inappropriate behavior.
“It’s just not right that teachers have to hide their lives because parents believe adults drinking is inappropriate,” stated Professor Amakar.
To my knowledge, I did not realize how offensive wine drinking could be. This teacher was in the privacy of her own home so she has to right to consume whatever she likes.
My question is why were her employers even looking at her pictures? The picture in question wasn’t even on her display page; it was in one of her photo albums.
There was also an incident where a mascot from a baseball team was fired because he acknowledged the team’s losing strike on Facebook.
This action upset the team’s coach. In my opinion, his comment wasn’t a big deal.
He was the mascot for goodness sakes. He’s the team’s number one supporter. If the coach is upset about the comment then maybe he should try winning some games.
It is just so interesting how social media has shaped our culture in ways of extremes by firing someone. There was also a story of an employee complaining about her boss on Facebook.
The boss later posts a comment on the employee’s page stating, “don’t bother coming in tomorrow,” thus officially discharging her from work. I am very happy to know this bill is in affect to protect people’s job security.
I feel that the changes resulting from this bill will be positive because they will allow people to have the freedom to enjoy their personal lives without censorship. They will help protect people from senseless firings and dismissals from the academic and professional worlds .
Facebook settings allow users to choose who they will allow to have access to their pages, also helping curb this problem. This will definitely keep prying employers and schools out of people’s social lives.