Loyalty, Privacy, And Free Expression In The Digital Workplace

A growing number of employees are getting "dooced" at work these days. Doocing is defined by the Urban Dictionary as "the act of getting fired for something that you have written on the Web". It originates from the fierce debate about privacy issues that occurred in 2002 when an American blogger was fired from her job as a web-designer and graphic artist because she had written satirical accounts of her experiences at work on her personal blog called dooce.com. More than 10 years later, employers are still grappling with the extent to which they can protect their business by monitoring and controlling what employees write on personal blogs or other social media.

Science-fiction has caught up with reality – today's workplace is almost entirely digital. From the beginning of time until 2003, approximately 5 exabytes of information have been created (1 exabyte is roughly 10¹⁸ bytes). Since 2003, 5 exabytes of information are being created every 2 days. Those