Social media has become the place to look for jobs and also it could be your downfall as shown by the popular Justine Sacco fiasco and the local one involving one Brijal Rawal.
If you have been a Twitter user for a long time, you may have seen people adding this phrase on their bios: “Retweets are not endorsements.” It is disclaimer aimed to shield the person in a way from a future case that could arise from his or her activity on Twitter. In this case however, a journalist from KBC would have taken that cue from other people since a retweet got her detained according to a report by the Kenyan Monitor.
The journalist, Judith Akolo apparently retweeted a post from a Twitter account (@moderncorps) which was a job posting titled “Talent spotting of officers from KPS and APS to join DCI) which led her being questioned by the DCI itself (Directorate of Criminal Investigations.) As of now, the retweet is not available on her timeline although fortunately there is a screenshot of the job offer.
The questioning went on for 3 hours where she was allegedly repeatedly asked about why she retweeted the post. Kenyan Monitor also reports she is supposed to go back to the DCI offices tomorrow to know her fate.
This incident has the potential to ignite the debate on online privacy and freedom which I talked about earlier since it has been a thorny issue from the start. It is common sense not to discredit your employer by tweeting or retweeting content that jeopardizes the company but also employees will raise the concern of social media activity monitoring by current employers or potential employers.
