Social Media and Doxxing - Your Thoughts???

[traumaRUs]

So, I first had to look up "doxxing" which is to publicly identify or publish private information about (someone) especially as a form of punishment or revenge.

This recently came up when I read about Joshua Strickland, an RN in Louisianna who posted a selfie at the end of his first day on a new job in which he BLURRED out parts of his name tag. He vaguely mentioned a comment from a patient he had cared for that day without revealing any identifying information. He posted it to a FB group and it went viral as so many nurses could identify with his sentiment.

However, out of the thousands of supportive comments he received there was someone who felt a need to report it. So, they utilized technology to "unblur" his name tag and then reported it to his hospital.

He was fired and is currently unemployed.

So....what are your thoughts on this?

Is it okay to post selfies regarding work situations?

How about the person who reported it?

Do you know your facility policy?

[CharleeFoxtrot, BSN, RN]

6 hours ago, hherrn said:

Yup. Still in America, and the first amendment is still valid.

Josh used it to discuss work in front of thousands of people.

The hospital exercised their freedom of speech to tell josh he is fired.

(applause) Why is it that people don't get this? Yes, you have the freedom to speak however that does not give you a pass on the consequences of your words.

[Jedrnurse, BSN, RN]

15 hours ago, Pixie.RN said:

I am just a few years younger than you, and I feel the same. Sometimes I would like to chuck my smartphone and delete my Facebook page!

Do it! (At least Facebook.) One can live quite well without it...

[Nurse SMS, MSN, RN]

9 hours ago, hherrn said:

Yup. Still in America, and the first amendment is still valid.

Josh used it to discuss work in front of thousands of people.

The hospital exercised their freedom of speech to tell josh he is fired.

You are right- employers cannot regulate what you say while not at work. But, they can decide whether they want to maintain a relationship with you. Look at it this way- if your employer said something about you to thousands of people, you might quit.

Or, let's say somebody worked for you has a handy man, or a painter, or babysitter. And let's say they talked about you in public in a way you did not appreciate- would you still hire them?

Applause. This is it exactly. You can say anything you want to say. You aren't exempt from the ways it is going to foul up your life because you didn't think it through.

[LilPeanut, MSN, RN, NP]

On 9/22/2019 at 4:10 AM, K+MgSO4 said:

Because it is outing...if I response with "o yes we use EMR X at this hospital " then it narrows down where I work. Or I respond with "well 5 yrs ago whwn I worked there we used EMR X" and in another post I mention I now work at hospital ABC people who I have worked with can put it all together and guess who I am.

As an anonymous message board I am not outing myself like that. Nursing / health is a small world however much we believe otherwise. Things I say here would not be said in a F2F world as I am in a leadership position - well actually I would but in the right situation.

You can know what EMR they use without saying you work there. I know what EMR several hospitals use that I don't work at. And I know how to figure out if they use Epic.

[Lunah, MSN, RN]

1 hour ago, Jedrnurse said:

Do it! (At least Facebook.) One can live quite well without it...

I did, a few years ago. I was off Facebook for about 6 months until a friend emailed me and told me a mutual friend's cancer had returned and he was going downhill. I came back to show support to him and his family. I kept it after he passed because I was deploying to Afghanistan and wanted to keep in touch with people. And I got sucked back in! Ugh.

[emmjayy, BSN, RN]

I hate social media as it exists on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I think people over-share, are addicted to the attention they receive on it, don't think through the consequences of their (virtual) actions, and rely on it as a crutch to make themselves feel validated or worthy. As a nurse, I never post a single word about my job on a forum where I can be easily identified. Even here, I shy away from posting particulars about patients/situations. I used to be sort of prolific in discussing patients (no identifiers) on here, but reeled it back in when I sat back and thought about how I really have no idea who is reading my comments. I pretty much stick to commentary such as this, and commiserating about nurse burnout in the ICU section.

I deleted my Facebook permanently about two years ago, don't miss it in the slightest or regret this action. I still have an Instagram account, but I don't even mention that I'm a nurse on it and mainly use it to post cute pictures of my dog and family when I feel up to it. I don't think that social media (esp. media that can be linked explicitly to the user) should be used as a therapy substitute, a platform from which to complain about your job at great length, certainly should not be used to discuss patients, etc. These are my values and I try to stick to 'em. Can't make anyone else follow suit, but I do highly recommend it for your own piece of mind! It's a crazy world out there, anything you can do to decrease the crazy you invite into your corner of it can only be a good thing!

[futurepsychrn, ADN]

On 9/22/2019 at 10:27 PM, hherrn said:

Yup. Still in America, and the first amendment is still valid.

Josh used it to discuss work in front of thousands of people.

The hospital exercised their freedom of speech to tell josh he is fired.

You are right- employers cannot regulate what you say while not at work. But, they can decide whether they want to maintain a relationship with you. Look at it this way- if your employer said something about you to thousands of people, you might quit.

Or, let's say somebody worked for you has a handy man, or a painter, or babysitter. And let's say they talked about you in public in a way you did not appreciate- would you still hire them?

The answer is yes I would to both questions. This us not high school, I'm an adult, and as such don't worry about what people say about me. Furthermore it's none of my business what they're saying. AND they have the same 1st amendment rights I do.

[hppygr8ful, ASN, RN, EMT-I]

My thoughts are people who do these things sure have a lot of time on their hands!

[RNperdiem, RN]

Before social media, Josh might have had to restrict his comments to a small circle of friends, family, and it would be unlikely any of them would go to the employer and report what was said. Without real evidence, there wouldn't be much to go on anyway. To take a picture, he would need to bring his camera to work, and how many people would have done that back in the day?

These days, companies are almost obsessive about protecting their brand/image. Look at how many people, prominent and famous have lost jobs because of racist twitter rants, sexual harrassment accusations etc in the past few years. Social media is very public, hard to refute and easy to track.

[natural thing]

On 9/23/2019 at 7:19 AM, emmjayy said:

I hate social media as it exists on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I think people over-share, are addicted to the attention they receive on it, don't think through the consequences of their (virtual) actions, and rely on it as a crutch to make themselves feel validated or worthy. As a nurse, I never post a single word about my job on a forum where I can be easily identified. Even here, I shy away from posting particulars about patients/situations. I used to be sort of prolific in discussing patients (no identifiers) on here, but reeled it back in when I sat back and thought about how I really have no idea who is reading my comments. I pretty much stick to commentary such as this, and commiserating about nurse burnout in the ICU section.

I deleted my Facebook permanently about two years ago, don't miss it in the slightest or regret this action. I still have an Instagram account, but I don't even mention that I'm a nurse on it and mainly use it to post cute pictures of my dog and family when I feel up to it. I don't think that social media (esp. media that can be linked explicitly to the user) should be used as a therapy substitute, a platform from which to complain about your job at great length, certainly should not be used to discuss patients, etc. These are my values and I try to stick to 'em. Can't make anyone else follow suit, but I do highly recommend it for your own piece of mind! It's a crazy world out there, anything you can do to decrease the crazy you invite into your corner of it can only be a good thing!

Nice! I also dumped FB about 2 years ago and am relieved to not be subject to their "ideas" anymore. I tried removing some personal data from my profile but FB made that impossible. Since they don't have a phone number to call, I wrote a letter to the brick and mortar building but never got a response. Happy to be rid of FB.

[headofcurls, BSN, RN]

Usually I think doxing is wrong, unless someone is doing something violent or illegal. I think we learned in nursing school and every single orientation not to post pictures or talk about patients in any way. I never talk about stuff at work (unless it’s something like a patient gave me a flower/card) or identify my job on social media for this very reason. I hope he finds something else and whoever unblurred his badge needs to get a life.

[emmjayy, BSN, RN]

9 hours ago, natural thing said:

Nice! I also dumped FB about 2 years ago and am relieved to not be subject to their "ideas" anymore. I tried removing some personal data from my profile but FB made that impossible. Since they don't have a phone number to call, I wrote a letter to the brick and mortar building but never got a response. Happy to be rid of FB.

I went through a crazy long process getting rid of Facebook... first I downloaded a complete copy of my Facebook data for my own records. Then, I went through and used a script to delete every comment/like/interaction I'd ever made (this took two weeks, even using a script!!), contacted every person who'd tagged a photo of me and asked them to take the photo down, untagged myself if they refused to remove the photo, used the script to delete every status update, downloaded all my photos and then deleted all of them, changed the contact information I couldn't delete to fictitious email addresses/phone numbers, and basically turned the account into a completely empty "shell" account. I then changed the name on my account and let it sit for awhile before I used the permanent delete option (e.g., don't log back in for two weeks and your access to the account is gone forever). The purpose of letting it sit empty with a fictitious name was to hopefully give FB the opportunity to perform a routine back-up of my account and hopefully over-write their saved copy of my full account with the empty shell account. I truly mistrust Facebook's use of my data and wanted to give myself as much of a chance to cut free of it as possible.

This may seem sort of crazy (I can acknowledge that ? ) but during that process I learned just how much Facebook intrudes on your life. It is devilishly difficult to extricate yourself from the site, they purposefully make it tough for you to mass-delete things or truly control the privacy of your information. They save information on you that you really have no idea they were saving until you go looking to find out about it. I'm sure it's only gotten worse over the past couple of years, as well!