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I think that many people agree that social media can be a negative in people’s lives, but this is hazardous at a different level. While this is an extreme situation, it is still useful to ponder what you do and should not post on social media.
During the Capitol invasion last week there were tens of thousands of cell phones and those cell phones took millions of pictures and hundreds of thousands of videos.
The FBI, caught rather flatfooted in ignoring the impending attack (the day before the attack the Virginia FBI office issued an explicit warning about the attack and that warning was, apparently, ignored), is now using the rioters own video and images to find and prosecute the lawbreakers.
Case in point, Tim Gionet, known as Baked Alaska, livestreamed both outside and inside the Capitol during the attack, for over an hour. That video is now being used to identify people who were involved in the attack.
Same for the messages, pictures and video posted on Parler, which used to be an alternative for some folks who did not like Twitter’s editorial policy, before Amazon kicked them off the platform for violating their terms of service.
These videos and images are super high resolution. This is not the old surveillance camera video where you could hardly make out whether that was a picture of a person.
People have already turned in tens of thousands of images to the authorities and all of these images have to potential to help authorities identify these folks. The use of facial recognition software from companies like Palantir and Clearview AI (they have indexed over 3 billion photos) that privacy advocates have been warning about is likely being used extensively right now. If you were at the Capitol and have even been in a photo posted by someone on some social media, the feds have likely matched you up.
Without regard to what happens to those folks and this specific case, what is more relevant to businesses is that the text, images and video that you and, separately and unofficially, your employees post to social media can have, shall we say, negative consequences.
If your employees post text, images or video, say while wearing your company logo polo shirt, and those posts do not match your company values but they do it on their OWN social media accounts, you need to have policies in place and train employees.
Apparently, a number of people who stormed the Capitol were wearing their work ID badges, clearly visible. Okay, I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but that doesn’t seem smart.
In a number of cases, employers recognized their employees and have either fired them or they have resigned.
Bottom line:
(1) Given what we saw last week and the fallout from it, businesses need to consider whether existing company policies are adequate for dealing for situations such as these.
(2) Companies should review existing employee training to make sure that employees understand what is permitted and what is not permitted and what the consequences might be.