I thought these people have the intellect, as Peter Fries like to point out, equivalent of an 'astronomer' and yet somehow clueless about how social media like Twitter works.
Yeah, no. He’s 100% wrong, full stop. Social media is NOT private— hell, “social” is in the damned term. Neither account was locked down. That means his (and her) social media account was completely public. It’s the same as walking around with the world’s largest and loudest microphone.
You CHOOSE to share your thoughts and opinions on social media. Unless it’s your job— i.e. Social Media Manager, Community Manager— nobody forces you to post anything. You WANT people to read it. You may try to bullshit and say that it’s not your intent, but you’re fooling yourself if you say so. If you don’t want people to react, either don’t post it (best course of action) or lock down your account (not the best, but better than nothing).
Mr. Fries here shows an amazing amount of ignorance and generates zero sympathy. If you don’t know how social media works, don’t use it. Otherwise, all of the excuses in the world can’t save you from real-world consequences.
Also— in response to recent developments in the thread, the gaming media is looking awful here. Not only is the representation of the story completely biased, but the emotional connection to the terminated employees is just weird.
They’re not heroes. They didn’t sacrifice anything. They behaved poorly online and represented their employer in a negative fashion. People get fired for bad social media decisions all the time.
Like it or not, using social media in an aggressive or disrespectful fashion is a transgression. Your freedom of speech is fully intact— but if you insist on being a jerk online, you had better learn to accept any consequences that come with it. You don’t need a warning; warnings have been everywhere in the examples of the people fired before you for behaving badly on social media. Don’t even bother with an “I shouldn’t be stifled” defense, because all that says to me (and anyone who thinks about this logically) is that you want carte blanche to say whatever you want without consequence... and that’s not how things work.