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by throwaway0a5e 1473 days ago
They don't want you shooting the shit with company communications mediums because that has limited upside and much less limited potential downside.

Remember the famous "will the atom bomb test ignite the atmosphere" gentleman's bet those scientists had? Nobody actually thought it would but they discussed it semi-seriously. Today discussing some fanciful bad outcome like that (be it the mundane failure to deliver a product or something more interesting) is a liability when it's sitting in your company email servers. Even if that bad thing isn't what winds up happening or the people speculating aren't in a position to have accurate info the other side's lawyer or the regulator will try and construe it as proof that the company should have known ahead of time.

Or, more likely, say there's some sexual harassment or adultery kerfuffle between employees. It's way better for the company if none of that happened on company provided communications tools.

From the company's perspective it's avoidable risk to have work communication tools be used for informal BSing between employees. But they can't realistically prevent that so they introduce Skynet in order to make people watch their mouths and move those sensitive conversations elsewhere.
2 comments
mc4ndr3 1473 days ago
Having employees is a big potential liability. Having a corporation is a big potential liability. Drinking water is a big potential liability. I guess just don't do anything at all and then recalculate your risk metric.
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barrysteve 1473 days ago
The conversations will happen elsewhere and so will the relationships. Management is locking themselves out from the team leaders and suddenly those off site 'adult kerfuffles' are exactly the conversation you needed to hear to prevent exodus.
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ceeplusplus 1473 days ago
> The conversations will happen elsewhere

That's entirely intentional. You really don't want internal evidence of something that's going to be construed 10 years down the line as cancel-worthy, or worse, something that politicians/regulators are going to take out of context to attack you with.

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