February 28, 2011 • 37 mins
The explosive growth of social media has triggered startling innovations - but it's also created unprecedented opportunities for social faux pas or embarrassing statements. Tune in as the guys break down social media faux pas (and how to avoid them).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot coming. Hello again, everyone,
and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Palette,
(00:20):
and I'm an editor at how stuff works dot Com.
Sitting across from me as usual as senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
I'm not shouting, all right, I am. I'm shouting. I'm shouting.
I'm shouting. You know, I'll have to ask you where
you picked that one up because I don't know that one.
You don't know that one? Now, I don't know. Okay,
that was That was a classic film from the eighties. Actually,
(00:43):
I wonder if it's got to be one you've seen.
If you have not seen this movie, you will have
to watch it. Okay, but we'll talk about it afterwards. Okay,
let's talk about what we're going to actually address today. Okay,
so today we're going to talk about some some mistakes
people have made utilizing social media in its various forms
and social networking. I see, so I thought I thought
(01:06):
before we actually get into any cases, we can kind
of talk a little bit about why this has become
a problem sort of from an armchair psychology way right,
good because I only I went to the school of
armchair psychology. Yeah, yeah, I I have a degree in
lazy boy psychiatry actually, so I can. I never mind anyway.
(01:27):
So what my theory about why social media and social
networking has given rise to a lot of people making
goofy mistakes is that it allows you to voice your
thoughts to essentially a global audience almost immediately allows you nay,
I say, encourages you to do this. It tasks me,
(01:51):
um it, Oh there's something going on I should write
about that. Now I have had a thought, let me
express it to everyone I know and to people I
don't know as well. Yeah, especially with things like like
cell phones and smartphones tying into this technology, it's really
given us the opportunity to express a thought almost instantaneously. Yes,
(02:16):
and in some cases, depending on what it is that
you're doing, I would say that it, uh, you're you're
trying to scoop everyone else. If you see something happening
that that could be uh, you know, m historical event
or just something compelling where you'd like to, you know,
get the jump on everyone else. Tweeting it's like, hey,
(02:37):
there goes somebody famous down the sidewalk. I should tweet that, right,
And also it gives you this feeling that, uh, you know,
it's not that far removed from text messaging, right, but
when you're seeing a text message, you're sending it to
a specific person, it's not going out to the public
at large, and you get this idea. It's kind of
like when you're chatting with friends. You know, you don't
(02:57):
expect the things you say to friends, as long as
it's not directly about them or their significant others. You
don't expect that stuff to come back and kick you
in the butt. True, right, like you can get with
your friends and complain about your job. That's that's true.
And it's funny because you figure, well, I don't know
you do, but some people might think, you know, hey,
(03:20):
I've only got twenty three followers. Only those twenty three
people are going to read my Twitter account. But unless
you've locked it down in your privacy settings, that's not
the case necessarily. And you know, the Library of Congress
is archiving these things, so there's a public records, a
public record of what you're doing, at least on Twitter.
(03:41):
But but This is the case for various venues, not
just Twitter, but we're also going to talk about Facebook
and probably YouTube, and there's even a Craigslist story in here. Really, yeah,
I don't know that when you're talking about yes you do, Oh,
yes I do, Yes you do, it's funny. Okay. So
we've got some story is to share about some fairly
(04:02):
famous or at least infamous misuses of social networking. And
really the reason why we're doing this it's kind of
a cautionary tale, right. It's letting people know you need
to be careful with what you say on the Internet
because it can have real life consequences further down the road,
even if you were just being silly or joking. And
(04:23):
I can say from personal experience, I mean I've been
guilty of sending something on Twitter or posting posting something
on Facebook that I intended to be expressed one way,
but due to either of my failing because I worded
it incorrectly or because of the the way people inferred
(04:44):
what I meant, it kind of um didn't go the
way I hadn't anticipated. It also does not help that
if you get angry, you know, you should make sure
that you're as far away from a computer or smartphone
as humanly possible, because you will your your inner sir,
your inner editor tends to take little breaks whenever you
get ticked off, and the next thing you know, you're
(05:07):
sending out ah an obscenity laden tweet that particularly points
the finger at specific individuals in your life, and then
you will have a reckoning. So, um, should we tell
everyone which tweet it was that made us think this
would be a good time to do this episode? Go
(05:27):
for it? So fashion designer Kenneth Cole. And and now
we don't really need to say anything else because this
is pretty close in proximity to when we're recording it,
and I'll probably release fairly close to that too. You. Um,
Kenneth Cole has a history of trying to demonstrate that
(05:49):
he's with it. He knows what's going on in the world.
He pays attention to world events. Yeah, and if you
don't know who Kenneth Cole is, he's a fashion designer.
Didn't I say a fashion designer? You probably did and
I just zoned out. Um, I haven't had my coffee yet,
so if I if I missed it anyway, that's good
to point out Uh, well, he's uh. He apparently is
(06:11):
uh one of the people at his company that has
access to his company's Twitter account, or at least he
used to Yeah, well, or or somebody tweeted and and
attributed it to him because they put their um uh,
they put their initials casey by by this, so we
assume that it is in fact kennethic goal and he
(06:32):
did in fact apologize for it later. But um as
the uh, I guess is it safe to call it
a revolution in Egypt? A lot of Egyptian people call
it a revolution, so I guess if they're the authorities
on this um they a few days after the protests
had begun in Egypt, Mr Cole apparently quoted tweeted and
(06:56):
I quote millions are in uproar in Cairo in hashtag
Cairo rememor is they heard our new spring collection is
now available online at and put the r L right now.
Using the hashtag Cairo means that if you were to
use Twitter search to find out the latest information of
what was going on in Cairo and use that hashtag,
(07:18):
this would be one of the messages that would pull up,
depending on you know, how long after you were looking
it up because there was a lot of stuff happening, right,
So I mean clearly that that list would be filling
up quickly. But it means that this, this promotional tweet
would appear in the middle of all these messages that
were about social change, and a lot of people thought
(07:38):
that this was in bad taste, and Chris You pointed
out that it was also a case of just incredibly
poor timing, because not only was it in poor taste,
just to start with um, when Kenneth Cole posted this message,
it was when the protests were still relatively peaceful, right,
And so it happened to be hosted the same day
(08:01):
that some of the protests began to turn violent, that
there was violence enacted upon the protesters, and so then
it went from poor taste to astonishingly poor taste. And
here's the thing about the internet. The Internet is kind
of like a big brother, right. Big brothers tend to,
you know, bully their their younger siblings around a little
(08:23):
bit every now and then. But if someone else picks
on that younger sibling, big brother gets really mad and
then may lash out in a way that is not
necessarily equivalent to whatever the slight was so in other words,
if you were to insult my little sister and I
have one, I might punch you in the mush and uh.
(08:45):
And so the Internet punched Kenneth Cole in the mush
so hard. There were tons of of parody and satirical
tweets that came out, supposedly attributed to Kenneth Cole that
were about other major events being belittled, essentially as part
of a marketing scheme. Um. And as Chris said, Kenneth
(09:08):
Cole himself actually apologized on Facebook. I might add, and
I have the quote for that if you would like
me to read it. I apologize to everyone who was
offended by my insensitive tweet about the situation in Egypt.
I've dedicated my life to raising awareness about serious social issues,
and in hindsight, my attempt at humor regarding a nation
liberating themselves against oppression was poorly timed and absolutely inappropriate.
(09:33):
So you have to admit he did not deflect this
in any way. He accepted responsibility, which that's an admirable thing,
and we should all remember that there are times when
some of us will make a joke about a particularly
sensitive topic without fully considering the implications of that joke.
I've done it in the past, but pretty much everyone has, right,
(09:56):
It's it's one thing to to do this, however, when
you're around a couple of your friends by seeing a
news event on TV and making that joke, versus broadcasting
it on Twitter to the world, including a link a
much bigger forum too, you know, because then only is
it a joke, it's a marketing ploy, right, So yeah,
(10:17):
it was definitely a bad choice. He apologized for it. Um,
I'd say that most of the fallout has pretty much
died down about around the time we're recording this. It's
been it's been a more than a week since, a
couple of weeks since uh that happened. But um, but yeah,
he was. He was raked over the virtual coals for
quite some time for that, and that's that was really
(10:40):
what kind of precipitated this discussion. Now, not not everything
we're going to talk about here is necessarily something that
gets someone fired or gets them in trouble with their friends.
In some cases, it's just something that's bizarre and awkward,
And I wanted to do one of those just to
kind of give you the idea of what can happen
when taken to the extreme. Before I, before I really
(11:05):
get into this, this is about David Prager, who is
an executive with Revision three. Uh. Now, I have never
spoken with David. I have not met David, but I
know people who do know David, and they all say
that he's a great guy and is just a you know,
a cool cat. That's the deal with David. Um. Now,
David did get a little bit of a heat put
(11:28):
on him. A lot of jokes were made at his
expense for something that he did on Twitter a couple
of years ago. Um. He was the victim of a
home invasion, more or less, and rather than calling the police,
he tweeted about it at length. I would like to
read to you a selection of the tweets he wrote,
(11:52):
keeping in mind, I cut out a lot of them,
so there when you sit there and think, wow, this
guy tweeted a lot. That's about maybe sixty percent of
what he actually said. So here's how it starts. Okay,
maybe I should lock my door. I swear a random
dude just walked into my bathroom. And I can't believe
I haven't freaked out next, and I can't believe I'm
(12:14):
tweeting about it while he's still here. I wonder if
he's sleepwalking or if maybe I should freak out. Then okay,
he's still in the bathroom. And now I'm thinking a
combo of hobo and drunk and sleepwalking dude. He seems
late twenties. What next? Next? Should I call the cops
(12:34):
like you guys have recommended, find a blunt object before
opening the door. My gut tells me he's harmless. Next,
but I could be wrong about the harmless assumption. Next, Okay,
about to make a move, putting shoes on first, Thank
god he tweeted that. Next, Okay, have weapon if I
(12:54):
need it, but don't plan on any confrontation with it.
About to go in Next, Okay, still haven't done anything.
He is still in there, Gonna set up a U
stream now I think stand by. So then he starts
to live stream the home invasion with a webcam. If
you haven't been watching my youth stream, the dude passed
out in my bathroom and I just dragged him out. Next,
(13:18):
I think the drama is over. In truder is out
door is locked. I think I finally need some sleep,
and that that's the conclusion. Keep in mind. Like I said,
I cut out about the tweets he sent during that
that whole thing, Now, David David got a little bit
of joking at his expense for rather than reacting to
(13:38):
a possible home invasion in a way that most of
us would, which is that we'd call the cops and
perhaps lock our own bedroom door to make sure that,
you know, we would remain safe, he decided to broadcast
it to the world. Uh, that's an unusual faux paw. Uh.
And like I said, from everything I've heard, he's actually
(13:58):
a pretty cool guy. So thankfully it was a peaceful resolution,
I guess. And uh, maybe he locks his door now perhaps,
how how anyone in this world doesn't lock their door?
Of course I live in Atlanta. I can't even imagine,
not like like when I watch a show like Friends
where people just walk in and out of their their apartments.
(14:20):
I think, what world is that? I can't imagine. I
would not be able to even sit down if I
knew my door was unlocked. Um, but we've got some
other ones. Here's here's um, here's a good way to
really mess up after a great job interview. Oh Cisco Fatty,
Oh yeah, you got it exactly right. Connor Riley, also
(14:43):
known as the Connor on Twitter wrote, Cisco just offered
me a job. Now I have to weigh the utility
of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San
Jose and hating the work. All right, Guys, if you
interview for a job, don't slam the work immediately after
the job interview. Don't sit there and say you're you're
(15:05):
debating on whether or not you're going to accept the position,
because especially if it happens to be a computer or
or i T type company, because there's a chance they're
gonna notice. Yes, like the guy from Cisco who wrote,
who was the hiring manager, I'm sure they would love
to know that you will hate the work. We hear
at Cisco are well versed in the web. Yeah, so
(15:28):
um burn and uh And this this particular tweet also
gave rise to lots of parodies and spoofs. People were
joking about Cisco fatty because he was talking about the
fatty paycheck. Uh. Yeah, you don't want that kind of reputation.
And keep in mind, like again, he was probably thinking
that he was just posting that to his friends, but
because he didn't have a protected Twitter account, everyone got
(15:51):
to see it. Um. And then there are other ways
of having social social media faue pas as well, like Skittles, Skittles, yeah,
candy exactly, because not all of these are necessarily people
saying stupid things online and getting in trouble. In some cases,
it's a company allowing people to say stupid things. Yeah.
(16:14):
What Skittles did was Skittles created and a little applet
on their web page that would automatically post Twitter messages
that had the hashtag Skittles in them, And once people
figured that out, they began to have a little bit
of fun uh using these Skittles hashtag. Here's one that
was posted by Baritunde Thurston, who is a comedian. This
(16:37):
is one of the few pretty much safer work ones,
although again tasteless humor. Here we go hashtag Skittles got
stuck in my mouth while I was driving, forced me
to slam into orphanage, killing hundreds. I'll never eat them again.
So in that case, the faux pas is a company
thinking that people will be reasonable and not take advance
(17:00):
enag of a of a system to in order to
make tasteless jokes. Uh. Lesson learned one of the major
auto manufacturers here in the United States posted um UM
an opportunity to make your own commercial on their website
about suv s or utility vehicles, which are uh, very
(17:22):
useful vehicles, but they also consume a lot of gas
petroleum petrol um And so rather than making viral video
videos that would extol the virtues of driving SUVs and
o MG, aren't these fun, people started talking about how
much gas they were using and how they were destroying
(17:43):
the planet. And I'm going to try to find the company.
If not, then you can write, but don't pause the
podcast now if when Jonathan's talking, I can't find it.
But that reminded me of that because I had forgotten
about the Skittles thing UM completely because it's been that's
been a couple of years ago, hasn't it now now
that we're recording in UM. But they are all sorts
(18:06):
of other things. Politicians have been terrible about this. They um.
Of course, they've been caught tweeting and emailing and doing
all kinds of things in session when they're supposed to
actually be paying attention to what's going on during the
State of the Union address. Yes, UM but I was
(18:26):
thinking of the United States representative from Michigan, Pete Hoekstra,
who who was on a UH state trip to Iraq
and Afghanistan, except the military would have preferred that he
didn't tell people where he was, and he was tweeting
about his whereabouts and saying that he had just landed
(18:48):
in Iraq, and the Pentagon was really upset with him,
for it makes protecting a public servant much more difficult
when the public servant is broadcasting his position exactly. And
as we know, people in you know, everywhere in the
world at least did had access to these tools are
using them. So it is very likely that somebody who
(19:10):
may have wanted to remove him from the planet was
reading that right as he was tweeting it. Here's another
politico who who used social networking poorly, Virginia State Senator
Jeff Frederick, member of the Republican Party. He tweeted about
a Democrat named Ralph Northam who was considering uh leaving
(19:36):
the Democratic Party. I remember this. Here's the Twitter message.
Big news coming out of Senate. Apparently one dem is
either switching or leaving the DEM Caucus. Negotiations for power
sharing underway now if he had done this after the switch,
it wouldn't have been such a big deal. But he
did it before, which gave the Democrats, who were paying
(19:58):
attention to the internet, the opportunity to find out who
was the person the person who was going to quote
unquote leave the Democratic Party and put a lot of
political pressure on that guy, Ralph Northam to stay a Democrat.
And that is exactly what happened, which means that Jeff
Frederick managed to stick it to his own party. You know,
(20:21):
they might have gained another uh you know, an ally,
but because he got a little thumb happy on Twitter,
that ended up not happening. Yeah. Actually, that's funny because
according to the information I saw now that the Senate
um in Virginia is has an even number of members,
(20:44):
and so the lieutenant governor, uh, in the case of
a tie vote in the Senate, is the tiebreaker. Now,
the lieutenant governor was a Republican, and if if the
switch had been made, it would have been an even
split down the middle, which means that if there was
a vote down party lines half Democrat half Republican, the
lieutenant governor, a Republican, would have been able to Basically
(21:08):
they would have been able to do anything they needed
to do down party lines, because you know that that
one UH senator had switched, but leaving the Democrats at
fifty one forty nine, um prevented that from happening. So
that was probably not such a good move. Actually, I'm
not sure that it's there a hundred senators in Virginia,
(21:31):
so anyway it was, or however many of there are. UM.
So I was gonna say, if you are not supposed
to tweet during jury duty, you should you should not
tweet during jury duty or or use Facebook, or use Facebook.
I'm specifically thinking about you to date show anchorman or
(21:53):
weatherman alt Roker. Well, I like you, aut Roker. However,
you shouldn't tweet during jury duty. I don't even know
this story. Can you tell me a little more? Not
a lot? But he he got busted for tweeting because well,
the thing is, I mean, if you're in jury duty,
you're not supposed to be discussing the details of the case.
(22:15):
It's supposed to be quiet. Um. Then again, you don't
often have media personalities and your jury pool at that
at that level, because if you don't live in the
United States, Mr Roker is a well known and pretty
well liked, uh celebrity on one of the morning news
shows Networks New Shows, and uh, yeah, I mean a
(22:36):
lot of lots and lots of people know who he is.
He's a he's a pretty personable guy and easy to
follow on Twitter, and yeah, that that draws a lot
of attention. You would go, hey, how Roker's in jury
duty with me and he's tweeting about it. There was
a juror in the United Kingdom who uh apparently was
really confused over how she should side in the case,
(22:59):
and so she used her Facebook profile to ask her
friends what she should do and essentially made a poll
over whether she should give a guilty or not guilty verdict.
Needless to say, the judge was not amused and she
was removed from the jury pool. Uh so, yeah, that
was also not a very wise decision. I'm getting back
(23:22):
to politicians for a second. We mentioned Craig's list briefly.
I gotta I gotta tell this story though. Okay, so
here's the other thing about if if you are uh
if if you have decided that you are going to
have an affair, first of all, shame upon you. But secondly, Uh,
you might want to make sure you're not leaving a
(23:42):
easily followable trail, or that you're talking to people who
might recognize who you are. That unfortunately happened with Christopher Lee,
who was a congressman who responded to a personal ad
on Craigslist of a woman who was looking for someone,
and he claimed at that he was a thirty nine
year old divorced lobbyist. He is actually a forty six
(24:06):
year old former congressman who was married and has kids. Um,
And he posted he sent the lady a picture of himself, uh,
making a muscle man pose, wearing no shirt at all,
and that has now become sort of his image on
the web, which I think probably has heard his political future,
(24:29):
at least in the short term. Although this is America,
you never know true true enough. Um, yeah, I mean
that the you know, the United States has a a
place where many entrepreneurs, you know, set out to strike
it rich. Like I'm thinking about Mark Cuban, who made
a whole lot of money on an internet startup which
(24:51):
went big and then he bought the Dallas Mavericks started
complaining about the officiating on social media. Yeah, uh, tweeted
got fined twenty five thousand dollars complaining about the refs. Yeah, yeah, sports,
We've we've actually done a podcast about social media and
(25:13):
sports and we talked about how the two don't necessarily
go hand in hand and uh or how how you know.
Some teams and some um stadiums have struggled with the
ability of their employees to now reach a global audience
like it used to be that if you were a
player or if well, players are a little different because
(25:35):
they have access to too larger media outlets. But let's
say that you're an employee with a stadium. Chances are
if you were complaining about things, you were just complaining
it to a small group of people and no one
really cared. But the Philadelphia Eagles Stadium cared when um UH,
(25:56):
an employee was critic sizing the team, the Eagles team
on Facebook and the the stadium uh, the stadium brass
decided to fire him for that. Then, Actually, I guess
Pennsylvania in general has problems with employees, sports employees and
the internet. Because Andrew Kurtz, who and I love this,
(26:21):
was a Pittsburgh pirate Peroguey mascot was fired because he
criticized team management of the Pittsburgh Pirates on Facebook, he
got he got canned. So you know, if you're a
paroguey just be careful about that social networking. Also, you're
delicious what a spud uh, you know? And it doesn't
(26:46):
take a parogue to make a mistake on on Twitter though,
I mean, you could, you know, tweet your personal phone
number to twenty one followers yikes? Like New York Times
tech columnists, well well well spected tech columnist David Hog,
I think I think a lot of us have accidentally
put out a public tweet when we thought we were
(27:08):
doing a direct message. I know I have, and I've
seen others too. I remember there was there was one
where it was supposed to be Oh, I remember it
was pollen Storm paullen Storm, the musical group, sending a
message to Neil Gaiman because they were going up to
visit Neil Gaiman. And Neil Gaiman and Poullen Storm and
(27:28):
Jonathan Colton are all friends and Neil Gaiman's a very
well known author, and paullen Storm accidentally publicly tweeted the
location of the restaurant they were all going to have
lunch at, and then immediately send on a message saying
please don't mob us. And because it was meant to
(27:48):
be a private message and it wasn't good times with
times also not necessarily a good idea to reveal that
you were leaving your house. Um. Israel Himan uh tweeted
to his I think he had around a couple of
thousand followers at the time, that he was leaving his
(28:08):
house to go on vacation for a ten hour drive,
and then he tweeted later that he made it um.
And then when he got home he found out that
his house had been broken into. And in the interview
I read and uh, I got I got a lot
of my ideas from from Keymate Houstner's story at ABC
News about tweet faux pause, the ones that I didn't
(28:30):
already know. I found some other juicy ones, and uh,
this is one of them. And in the interview they
did with him said, you know, my wife thinks it
may have been random, but I'm not so sure. That's
a paraphrase. It wasn't exact quote, but he he essentially
said that, you know, I think that maybe that was
a really bad idea on my part, and yes, it
it really kind of is it's it's nice to have
(28:50):
these check in enabled systems like four squares and Wala,
but you have to be really careful because you really
don't know. If people know who you are on there
and they know where where you live and you've said,
you know, hey, I'm across the country on a business trip,
that's almost open advertising to come and get robbed. Now
(29:13):
that being said, if you are careful about your private
information online and you can't necessarily find your address online,
then you're probably in okay shape. One way to test that,
by the way, is to go to Google and type
your address and not your name, but your address, and
see if your name comes up in relation to your address.
(29:34):
And if so, then somewhere on the web, whether it's
Facebook where you've got it public information there or somewhere else, uh,
there is a link between you and your address. So
you want to make sure that those are clean. In fact, really,
as a general rule, you want to kind of if
you're going to be interviewing for a job or if
(29:54):
you're entering the professional market, you really want to kind
of scrub your social network stuff clean as much as possible,
especially for Facebook, you know, use those privacy settings make
sure that the people who have access to say, let's
let's say you're using Facebook to have fun with your friends.
Let's let's also say that if you're going to do that,
(30:14):
make sure your privacy settings are set to a point
where not just anyone could log on and see the
photo of you, you know, drinking alcohol with your shirt
off and you know, uh uh a funny but obscene
word written across your chest. That's not something that your your, your,
your future employer is going to find very impressive. In
(30:37):
most cases, I will use the qualifier in most cases
because who knows I did make a joke the other
day that one day, the same people who are posting
these irresponsible pictures of themselves on Facebook without any privacy settings,
someday they will be the people in charge. And that's
when social moray's will crumble, institutions will fall, zombies will eyes,
(31:00):
and Ghostbusters three will be in theaters. Thank you, So,
I mean, they're There are tons of other examples, but
we're gonna have to kind of wrap this up. I
did want to mention a few times, just because you
do make a mistake, or let's not even call it
a mistake. Let's say that you're just expressing your opinion,
because there are lots of cases where people were either
(31:22):
fired or were um uh, were harassed just for expressing
an opinion on these social networking sites, not necessarily an
uninformed opinion, um and not. It doesn't always turn out badly,
and we do have to walk a fine line between
making sure that we don't we're that we're not irresponsible
online and making sure that our freedom of speech and
(31:44):
our freedom of expression remains protected. You know, there's a
there's a balance there. We're not telling you don't say
what you're thinking online. We're just saying think about it
first and think about the potential consequences before it's saying it.
And here's what I would close with. In Australia, there
was have you heard of the Facebook six um? You know,
(32:06):
I'm not sure that I have. So in Australia, there
was the their corrections systems systems. So the prison system
in Australia UM was going through some some trouble and
some of the hundreds of employees actually joined a Facebook
group where they could have discussions about the system, the
(32:26):
politics within the system, the troubles they perceived, the potential
solutions really a place to kind of not just suggest things,
but to gripe and grouse. I mean everyone occasionally needs
to do that, right, just to go home and get
it out vent and say, God, it was just such
a bad day at work and blah blah blah blah.
Not me because I love my job, but everyone else.
(32:49):
Uh So, Anyway, the the commissioner for the Corrective Services
Department in Australia UH singled out six particular employees among
the hundreds that were using this Facebook group and said
that they were using language that was public bullying and
(33:10):
so started to make the move to have them terminated
from their positions. Uh. The the six ended up having
a suit against the Corrective Services Department and six months
later they won the suit, which essentially said that no,
you can't fire them because they were criticizing the department.
And uh but I mean that's just another indication that
(33:32):
there are times where where if you express your opinion
there could be consequences. Now, hopefully if it's something like
this case and you have you have actual, you know,
case to support your your perspective, it'll all turn out
all right. But that's six months out of your life.
So again, it's the balance between being able to speak
(33:54):
your mind and knowing that there could be potential consequences
further down the road. So there's an element of bravery
there too. I mean, I'm sure that the people in
Egypt who were using Twitter and Facebook in order to
criticize the government and to organize protests, they were doing that.
I'm sure with the knowledge that if things went poorly,
(34:17):
it could really come to haunt them later on. But
but they showed courage in that case. But there's a
difference between showing courage and a protest and calling your
employer a jerk, right, So just make sure you know
that difference, because sometimes I don't. By the way, just
(34:37):
to follow up, I never did find the the SUV company,
So I'm sure somebody if you would like to tell
us on Facebook who that was. I can't remember for
the life of me who it was. Um, And I
looked at the outroker thing because I just basically pulled
it from my list. Um, he was actually taking pictures
and posting pictures of the prospective jurors. He said he
got permission and U and the the court basically said
(35:03):
he was okay because somebody told him it was okay,
but it really wasn't okay to do that. But someone
had told him it was okay, so they weren't. It's like, well,
you know, you got told something. It isn't incorrect, but
you were actually told that, so it's not your fault.
Even so, I don't do it. I can't imagine being
the person who told him, oh, sure you can do that. Yeah,
and I I don't think i'd want to have the pictures,
(35:25):
but yes, that is. That is the more specific information
about about what he was doing. I'm sorry I didn't
have that earlier. I was just grabbing all kinds of
crazy things and I thought, oh, that's interesting. Yeah, like
we said, there are a lot more stories here. I mean,
there's stories about companies that laid off, you know, more
than a dozen employees, for creating a Facebook pro Facebook
(35:47):
group page to talk about something or other. Ones of
a lot of sports ones. There are a lot of
politician ones. There's the entire there's an entire sub genre
for teachers. Because of course, teachers, you know, they're held
to a very specific kind of standard and should they
have anything in their social media profiles that is somewhat
(36:08):
uh below that standard. They could suffer for it, and
there's not a whole lot of sympathy offered to them
from most school boards, I would say, and uh oh.
And then there's the guy from best Buy who was
fired and then rehired by best Buy for creating the
YouTube video of the cartoon where it's the customer who
(36:30):
comes in wanting to buy an iPhone and the the
best Buy representative is trying to convince the customer that
the EVO is a superior product. That was the one
that kind of launched all the the that that series
of videos of all the cartoons with the robotic voices
that wanted an iPhone. You know that kind of thing,
(36:51):
I want an iPhone? Yes, exactly that video. There's that
guy too. So this does span things well beyond Twitter
and Facebook. Guys, if you have any favorite stories, or
if you have a story of what happened to you
or to maybe someone you know who perhaps used Twitter
or Facebook in a moment of absent mindedness, let's say,
(37:13):
and you want to share it. First of all, keep
it clean, folks, but you can let us know on
Facebook or Twitter are handle there is text stuff h
s W. Or you can shoot us an email That
address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com,
and Chris and I will talk to you again, hopefully
when we think about it first really soon. For more
(37:35):
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
our homepage. The house stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.
Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot coming. Hello again, everyone,
and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Palette,
(00:20):
and I'm an editor at how stuff works dot Com.
Sitting across from me as usual as senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
I'm not shouting, all right, I am. I'm shouting. I'm shouting.
I'm shouting. You know, I'll have to ask you where
you picked that one up because I don't know that one.
You don't know that one? Now, I don't know. Okay,
that was That was a classic film from the eighties. Actually,
(00:43):
I wonder if it's got to be one you've seen.
If you have not seen this movie, you will have
to watch it. Okay, but we'll talk about it afterwards. Okay,
let's talk about what we're going to actually address today. Okay,
so today we're going to talk about some some mistakes
people have made utilizing social media in its various forms
and social networking. I see, so I thought I thought
(01:06):
before we actually get into any cases, we can kind
of talk a little bit about why this has become
a problem sort of from an armchair psychology way right,
good because I only I went to the school of
armchair psychology. Yeah, yeah, I I have a degree in
lazy boy psychiatry actually, so I can. I never mind anyway.
(01:27):
So what my theory about why social media and social
networking has given rise to a lot of people making
goofy mistakes is that it allows you to voice your
thoughts to essentially a global audience almost immediately allows you nay,
I say, encourages you to do this. It tasks me,
(01:51):
um it, Oh there's something going on I should write
about that. Now I have had a thought, let me
express it to everyone I know and to people I
don't know as well. Yeah, especially with things like like
cell phones and smartphones tying into this technology, it's really
given us the opportunity to express a thought almost instantaneously. Yes,
(02:16):
and in some cases, depending on what it is that
you're doing, I would say that it, uh, you're you're
trying to scoop everyone else. If you see something happening
that that could be uh, you know, m historical event
or just something compelling where you'd like to, you know,
get the jump on everyone else. Tweeting it's like, hey,
(02:37):
there goes somebody famous down the sidewalk. I should tweet that, right,
And also it gives you this feeling that, uh, you know,
it's not that far removed from text messaging, right, but
when you're seeing a text message, you're sending it to
a specific person, it's not going out to the public
at large, and you get this idea. It's kind of
like when you're chatting with friends. You know, you don't
(02:57):
expect the things you say to friends, as long as
it's not directly about them or their significant others. You
don't expect that stuff to come back and kick you
in the butt. True, right, like you can get with
your friends and complain about your job. That's that's true.
And it's funny because you figure, well, I don't know
you do, but some people might think, you know, hey,
(03:20):
I've only got twenty three followers. Only those twenty three
people are going to read my Twitter account. But unless
you've locked it down in your privacy settings, that's not
the case necessarily. And you know, the Library of Congress
is archiving these things, so there's a public records, a
public record of what you're doing, at least on Twitter.
(03:41):
But but This is the case for various venues, not
just Twitter, but we're also going to talk about Facebook
and probably YouTube, and there's even a Craigslist story in here. Really, yeah,
I don't know that when you're talking about yes you do, Oh,
yes I do, Yes you do, it's funny. Okay. So
we've got some story is to share about some fairly
(04:02):
famous or at least infamous misuses of social networking. And
really the reason why we're doing this it's kind of
a cautionary tale, right. It's letting people know you need
to be careful with what you say on the Internet
because it can have real life consequences further down the road,
even if you were just being silly or joking. And
(04:23):
I can say from personal experience, I mean I've been
guilty of sending something on Twitter or posting posting something
on Facebook that I intended to be expressed one way,
but due to either of my failing because I worded
it incorrectly or because of the the way people inferred
(04:44):
what I meant, it kind of um didn't go the
way I hadn't anticipated. It also does not help that
if you get angry, you know, you should make sure
that you're as far away from a computer or smartphone
as humanly possible, because you will your your inner sir,
your inner editor tends to take little breaks whenever you
get ticked off, and the next thing you know, you're
(05:07):
sending out ah an obscenity laden tweet that particularly points
the finger at specific individuals in your life, and then
you will have a reckoning. So, um, should we tell
everyone which tweet it was that made us think this
would be a good time to do this episode? Go
(05:27):
for it? So fashion designer Kenneth Cole. And and now
we don't really need to say anything else because this
is pretty close in proximity to when we're recording it,
and I'll probably release fairly close to that too. You. Um,
Kenneth Cole has a history of trying to demonstrate that
(05:49):
he's with it. He knows what's going on in the world.
He pays attention to world events. Yeah, and if you
don't know who Kenneth Cole is, he's a fashion designer.
Didn't I say a fashion designer? You probably did and
I just zoned out. Um, I haven't had my coffee yet,
so if I if I missed it anyway, that's good
to point out Uh, well, he's uh. He apparently is
(06:11):
uh one of the people at his company that has
access to his company's Twitter account, or at least he
used to Yeah, well, or or somebody tweeted and and
attributed it to him because they put their um uh,
they put their initials casey by by this, so we
assume that it is in fact kennethic goal and he
(06:32):
did in fact apologize for it later. But um as
the uh, I guess is it safe to call it
a revolution in Egypt? A lot of Egyptian people call
it a revolution, so I guess if they're the authorities
on this um they a few days after the protests
had begun in Egypt, Mr Cole apparently quoted tweeted and
(06:56):
I quote millions are in uproar in Cairo in hashtag
Cairo rememor is they heard our new spring collection is
now available online at and put the r L right now.
Using the hashtag Cairo means that if you were to
use Twitter search to find out the latest information of
what was going on in Cairo and use that hashtag,
(07:18):
this would be one of the messages that would pull up,
depending on you know, how long after you were looking
it up because there was a lot of stuff happening, right,
So I mean clearly that that list would be filling
up quickly. But it means that this, this promotional tweet
would appear in the middle of all these messages that
were about social change, and a lot of people thought
(07:38):
that this was in bad taste, and Chris You pointed
out that it was also a case of just incredibly
poor timing, because not only was it in poor taste,
just to start with um, when Kenneth Cole posted this message,
it was when the protests were still relatively peaceful, right,
And so it happened to be hosted the same day
(08:01):
that some of the protests began to turn violent, that
there was violence enacted upon the protesters, and so then
it went from poor taste to astonishingly poor taste. And
here's the thing about the internet. The Internet is kind
of like a big brother, right. Big brothers tend to,
you know, bully their their younger siblings around a little
(08:23):
bit every now and then. But if someone else picks
on that younger sibling, big brother gets really mad and
then may lash out in a way that is not
necessarily equivalent to whatever the slight was so in other words,
if you were to insult my little sister and I
have one, I might punch you in the mush and uh.
(08:45):
And so the Internet punched Kenneth Cole in the mush
so hard. There were tons of of parody and satirical
tweets that came out, supposedly attributed to Kenneth Cole that
were about other major events being belittled, essentially as part
of a marketing scheme. Um. And as Chris said, Kenneth
(09:08):
Cole himself actually apologized on Facebook. I might add, and
I have the quote for that if you would like
me to read it. I apologize to everyone who was
offended by my insensitive tweet about the situation in Egypt.
I've dedicated my life to raising awareness about serious social issues,
and in hindsight, my attempt at humor regarding a nation
liberating themselves against oppression was poorly timed and absolutely inappropriate.
(09:33):
So you have to admit he did not deflect this
in any way. He accepted responsibility, which that's an admirable thing,
and we should all remember that there are times when
some of us will make a joke about a particularly
sensitive topic without fully considering the implications of that joke.
I've done it in the past, but pretty much everyone has, right,
(09:56):
It's it's one thing to to do this, however, when
you're around a couple of your friends by seeing a
news event on TV and making that joke, versus broadcasting
it on Twitter to the world, including a link a
much bigger forum too, you know, because then only is
it a joke, it's a marketing ploy, right, So yeah,
(10:17):
it was definitely a bad choice. He apologized for it. Um,
I'd say that most of the fallout has pretty much
died down about around the time we're recording this. It's
been it's been a more than a week since, a
couple of weeks since uh that happened. But um, but yeah,
he was. He was raked over the virtual coals for
quite some time for that, and that's that was really
(10:40):
what kind of precipitated this discussion. Now, not not everything
we're going to talk about here is necessarily something that
gets someone fired or gets them in trouble with their friends.
In some cases, it's just something that's bizarre and awkward,
And I wanted to do one of those just to
kind of give you the idea of what can happen
when taken to the extreme. Before I, before I really
(11:05):
get into this, this is about David Prager, who is
an executive with Revision three. Uh. Now, I have never
spoken with David. I have not met David, but I
know people who do know David, and they all say
that he's a great guy and is just a you know,
a cool cat. That's the deal with David. Um. Now,
David did get a little bit of a heat put
(11:28):
on him. A lot of jokes were made at his
expense for something that he did on Twitter a couple
of years ago. Um. He was the victim of a
home invasion, more or less, and rather than calling the police,
he tweeted about it at length. I would like to
read to you a selection of the tweets he wrote,
(11:52):
keeping in mind, I cut out a lot of them,
so there when you sit there and think, wow, this
guy tweeted a lot. That's about maybe sixty percent of
what he actually said. So here's how it starts. Okay,
maybe I should lock my door. I swear a random
dude just walked into my bathroom. And I can't believe
I haven't freaked out next, and I can't believe I'm
(12:14):
tweeting about it while he's still here. I wonder if
he's sleepwalking or if maybe I should freak out. Then okay,
he's still in the bathroom. And now I'm thinking a
combo of hobo and drunk and sleepwalking dude. He seems
late twenties. What next? Next? Should I call the cops
(12:34):
like you guys have recommended, find a blunt object before
opening the door. My gut tells me he's harmless. Next,
but I could be wrong about the harmless assumption. Next, Okay,
about to make a move, putting shoes on first, Thank
god he tweeted that. Next, Okay, have weapon if I
(12:54):
need it, but don't plan on any confrontation with it.
About to go in Next, Okay, still haven't done anything.
He is still in there, Gonna set up a U
stream now I think stand by. So then he starts
to live stream the home invasion with a webcam. If
you haven't been watching my youth stream, the dude passed
out in my bathroom and I just dragged him out. Next,
(13:18):
I think the drama is over. In truder is out
door is locked. I think I finally need some sleep,
and that that's the conclusion. Keep in mind. Like I said,
I cut out about the tweets he sent during that
that whole thing, Now, David David got a little bit
of joking at his expense for rather than reacting to
(13:38):
a possible home invasion in a way that most of
us would, which is that we'd call the cops and
perhaps lock our own bedroom door to make sure that,
you know, we would remain safe, he decided to broadcast
it to the world. Uh, that's an unusual faux paw. Uh.
And like I said, from everything I've heard, he's actually
(13:58):
a pretty cool guy. So thankfully it was a peaceful resolution,
I guess. And uh, maybe he locks his door now perhaps,
how how anyone in this world doesn't lock their door?
Of course I live in Atlanta. I can't even imagine,
not like like when I watch a show like Friends
where people just walk in and out of their their apartments.
(14:20):
I think, what world is that? I can't imagine. I
would not be able to even sit down if I
knew my door was unlocked. Um, but we've got some
other ones. Here's here's um, here's a good way to
really mess up after a great job interview. Oh Cisco Fatty,
Oh yeah, you got it exactly right. Connor Riley, also
(14:43):
known as the Connor on Twitter wrote, Cisco just offered
me a job. Now I have to weigh the utility
of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San
Jose and hating the work. All right, Guys, if you
interview for a job, don't slam the work immediately after
the job interview. Don't sit there and say you're you're
(15:05):
debating on whether or not you're going to accept the position,
because especially if it happens to be a computer or
or i T type company, because there's a chance they're
gonna notice. Yes, like the guy from Cisco who wrote,
who was the hiring manager, I'm sure they would love
to know that you will hate the work. We hear
at Cisco are well versed in the web. Yeah, so
(15:28):
um burn and uh And this this particular tweet also
gave rise to lots of parodies and spoofs. People were
joking about Cisco fatty because he was talking about the
fatty paycheck. Uh. Yeah, you don't want that kind of reputation.
And keep in mind, like again, he was probably thinking
that he was just posting that to his friends, but
because he didn't have a protected Twitter account, everyone got
(15:51):
to see it. Um. And then there are other ways
of having social social media faue pas as well, like Skittles, Skittles, yeah,
candy exactly, because not all of these are necessarily people
saying stupid things online and getting in trouble. In some cases,
it's a company allowing people to say stupid things. Yeah.
(16:14):
What Skittles did was Skittles created and a little applet
on their web page that would automatically post Twitter messages
that had the hashtag Skittles in them, And once people
figured that out, they began to have a little bit
of fun uh using these Skittles hashtag. Here's one that
was posted by Baritunde Thurston, who is a comedian. This
(16:37):
is one of the few pretty much safer work ones,
although again tasteless humor. Here we go hashtag Skittles got
stuck in my mouth while I was driving, forced me
to slam into orphanage, killing hundreds. I'll never eat them again.
So in that case, the faux pas is a company
thinking that people will be reasonable and not take advance
(17:00):
enag of a of a system to in order to
make tasteless jokes. Uh. Lesson learned one of the major
auto manufacturers here in the United States posted um UM
an opportunity to make your own commercial on their website
about suv s or utility vehicles, which are uh, very
(17:22):
useful vehicles, but they also consume a lot of gas
petroleum petrol um And so rather than making viral video
videos that would extol the virtues of driving SUVs and
o MG, aren't these fun, people started talking about how
much gas they were using and how they were destroying
(17:43):
the planet. And I'm going to try to find the company.
If not, then you can write, but don't pause the
podcast now if when Jonathan's talking, I can't find it.
But that reminded me of that because I had forgotten
about the Skittles thing UM completely because it's been that's
been a couple of years ago, hasn't it now now
that we're recording in UM. But they are all sorts
(18:06):
of other things. Politicians have been terrible about this. They um.
Of course, they've been caught tweeting and emailing and doing
all kinds of things in session when they're supposed to
actually be paying attention to what's going on during the
State of the Union address. Yes, UM but I was
(18:26):
thinking of the United States representative from Michigan, Pete Hoekstra,
who who was on a UH state trip to Iraq
and Afghanistan, except the military would have preferred that he
didn't tell people where he was, and he was tweeting
about his whereabouts and saying that he had just landed
(18:48):
in Iraq, and the Pentagon was really upset with him,
for it makes protecting a public servant much more difficult
when the public servant is broadcasting his position exactly. And
as we know, people in you know, everywhere in the
world at least did had access to these tools are
using them. So it is very likely that somebody who
(19:10):
may have wanted to remove him from the planet was
reading that right as he was tweeting it. Here's another
politico who who used social networking poorly, Virginia State Senator
Jeff Frederick, member of the Republican Party. He tweeted about
a Democrat named Ralph Northam who was considering uh leaving
(19:36):
the Democratic Party. I remember this. Here's the Twitter message.
Big news coming out of Senate. Apparently one dem is
either switching or leaving the DEM Caucus. Negotiations for power
sharing underway now if he had done this after the switch,
it wouldn't have been such a big deal. But he
did it before, which gave the Democrats, who were paying
(19:58):
attention to the internet, the opportunity to find out who
was the person the person who was going to quote
unquote leave the Democratic Party and put a lot of
political pressure on that guy, Ralph Northam to stay a Democrat.
And that is exactly what happened, which means that Jeff
Frederick managed to stick it to his own party. You know,
(20:21):
they might have gained another uh you know, an ally,
but because he got a little thumb happy on Twitter,
that ended up not happening. Yeah. Actually, that's funny because
according to the information I saw now that the Senate
um in Virginia is has an even number of members,
(20:44):
and so the lieutenant governor, uh, in the case of
a tie vote in the Senate, is the tiebreaker. Now,
the lieutenant governor was a Republican, and if if the
switch had been made, it would have been an even
split down the middle, which means that if there was
a vote down party lines half Democrat half Republican, the
lieutenant governor, a Republican, would have been able to Basically
(21:08):
they would have been able to do anything they needed
to do down party lines, because you know that that
one UH senator had switched, but leaving the Democrats at
fifty one forty nine, um prevented that from happening. So
that was probably not such a good move. Actually, I'm
not sure that it's there a hundred senators in Virginia,
(21:31):
so anyway it was, or however many of there are. UM.
So I was gonna say, if you are not supposed
to tweet during jury duty, you should you should not
tweet during jury duty or or use Facebook, or use Facebook.
I'm specifically thinking about you to date show anchorman or
(21:53):
weatherman alt Roker. Well, I like you, aut Roker. However,
you shouldn't tweet during jury duty. I don't even know
this story. Can you tell me a little more? Not
a lot? But he he got busted for tweeting because well,
the thing is, I mean, if you're in jury duty,
you're not supposed to be discussing the details of the case.
(22:15):
It's supposed to be quiet. Um. Then again, you don't
often have media personalities and your jury pool at that
at that level, because if you don't live in the
United States, Mr Roker is a well known and pretty
well liked, uh celebrity on one of the morning news
shows Networks New Shows, and uh, yeah, I mean a
(22:36):
lot of lots and lots of people know who he is.
He's a he's a pretty personable guy and easy to
follow on Twitter, and yeah, that that draws a lot
of attention. You would go, hey, how Roker's in jury
duty with me and he's tweeting about it. There was
a juror in the United Kingdom who uh apparently was
really confused over how she should side in the case,
(22:59):
and so she used her Facebook profile to ask her
friends what she should do and essentially made a poll
over whether she should give a guilty or not guilty verdict.
Needless to say, the judge was not amused and she
was removed from the jury pool. Uh so, yeah, that
was also not a very wise decision. I'm getting back
(23:22):
to politicians for a second. We mentioned Craig's list briefly.
I gotta I gotta tell this story though. Okay, so
here's the other thing about if if you are uh
if if you have decided that you are going to
have an affair, first of all, shame upon you. But secondly, Uh,
you might want to make sure you're not leaving a
(23:42):
easily followable trail, or that you're talking to people who
might recognize who you are. That unfortunately happened with Christopher Lee,
who was a congressman who responded to a personal ad
on Craigslist of a woman who was looking for someone,
and he claimed at that he was a thirty nine
year old divorced lobbyist. He is actually a forty six
(24:06):
year old former congressman who was married and has kids. Um,
And he posted he sent the lady a picture of himself, uh,
making a muscle man pose, wearing no shirt at all,
and that has now become sort of his image on
the web, which I think probably has heard his political future,
(24:29):
at least in the short term. Although this is America,
you never know true true enough. Um, yeah, I mean
that the you know, the United States has a a
place where many entrepreneurs, you know, set out to strike
it rich. Like I'm thinking about Mark Cuban, who made
a whole lot of money on an internet startup which
(24:51):
went big and then he bought the Dallas Mavericks started
complaining about the officiating on social media. Yeah, uh, tweeted
got fined twenty five thousand dollars complaining about the refs. Yeah, yeah, sports,
We've we've actually done a podcast about social media and
(25:13):
sports and we talked about how the two don't necessarily
go hand in hand and uh or how how you know.
Some teams and some um stadiums have struggled with the
ability of their employees to now reach a global audience
like it used to be that if you were a
player or if well, players are a little different because
(25:35):
they have access to too larger media outlets. But let's
say that you're an employee with a stadium. Chances are
if you were complaining about things, you were just complaining
it to a small group of people and no one
really cared. But the Philadelphia Eagles Stadium cared when um UH,
(25:56):
an employee was critic sizing the team, the Eagles team
on Facebook and the the stadium uh, the stadium brass
decided to fire him for that. Then, Actually, I guess
Pennsylvania in general has problems with employees, sports employees and
the internet. Because Andrew Kurtz, who and I love this,
(26:21):
was a Pittsburgh pirate Peroguey mascot was fired because he
criticized team management of the Pittsburgh Pirates on Facebook, he
got he got canned. So you know, if you're a
paroguey just be careful about that social networking. Also, you're
delicious what a spud uh, you know? And it doesn't
(26:46):
take a parogue to make a mistake on on Twitter though,
I mean, you could, you know, tweet your personal phone
number to twenty one followers yikes? Like New York Times
tech columnists, well well well spected tech columnist David Hog,
I think I think a lot of us have accidentally
put out a public tweet when we thought we were
(27:08):
doing a direct message. I know I have, and I've
seen others too. I remember there was there was one
where it was supposed to be Oh, I remember it
was pollen Storm paullen Storm, the musical group, sending a
message to Neil Gaiman because they were going up to
visit Neil Gaiman. And Neil Gaiman and Poullen Storm and
(27:28):
Jonathan Colton are all friends and Neil Gaiman's a very
well known author, and paullen Storm accidentally publicly tweeted the
location of the restaurant they were all going to have
lunch at, and then immediately send on a message saying
please don't mob us. And because it was meant to
(27:48):
be a private message and it wasn't good times with
times also not necessarily a good idea to reveal that
you were leaving your house. Um. Israel Himan uh tweeted
to his I think he had around a couple of
thousand followers at the time, that he was leaving his
(28:08):
house to go on vacation for a ten hour drive,
and then he tweeted later that he made it um.
And then when he got home he found out that
his house had been broken into. And in the interview
I read and uh, I got I got a lot
of my ideas from from Keymate Houstner's story at ABC
News about tweet faux pause, the ones that I didn't
(28:30):
already know. I found some other juicy ones, and uh,
this is one of them. And in the interview they
did with him said, you know, my wife thinks it
may have been random, but I'm not so sure. That's
a paraphrase. It wasn't exact quote, but he he essentially
said that, you know, I think that maybe that was
a really bad idea on my part, and yes, it
it really kind of is it's it's nice to have
(28:50):
these check in enabled systems like four squares and Wala,
but you have to be really careful because you really
don't know. If people know who you are on there
and they know where where you live and you've said,
you know, hey, I'm across the country on a business trip,
that's almost open advertising to come and get robbed. Now
(29:13):
that being said, if you are careful about your private
information online and you can't necessarily find your address online,
then you're probably in okay shape. One way to test that,
by the way, is to go to Google and type
your address and not your name, but your address, and
see if your name comes up in relation to your address.
(29:34):
And if so, then somewhere on the web, whether it's
Facebook where you've got it public information there or somewhere else, uh,
there is a link between you and your address. So
you want to make sure that those are clean. In fact, really,
as a general rule, you want to kind of if
you're going to be interviewing for a job or if
(29:54):
you're entering the professional market, you really want to kind
of scrub your social network stuff clean as much as possible,
especially for Facebook, you know, use those privacy settings make
sure that the people who have access to say, let's
let's say you're using Facebook to have fun with your friends.
Let's let's also say that if you're going to do that,
(30:14):
make sure your privacy settings are set to a point
where not just anyone could log on and see the
photo of you, you know, drinking alcohol with your shirt
off and you know, uh uh a funny but obscene
word written across your chest. That's not something that your your, your,
your future employer is going to find very impressive. In
(30:37):
most cases, I will use the qualifier in most cases
because who knows I did make a joke the other
day that one day, the same people who are posting
these irresponsible pictures of themselves on Facebook without any privacy settings,
someday they will be the people in charge. And that's
when social moray's will crumble, institutions will fall, zombies will eyes,
(31:00):
and Ghostbusters three will be in theaters. Thank you, So,
I mean, they're There are tons of other examples, but
we're gonna have to kind of wrap this up. I
did want to mention a few times, just because you
do make a mistake, or let's not even call it
a mistake. Let's say that you're just expressing your opinion,
because there are lots of cases where people were either
(31:22):
fired or were um uh, were harassed just for expressing
an opinion on these social networking sites, not necessarily an
uninformed opinion, um and not. It doesn't always turn out badly,
and we do have to walk a fine line between
making sure that we don't we're that we're not irresponsible
online and making sure that our freedom of speech and
(31:44):
our freedom of expression remains protected. You know, there's a
there's a balance there. We're not telling you don't say
what you're thinking online. We're just saying think about it
first and think about the potential consequences before it's saying it.
And here's what I would close with. In Australia, there
was have you heard of the Facebook six um? You know,
(32:06):
I'm not sure that I have. So in Australia, there
was the their corrections systems systems. So the prison system
in Australia UM was going through some some trouble and
some of the hundreds of employees actually joined a Facebook
group where they could have discussions about the system, the
(32:26):
politics within the system, the troubles they perceived, the potential
solutions really a place to kind of not just suggest things,
but to gripe and grouse. I mean everyone occasionally needs
to do that, right, just to go home and get
it out vent and say, God, it was just such
a bad day at work and blah blah blah blah.
Not me because I love my job, but everyone else.
(32:49):
Uh So, Anyway, the the commissioner for the Corrective Services
Department in Australia UH singled out six particular employees among
the hundreds that were using this Facebook group and said
that they were using language that was public bullying and
(33:10):
so started to make the move to have them terminated
from their positions. Uh. The the six ended up having
a suit against the Corrective Services Department and six months
later they won the suit, which essentially said that no,
you can't fire them because they were criticizing the department.
And uh but I mean that's just another indication that
(33:32):
there are times where where if you express your opinion
there could be consequences. Now, hopefully if it's something like
this case and you have you have actual, you know,
case to support your your perspective, it'll all turn out
all right. But that's six months out of your life.
So again, it's the balance between being able to speak
(33:54):
your mind and knowing that there could be potential consequences
further down the road. So there's an element of bravery
there too. I mean, I'm sure that the people in
Egypt who were using Twitter and Facebook in order to
criticize the government and to organize protests, they were doing that.
I'm sure with the knowledge that if things went poorly,
(34:17):
it could really come to haunt them later on. But
but they showed courage in that case. But there's a
difference between showing courage and a protest and calling your
employer a jerk, right, So just make sure you know
that difference, because sometimes I don't. By the way, just
(34:37):
to follow up, I never did find the the SUV company,
So I'm sure somebody if you would like to tell
us on Facebook who that was. I can't remember for
the life of me who it was. Um, And I
looked at the outroker thing because I just basically pulled
it from my list. Um, he was actually taking pictures
and posting pictures of the prospective jurors. He said he
got permission and U and the the court basically said
(35:03):
he was okay because somebody told him it was okay,
but it really wasn't okay to do that. But someone
had told him it was okay, so they weren't. It's like, well,
you know, you got told something. It isn't incorrect, but
you were actually told that, so it's not your fault.
Even so, I don't do it. I can't imagine being
the person who told him, oh, sure you can do that. Yeah,
and I I don't think i'd want to have the pictures,
(35:25):
but yes, that is. That is the more specific information
about about what he was doing. I'm sorry I didn't
have that earlier. I was just grabbing all kinds of
crazy things and I thought, oh, that's interesting. Yeah, like
we said, there are a lot more stories here. I mean,
there's stories about companies that laid off, you know, more
than a dozen employees, for creating a Facebook pro Facebook
(35:47):
group page to talk about something or other. Ones of
a lot of sports ones. There are a lot of
politician ones. There's the entire there's an entire sub genre
for teachers. Because of course, teachers, you know, they're held
to a very specific kind of standard and should they
have anything in their social media profiles that is somewhat
(36:08):
uh below that standard. They could suffer for it, and
there's not a whole lot of sympathy offered to them
from most school boards, I would say, and uh oh.
And then there's the guy from best Buy who was
fired and then rehired by best Buy for creating the
YouTube video of the cartoon where it's the customer who
(36:30):
comes in wanting to buy an iPhone and the the
best Buy representative is trying to convince the customer that
the EVO is a superior product. That was the one
that kind of launched all the the that that series
of videos of all the cartoons with the robotic voices
that wanted an iPhone. You know that kind of thing,
(36:51):
I want an iPhone? Yes, exactly that video. There's that
guy too. So this does span things well beyond Twitter
and Facebook. Guys, if you have any favorite stories, or
if you have a story of what happened to you
or to maybe someone you know who perhaps used Twitter
or Facebook in a moment of absent mindedness, let's say,
(37:13):
and you want to share it. First of all, keep
it clean, folks, but you can let us know on
Facebook or Twitter are handle there is text stuff h
s W. Or you can shoot us an email That
address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com,
and Chris and I will talk to you again, hopefully
when we think about it first really soon. For more
(37:35):
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
our homepage. The house stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.
Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the
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TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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