Ideally, what an employee posts on the internet should be none of the business of an employer as long as the employee is well behaved and gets the job done in the company.

I remember an intern losing a job offer at (I think) a chemical factory, because he posted his profile description on his personal blog or Facebook as "like to blow things up"...which would have just been a fancy way of saying he enjoyed Chemistry. Didn't have to mean arson. Nosy employers can not just be dumb, they can also have a poor idea on how to run a company.

Spending time on monitoring employee activity outside the company shows they don't really know how to optimize manpower in getting their business outpacing the competition or in investing their time in creating a better product.

@Nav we don't live in an ideal world, far from it. People have gotten fired, evicted, and had to go into hiding for less.

So if someone wanted to get a colleague fired, all they had to do is create a fake profile and post some nonsense? Any company which makes judgments based on such things shows a very poor management mentality.

@Nav again, not living in an ideal world here. It's not wise to run the risk.

Companies don't want the grief

If a twitterstorm starts and the company is faced with either firing you or dealing with the fallout, you are out the door

@Nav And there's the key point: "as long as the employee is well behaved". If your free-time activities revolve around white supremacy, antisemitism, gay-bashing or anything like that, it's entirely reasonable for your employer to assume you don't leave those opinions at the door. That creates a real risk for other employees, and for the employer if/when anything happens relating to this.

@Nav If someone wanted to get a colleague fired and the colleague is carrying out racist activities in their free time, they could post things they know to be true about their colleague, and the company may pay attention. If the colleague isn't doing this, they can show that this is all faked-up nonsense, and of course they're not going to get fired.

@Graham tread lightly, you are dancing on the line of the be nice rule.

@RichardU I don't know which part is not being "nice" - please could you advise? If it's the fact I put the extra condition in bold, that was to make it clear it was a prerequisite on Nav's "fake profile" situation (because exposing the truth about someone is not slander or libel). I didn't intend it to be rude - apologies if it came across that way.

@Graham There are certain things that get people to draw the long knives. Your highlighted section is like chum to the sharks. Just be careful, they are very sensitive to trolling or perceived trolling here. Not saying that you are, just that you want to avoid even the perception of it.