Ten Things You Should Know About the Law and Social Media: When Bad Judgment Goes Viral, Watch Out!
1. The things you say may have legal consequences: Be careful what you say about people on Facebook, Twitter, or other forms of social media. What you say may be libel. This extends to emails (especially in the work setting) where people say the dumbest, most abusive things possible, all of which can subject them to legal liability. Ask yourself: why is it lawyers always want emails in discovery? Although this does not relate to social media directly, we all remember the lawyers in the news recently for their racist and disgusting emails, which ripped their firm—a firm they started—apart. Ultimately, that story was spread by social media. If you say anything in an email, assume it never goes away. If someone says something horrible to you in an email, make sure you keep a record.
Do I keep such things, you may ask?
I won’t answer that question other than to say that I have a Master of Science in Library Science, and I’ve been a litigator for 18 plus years. And…I’ve published two short stories.
Surely those things cannot be related, right? What is it writes do? They describe. Of course, the fictional stories are made up. After all, it’s fiction.
2. Get permission before using pictures, articles, or content written by someone else: Using a person’s or corporation’s pictures, articles or other intellectual property without permission may be copyright infringement. This may subject you to a lawsuit for money damages. Copyright law can be quite thorny, especially with the new Copyright Claims Board, which is essentially a small claims court for copyright claims. This makes it easier to pursue such claims whereas before it was too expensive. Consider number 5, which relates to trademark issues as those may be raised as well.
3. Do not say anything on social media sites you do not want repeated: Be careful about what you say and when you say it. There are numerous examples of employers seeing Facebook (or other social media posts) posts where people have said they never work at work; then the employer fires the employee. You can imagine other things people post online while clearly at work.
4. Be careful about the pictures you post: They might make you look bad (I don’t mean just appearance) or get you sued. Anyone remember what happened to Urban Meyer after those pictures of him at the bar surfaced?
5. Do not use trademarks without permission: It is against the law to use a trademark without permission. Examples of trademarks include McDonald’s golden arches, Allstate’s good hands, and anything else that may be or is intellectual property.
6. Watch out for spammers: Be wary of spammers on Facebook, your phone, email, and other social media outlets. They may be trying to steal your identity. One recent scam is that Facebook scam on Facebook Marketplace where a potential buyer wants a Google Code to “verify you are who you say you are.” It’s a scam.
7. Refrain from giving TMI (Too Much Information): Some people chronicle their entire lives on Facebook, which, although entertaining (we love to watch a good train wreck),it can create all kinds of issues. For example, this exposes you to identity theft and blackmail. It can also be used to piece together what’s known as a “synthetic identity” for you, which can result in theft of your information and resources.
8. Assume what you say never goes away: The internet is vast, and things said on the internet never go away. In other words, what you say may come back to haunt you. If you doubt me, look at the “WayBack Machine,” which takes snapshots of the Internet even if those snapshots no longer exist on websites. It is run by the Internet Archive, which is tasked with preserving the internet.
9. Police catch criminals by reading their Facebook pages all the time: Criminals like to brag, and they often do so on Facebook. Police know this, and they catch criminals this way all the time. They use TikTok, Twitter, and other social media as well. This applies to other situations that are not of the criminal variety.
10. Assume people Google you and look at social media about you: I look people up on Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and other social media all the time. But the first thing I do is Google them, which can tell you a lot very quickly and cheaply. What people say on social media outlets says a lot about them.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to email me at michaelwuva78@gmail.com or michael@wellslaw.us. I use both.
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