I remember when news used to tell you about things that did happen instead of things that might happen.
Until a company actually does this, this is just clickbait speculation.
Until a company actually does this, this is just clickbait speculation.
SIGNIFICANT EDIT: it seems the NBA has walked back and is now supporting the employee in question, as a consequence China has banned all NBA broadcasts in the country.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21176976
[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/deawtd/gonzalez_as_a_c...
[3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/dewiuy/yu_fu_cctv_anno...
Even so, with at-will employment, employees have always been subject to being fired for saying something controversial on social media, so this is nothing new.
Corporations hr departments have firing down to a fine art.
There is plenty of real coverage that takes place, but it doesn't fill a 24-hour news cycle. It consists of things like direct quotes of what candidates actually said and things they actually did. The rest of it is filled with guesses about hypothetical policies they might adopt and what horrible/wonderful things might occur if they do get adopted. In other words, clickbait speculation.
This coverage is about US employers en masse firing employees unless they censor themselves on social media. This is not a thing that has happened. This is not coverage about the two specific incidents that actually occurred. It is speculation.
The person quoted in the article is from the American Enterprise Institute, which is a think tank. This is not someone in charge of setting policy at any US company. This is someone sitting on the sidelines and making guesses.
Neither have US elections in 2020. Both are likely to happen if current tendencies keep in the future, which makes it sensible to discuss what would happen then. We see people fired or under threat of firing for social media posts all the time. Is it cause for concern for everybody right now? No, not yet. Does it happen frequently enough that it might become an issue in the future? IMO, yes, absolutely.
> This is someone sitting on the sidelines and making guesses.
These are not just abstract guesses made out of nothing on a whim. Those are educated guesses made following current trends - as much as speaking about who would win 2020 US elections. In both cases, nobody knows the answer until it happens. In both cases, it still makes sense to talk about it because it is important, it might happen, and talking about it now might prevent undesirable result in the future.