Do offline mores trump social media mores?

Today’s New York Times offers an interesting story about attorneys who are being penalized for speaking out online about their profession. [A Legal Battle: Online Attitude vs. Rules of the Bar by John Schwartz] Some are speaking out against unfair judges; others are blogging about cases in ways that aren’t entirely prudent.

The legal profession has strict codes of conduct for what can be said, particularly by officers of the court. Should these rules apply to Facebook and other social media, or are their posts protected by free speech?

According to the article, the codes of conduct apply.

I agree. For me, the conclusion to draw is this: Offline norms are more binding than social media norms.

If you are member of a professional community, you are bound to its code of ethics – regardless of whether it’s the Bar Association, the Knights Templar, or the Cosa Nostra.

In fact, your online behavior should be bound by the norms of the communities that you’re addressing. If you’re an officer of the court on and you’re followed by members of the legal community on Twitter, then the rules of the legal community apply, as it would on Facebook.

As a society of social media users, we tend to mistake social media for private conversations. We think of Facebook as monolithic, and expect to see a universal code of conduct for its users.

That conclusion is simply wrong.

Major social media channels are actually the intersection of various different communities. It makes sense, therefore, to tailor your posts online to the norms of every community that you’d be likely to address – that is, exercise the same caution that a public figure would.

The problem is: most of us don’t have much practice at being public figures.