I was trackbacked by a new voice (yes, she is going to be one of the Ten New Voices I pledged to find this week -- and she found me, which is cool), the self-styled Shasta MacNasty (in the "self-centered bitch rehab" tshirt in the picture), who weighs in on the implications of the Niall Kennedy Technorati imbloglio:

Shasta MacNasty

[from If You Don't Like It]

"The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer."

I have no idea if my employer has a blogging policy, and truth be told, I'm not going to ask. Why would I want to bring their attention to my little cyber abode? They get their nine plus hours of my attention when I'm in the office, no need for that to continue any moreso at the expense of my bandwidth. However the current buzz about people losing their jobs because of blogging, and the situation last week with Niall Kennedy and Technorati has got me a wee bit concerned. (Yeah, I'm about seven days late and a few bucks short on this topic. Let it go...)

The title of this post [bolded above] comes from the blogging policy of Feedster.com, which I think is pretty helpful, but still a little unclear in spots. A lot of the hub-bub with employers and employees blogging comes from employees who identify their employer and blog about details of the job. But what about those of us that don't blog about the details of our work...and don't name our employers? It's getting to the point where I'm afraid to even say, "I had a bad day at work" without fear of some kind of repurcussion. And I don't even mention my employers name on this blog. However I think there is a lot of confusion and fear floating around blogging, the employee's right to free speech and the employers right to keep certain aspects of their business private. However more often than not, it's usually the employer that encrouches on the employees personal life, and I find that more than a little irritating. However a good blogging policy, and Feedster's is a good start.

It's one thing when you have an employee saying, "Hi. I'm Joe Blow and I work for The Man, LLC Inc. & Company (A division of Big Azz Monopoly Corp.) and I just wanna say !@!@#% the The Man, MAN!" Ok. See. That's just a little strange. If you are going to purposefully align your name with your employer and blog about the business/industry your employer is in, then I believe it's best, for the both of you, to treat your blog as if it were a corporate blog. Sure you may include your personal thoughts, however where do you draw the line between the employers interests and your own?

There are several reasons why I don't mention my employer:

1. Privacy. I don't want everyone knowing where I work. Why? Well, it's really no ones business and it's just not safe. Like I need someone stalking me at work because they didn't like something I said. I could never understand why some people mention who they work for on their personal blogs, unless, of course, they are going after some kind of reputation/status/audience/credibility/whatever that mentioning the employer would get them. But doing so comes with a certain amount of responsibility. More importantly, saying where I work isn't NEARLY as sexy as if, oh, I could say I work for Microsoft, Google, or Oprah.

2. Control. You see this? :::dramatically waving my arm over my vast digital domain::: This is me. I run this. I pay the bills. I am the only one who decides what gets said here and what doesn't. It would seriously grate on me if I had to worry every five seconds about something I posted because my employer might not like it, or think I had explained a product incorrectly, or whatever. This is my personal life. As I mentioned above, my employer gets 105% from me every day (110% is just overkill) for 9.5 hours. That's enough. I sure don't want my employer to then control what I say, think, and do in my personal time. I'm fully aware of standard confidentiality that employers ask their employees to practice. I respect that and excecise it regularly such as not discussing deals with family/friends/in an elevator/or on my blog. Just don't care to. Again...this isn't really the place for that. Now Hello Kitty vibrators? NOW we're talking business.

Ok, I get the stalking idea, especially if you are blogging about vibrators. But I beleive that the principle of not naming your employer to retain some level of anonymity shouldn't be necessary. Why can't we say I work for Bigazz Inc., and still say things that are unpopular? If you work for Wal-Mart, can't you blog about the need for unions in the workplace? That is a right specifically upheald by the courts, for example, but which is highly unpopular with Wal-Mart senior management. Or you might be an engineer for a large software company who blogs about the benefits of open source while corporate types want to stamp it out.

Do you have to conceal elements of your identity -- and ultimately your self and your life -- in order to blog on a personal level? Is "don't ask, don't tell" going to be recast in this setting? Don't ask what the corporate policy is, and don't tell where you work?

Shasta seems to suggest that we may need to do so for self-protection -- protection from the Man, and protection from angry trolls who want to strangle us for the dirty thoughts we have put in their heads.

But I feel that this is the tightening of the noose, the turning of the screw, the bottom stair on the gallows. This is the first step to total abandonment of personal freedom of speech, where an arbitrary, totalitarian corporate policy, like "no personal blogging allowed," will force people into anonymous blogging, if that, unless they stick to "safe" topics like what they ate last night, or which TV shows they watch.

If we adopt the camoflage that bloggers in Iran and other repressive regimes put on -- concealing their identities in order to protect themselves from persecution -- then we are taking a terrible step backwards into the darkness. And freedoms, once yeilded, are very, very hard to regain.