Telstra Lays Down Law On Social Media 78
Kerrieanne writes to tell us that Australian telecommunications giant Telstra has become the first major player down under to lay down the law with respect to social media. Still recovering from the shakeup surrounding a Telstra worker using the name of the communications minister on Twitter, they have released a six-page set of guidelines on the use of Facebook, Twitter, and other similar websites for both company and personal use. "Under the guidelines, which are backed up with the threat of disciplinary action, employees using sites on official Telstra business should disclose who they are, ensure they do not give away confidential information and treat other users with respect. They are required to complete an accreditation process and undergo training to update their 'knowledge on emerging social trends and evolving best practice in social media.'"
In other words... (Score:1, Insightful)
In other words: stop expecting to be paid for twittering all day. Good for them.
Re:Some socially correct bitch (Score:4, Insightful)
Australia is predominantly female.
Obviously [wikipedia.org]
Re:Who's Teaching Whom? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems pretty sensible to me, and I'd be suspicious if some 24 yo employee claimed those rules are bullshit.
Re:Wait... accreditation? (Score:2, Insightful)
How are Facebook or Twitter anarcho-syndicalism?
Sure, if they'd purported to put out a best practices guide for Slashdot, IRC, or Usenet, I'd laugh my ass off.
But Facebook? Facebook is exactly the sort of closed, AOL-style walled garden Telstra would like the whole 'net to be.
Telstra is like GM too big to fail (Score:2, Insightful)
Telstra's upper management are almost exclusively US imports so you can't blame it on Australian factors.
They are also the weird aberration of a government owned monopoly that has recently gone private and has the worst of both worlds. Think of a department of motor transport mixed with Enron run by a guy that has bounced from one failure to the next all his career but still demands to be treated like a rock star. Thankfully he's taking his payout of millions and his mediocre cronies and leaving soon.
Telstra is the AT&T of australia.
Telstra is a company that needs to fail so that the australian telecommunications industry can change and adapt to new technologies and trends.
The bind for the australian government is that when it was privatized it was not broken up so this one company owns something like 90% of telecommunication infrastructure.
Re:read the fucking *summary* (Score:3, Insightful)
...which I'm reasonably sure was intended to apply mostly in cases where an employee refers to Telstra AND in doing so mentions they're employed by Telsra. It's pretty standard/common for corporations to require that- and I know a couple of friends who do it anyway just to cover their asses.
Sounds sort of reasonable. The way it's worded, they want to stop employees saying "I work for Telstra and blah blah" without adding a "And my name is Bob Jones, Cable Engineer". I don't really see how it applies to the Fake Stephen Conroy fiasco unless Fake Stephen Conroy claimed at some point to work for Telstra, which would have been both odd and out of character.
What's also odd is this part:
If the employee refers to Telstra, they are expected to identify themselves as an employee of the company and ensure they do not imply they are authorised to speak on Telstra's behalf.
It looks like some half-hearted attempt to rule out astroturfing but otherwise is patently ridiculous. It's going to cause a lot more damage to Telstra's image if randomguy123 posts "Telstra's broadband rates are criminal and service sucks, you should get naked ADSL from iiNet. The views expressed in this post are mine only and do not necessarily reflect the views of Telstra." instead of just some anonymous rant.
Re:But Telstra thinks school rules apply at home (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that not being allowed to speak freely about your company on your own time is a sign of a power imbalance.
Any company that has to censor its employees when they're at home is either dysfunctionally paranoid or has something to hide.
Just think of how many people have to use AC just to post on /.
Companies that censor their employees naturally have nothing but good PR...until they get caught hiding something.
A company that can have a healthy respect for self criticism is likely to be better off anyway.
Of course, with desperate workers not having much room to negotiate, companies are happy to consolidate their power and use their leverage to keep their workers sheared like sheep.