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snapchat is rediculous.

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I wish the smithtown coin shop wasn't closed on the weekend.

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the sweet 16 I just went to was great.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBTR5OOnNCE

this is my most popular video. It has 549 views. Unfortunately it's really cringy.

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Do you think teachers should let students use social media in class?

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Do you think teachers should let students use social media in class?

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Write a one paragraph response.

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Do you think you should be able to get fired over  social media?

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Last summer, a Google engineer lost his job after posting a memo on internal message boards saying that women had a tendency toward neuroticism and empathy, making them less suited to be engineers than their "systemizing" male counterparts.

In March 2011, a phlebotomist was terminated after she took to her Facebook page to post profane comments about her co-workers who she said blamed everything on her.

In 2001, an African American shipyard worker for Avondale Industries was dismissed from her job after she called her supervisor a "Klansman" within earshot of other African American workers.

What those cases illustrate is something that's a surprise to many U.S. citizens: The First Amendment's free speech guarantee doesn't apply to most employees. Indeed, legal experts said, private employers may well have an obligation to take a disciplinary action if an employee's speech is injurious, offensive, threatening, intimidating or coercive.

"The constitution says the free speech guarantee is: 'Congress shall make no law restricting the freedom of speech,'" said Leslie Gielow Jacobs, a law professor at Sacramento's McGeorge School of Law. "It only applies to the government, and it only limits what government does to private people ... But it does not limit a private employer."

Sacramento-area residents recently got a lesson in this after Kaiser Permanente fired nurse Faith Linthicum, who had worked at its Roseville Medical Center, over her Facebook comments. In one of them, she said that Stephon Clark, the unarmed black man killed March 18 by Sacramento police, "deserved it."

After losing her job, Linthicum went to the crowdfunding site GoFundMe.com seeking money to help pay her bills. The headline for her campaign was "RN Fired for exercising 1 st AMD."

Kaiser, however, in its statement noting that it had let an employee go, said free speech only goes so far, stating that it does not tolerate hate or discrimination and has a long history of embracing diversity and inclusion.

"We want to emphasize that the comments expressed by this employee ... do not in any way reflect Kaiser Permanente's views or actions," said Yvette Radford, the company's vice president of external and community affairs. "We are very much a part of the wonderful and rich diversity of the communities we serve and feel a deep responsibility to them."

That statement provides what Jacobs said is likely the company's legal basis for terminating the employee. Rather than crafting specific social media usage policies, said Dr. Kimberly Elsbach, a professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, many businesses lean upon mission statements promoting diversity and discouraging hostile environments in their workplace. That's because many social media policies have been found to violate key provisions of a federal labor law that protects workers' rights to organize job actions and speak out about their wages, hours and other terms of employment.

This federal law, known as the National Labor Relations Act, created the five-person National Labor Relations Board that regularly makes decisions on what constitutes fair employment practices, said David W. Tyra, an attorney with Sacramento's Kronick Moskovitz Tiedemann & Girard. For decades, this body has upheld terminations when companies can prove that the discharge interferes with the company's ability to comply with state and federal equal-employment laws, but it also has just as consistently struck down any social media policies that it views as having a chilling effect on a worker's rights to organize or to discuss terms of employment.

Go to the NLRB website, Tyra said, and search for social media or Facebook, and you'll find many cases involving employee posts that have landed before this body. Certainly, not all employees lose their appeals, but the NLRB did uphold company management decisions to terminate the engineer, the phlebotomist and the shipyard worker. The engineer is suing Google for wrongful termination.

The key to employees winning, Tyra said, is that their posts or remarks must be found to be enlisting fellow workers' support in making changes at their workplaces. The NLRB has said that employers can ban the use of provocative language as a precaution against bitterness and discord in the work environment.

In California, both case law and Labor Code Section 96(k) give employees the right to engage in lawful, off-duty conduct, Jenness and Tyra said, but if that lawful, off-duty conduct poisons the work environment, Section 96(k) will not protect the employee from discipline. The Kaiser nurse's conduct was lawful and occurred off duty, Jenness said, but her employer responded after the comments motivated patients to question the nurse's qualifications as a caregiver.

"Another much more common example is an employee who sends a coworker an unwelcome sexually explicit text after hours," Jenness said. "Even though the text was sent off-duty, such a text would still violate the employer's anti-harassment policy and would subject the employee to discipline, up to and including immediate termination. The employer would be subject to liability under California law if it did not act to discipline the employee who sent the sexually explicit text. "

In the case of the Google engineer, the NLRB noted, female employees had complained to human resources and management about the memo, and two female job candidates had withdrawn applications after learning about it. Similarly, co-workers of the phlebotomist had shared her Facebook posts with human resources.

In the Avondale case, the NLRB panel also ruled that the company had justification for concerns that other African American workers might chafe at working for a supervisor who a co-worker had identified as a Klansman.

Even before social media, workers could have faced disciplinary actions for remarks made on or off the clock that led to a hostile work environment, said Julia L. Jenness, an attorney with Sacramento's Boutin Jones, but it was harder to make such cases back when the remarks were made around the water cooler.

It's easier now with social media. Registered nurse Alice Benjamin, who's appeared on "The Dr. Oz Show" and "The Doctors," said she was told early in her career: "Never send an email unless you're ready for it to be plastered on a billboard." While many people think of social media as talking with friends on a phone call, she said, it's not.

"Social media is a very tricky space. It was originally intended to just socialize," she said. "Now it's a public forum where people can see your comments, screen-shot your comments, share your comments. All of a sudden, something you shared that you thought was in confidence is misconstrued or taken out of context."

Annually in a Gallup Poll, nurses are ranked as the most trusted professionals in the United States, Benjamin said, but that trust easily can be eroded if people perceive them as biased. That's how hundreds of Facebook users described Linthicum's comment that Clark deserved to be killed.

No one deserves to die, said RN Shaheen Lebastchi, who works in Lodi. He said he would feel obligated to report a nurse who made such a comment to his management.

"I don't manage nurses, but I manage CNA's (certified nursing assistants)," Lebastchi said, "and if one of my CNA's was saying ... that they let a patient's call light stay on longer because they have a swastika tattoo or that they don't give a patient the care they needed because of that, I wouldn't let them take care of my patients anymore .... It's not OK."

Lebastchi said he learned as part of his training on medical privacy laws that the First Amendment does not protect his employment, and he offered up a rule-of-thumb also shared by all three legal experts consulted by The Bee: "If you don't work for the government, your First Amendment rights don't apply."

Your social media work guide

National Nurse magazine in 2013 warned nurses about a growing number of disciplinary actions related to the use of social media:

Facebook is like a power tool. Used properly, a power tool can yield amazing results at blazing speeds with less effort. Used improperly, it can cut off your hand. Make sure you are controlling the tool, and not the other way around.

Any comments or personal information you share on the internet "lives forever." Consider who is really your friend, what your purpose is in posting and whether the thoughts you're posting should really be said out loud to anyone.

Many people get fired for complaining about their bosses on Facebook. It's difficult for supervisors to find out about private face-to-face conversations with friends or co-workers. Facebook, on the other hand, provides a ready-made trail.

A comment you perceive as innocuous can lead to your being fired, sometimes because it uses foul language, sometimes because it was posted during work hours and other times because it's perceived as breaching patient privacy.

Generally, your speech is protected under the National Labor Relations Act if you are working together, or at least trying or intending to work together, with other employees in identifying and acting on workplace problems. Don't be afraid to talk about wages, hours or other terms and conditions of employment.

Want to search for memos about social media from the NLRB's General Counsel? Visit https://www.nlrb.gov/reports-guidance/general-counsel-memos.

This story was originally published April 13, 2018, 12:01 AM.

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Venting on social media? Yes, you can, but the First Amendment won't save your job

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Last summer, a Google engineer lost his job after posting a memo on internal message boards saying that women had a tendency toward neuroticism and empathy, making them less suited to be engineers than their "systemizing" male counterparts.

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Do you think he should have posted the tweets?

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What would normally have been a low-key, voluntary workout for the Milwaukee Brewers at Miller Park on Thursday took on a decidedly different tone in the wake of the Josh Hader controversy.

Two days earlier, racist, homophobic and misogynistic tweets from Hader's Twitter account dating to 2011 were unearthed during the All-Star Game. Hader addressed the situation immediately afterward, but the effects have lingered.

Like his other four all-star teammates, Hader wasn't in attendance. He's expected to address the media Friday in advance of the Brewers' weekend series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The general sentiment in the clubhouse was one of forgiveness. But there was also a sense of disbelief that such ugly comments could have been attributed to Hader, who has generally been viewed as one of the more unassuming and laid-back players on the team.

"I think you feel a bunch of things," manager Craig Counsell said when asked for his general thoughts on the situation.

"I'm disappointed. At the same time I'm confused because it's not the person or the teammate that I've known for the last three years. So I think you're feeling both those things.

"That's how I think a lot of guys feel."

CLOSE

To a man, the players that addressed the controversy first and foremost expressed their distaste for Hader's tweets. Then they pointed out that based on everything they know about Hader and have experienced up to now, the 24-year-old is nothing like the 17-year-old that spouted off on social media.

"It's disappointing, I think it's unacceptable, but at the same time I've known Josh for two years and I've never seen him act that way, speak that way or do anything in any way that would represent those tweets," leftfielder Ryan Braun said. "I feel bad for him that he has to go through this situation.

"In my experience of knowing, I've never seen him act that way or speak that way. Or do anything remotely like that."

Third baseman Travis Shaw called the situation "a lot to deal with."

"I can't really defend anything he said," Shaw said. "I know it was a long time ago but at the same time, those tweets are wrong. It's a lot. I can defend the person he is now. I would have never guessed that something like that would come from him. He's a good kid now.

"I'd never in 100 years guess that he'd say something like that. At the same time, I can't really defend anything he said. All that stuff is wrong. I guess we all will try to move past this and put it behind us as much as we can."

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Outfielder Keon Broxton, one of four African-American players on the Brewers, said he'll forgive Hader.

"I was shocked. Definitely stunned by the things that were said," he said. "But knowing him the last couple years, it's kind of hard to even see him saying something like that. It's definitely a complete shock.

"I didn't know him when he was 17, or whenever those tweets were, but knowing him now, I don't think he feels the same way or was using those words in a way to bash on the African-American culture.

"I know the guy, I love him. He's a great teammate. He's been a great friend to me. It's very shocking to see this happen."

CLOSE

Perhaps nobody on the Brewers is more qualified to speak on Hader than outfielder Brett Phillips.

The two have been roommates for the past three years - at Class AA Biloxi, Class AAA Colorado Springs and with the Brewers. After also making it clear he didn't condone what Hader tweeted, Phillips offered up his perspective of Hader as a person as someone who's seen him on a day-to-day basis and in many different situations.

"I just want to speak on behalf of his character," he said. "I've lived with Hader the last three years. I'm a Christian man and not once has he made me feel uncomfortable. Not once has he made me feel as if he is a racist or someone who talks down to women. I've lived with him and not once has that come out.

"Obviously it's crazy to see that it came to light, and I was in just as much disbelief as everyone else because Hader's one of those guys who respects everyone. He's a great teammate and that's who he's been since I've known him."

Hader was drafted in 2012 by the Baltimore Orioles in the 19th round, and the following season he was traded to the Houston Astros. It was there, in 2014, that he met Phillips, and in 2015 the two were traded along with Domingo Santana and Adrian Houser to the Brewers for Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers.

"I didn't know Hader back in 2011. It sounds like he was in a dark place and just not a good person," Phillips said. "But that's not who Hader is and I know a lot of people aren't going to be able to see past this. But I'm here to tell you now that I've known Hader the past four years, he's one of my best friends in baseball and out of baseball, and that's not who he is anymore.

"I'm a firm believer that people can change for good or bad, and seeing those tweets, he's changed for the best. That's honestly all I can say about it. I know he's deeply sorry for this, as he should be."

Hader has been one of the most dominant relievers in baseball this season, sporting a 2-0 record, 1.50 earned run average and a WHIP of .079 to go along with 89 strikeouts in 48 innings en route to being named an all-star for the first time.

But can the left-hander continue to pitch as well in the second half as he did in the first with all the controversy swirling around him, and with the Brewers pushing to return to the postseason for the first time since 2011 to boot?

"It's a challenge for Josh," Counsell said. "In my conversations, he's sad. I think that's the best way to describe it. He's sad. He's got a challenge ahead of him. But the hope is the competition and the game and doing what he loves to do is part of his way to rebound from this a little bit."

Hader wasn't suspended by Major League Baseball for the tweets, but he was ordered to undergo sensitivity training. He's also expected to address his teammates, coaches and staff prior to Friday's game, and Billy Bean, originally MLB's ambassador for inclusion and now a VP and special assistant to commissioner Rob Manfred, will be on hand.

But apologizing to teammates and a generally sympathetic audience is one thing. Changing public sentiment is another, and that's just another challenge the former fan favorite is going to have to face in the coming days, weeks, months and years.

"Look, that's part of this. That's the reality of this situation," general manager David Stearns acknowledged. "When you make comments like this and when you have sentiments like this associated with you, regardless of when they appear, people are going to question your intent and they're going to question what your belief system is. Josh is going to have to work through that.

"I don't know how he's going to work through that. The truth of the matter is he put himself in this situation and he is going to have to work very hard to get through it."

The timing of the controversy couldn't be worse for the Brewers, who limped into the break losers of seven of eight games. Then on Wednesday, one-time trade target Manny Machado was acquired by the Dodgers, leaving him to make his National League debut as an opponent Friday at Miller Park.

Clubhouse chemistry has been one of the strong suits of the Brewers the past couple seasons. And while Counsell and his players feel the positive culture is strong enough to overcome this latest issue, it's still something that's going to linger for a while.

"Yeah, it can be (a test)," Shaw said. "There's a lot of different ways this could go, a lot of directions this could go. It's not going to go away. It's not something that a week later everybody is going to forget about. It's going to be there for the rest of the year if not longer.

"It's something we're going to have to manage and he's going to have to manage. Hopefully, we will learn and he will learn and we'll all be better for it."

Counsell said it's on Hader and the rest of the team to address it, move on from it and start winning games once again.

"I don't want this to sound callous, but your job is to deal with it head-on and then our responsibility is to move on because we have another job that we're here to do, and that's what we're going to do," he said. "For Josh, frankly, it's going to last longer. It's going to be his challenge.

"But it's going to be his challenge professionally to be able to move on and perform."

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Brewers players shocked by Josh Hader's tweets, but willing to hear him out

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What would normally have been a low-key, voluntary workout for the Milwaukee Brewers at Miller Park on Thursday took on a decidedly different tone in the wake of the Josh Hader controversy. Two days earlier, racist, homophobic and misogynistic tweets from Hader's Twitter account dating to 2011 were unearthed during the All-Star Game.

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Do you think Harvard should have done this?

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Harvard Rescinds Acceptances for At Least Ten Students for Obscene Memes | News | The Harvard Crimson

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Harvard rescinded admissions offers to at least ten prospective members of the Class of 2021 after the students traded explicit messages and memes in a Facebook group chat.