Social Media Police

As I articulated during my two-hour examination to end my university career, social media is changing the way the world works. To be fair, you don't need a degree to work that out, but just about everyone has a Facebook or Twitter account. 


A quote which I'd revised was something on the lines of:

"If someone had a bad experience in years gone by, they'd go home and tell ten people. Now if someone has a bad experience they can go home and tell thousands"

It couldn't be more true, and that's why businesses and sports teams are so conscious about what people (especially staff) are saying about them or others on these sites. Joey Barton has been in hot water for his tweeting, as has Ryan Babel and various other footballers. Similarly, some of the public have been arrested for things said on social media. So it's a touchy world, a world which doesn't really have any rules.

Barton during his spell at Newcastle

My personal gripe with this 'policing' of social media is that is it a personal page, for expressing views which that person holds. It's not really any different to speaking to a group of people in the street or discussing something in the pub with friends I don't think. Essentially if you are friends with someone on Facebook you are subscribing to what they say and are interested in what they've got to say. You may not agree, but you are a consumer of that view. Equally, if you follow Joey Barton on Twitter, you know what you are going to get. If you don't like what he has got to say, why are you following him? Follow someone you want to hear from.


So then why are we finding people getting fined/suspended for what they write on a personal site? It happens in companies where employees can get into trouble for posting something about the people they work for. What's the difference between them being annoyed about something their employees have done and a customer being unhappy with the service they have received? Both could go home and express their feelings online, but only one would end up in any trouble. 

What is even more crazy is that I'm told, according to guidelines, other people can be held accountable for something someone else has said, on their personal account. A club or captain could be held as partly responsible for something one of their players has said on a website, despite having nothing to do with it. As I mentioned before, these accounts are personal and individual and who is anyone to stop someone saying whatever they want, about whatever they want? Nevermind roping someone else in who has nothing to do with it.


As a captain of a side, there is no way I can police my team from expressing their views. If they want to say something on their personal site, then who am I to challenge that? Equally if I am meant to be responsible for this, how am I meant to actually enforce it? I can ask them not to say something but I can't be round everyone's house stopping them saying whatever they like can I? 


It is impossible to regulate what is said on personal sites and if you did, you'd be trying to stop free-speech essentially. From a companies point of view, if people are going home and slagging you off online, maybe you should take a look what you are doing as a business and try to correct what is wrong, and then people wont be able to go home and complain to 1,000's of people online. 


* This blog is no way intended to pick out any person/company/team/league body/etc but only to highlight the problems with policing social media, and the debate around free speech on personal sites.