Twitter reacts to Times of India's new social media policy for employees

In a social media age, who owns the various Twitter, Facebook and Google+ accounts of journalists? Is it the individuals or the publications they work for? The Times of India thinks it's the latter. Quartz India reports that Bennett, Coleman and Company Ltd, the publisher of the Times of India, Economic Times and other major news publications, has asked employees to hand over Twitter and Facebook login credentials and let the company post for them. The company has instituted a blanket ban on all news-related social media activity on all employee personal accounts. This is only possible if employees create a different account for the company, or if employees decided to 'convert' their personal accounts into company accounts. In that case, the company could tweet or post from these accounts, even when the individuals have left the organisation. This follows another major Indian news publication The Hindu's ban on its journalists retweeting or tweeting stories from other publications or news sources.  Obviously this brings up lots of questions related to employee privacy and social media ownership of employee accounts, even when they are explicitly categorised as personal. What's bizarre is that the company wants access to the Facebook accounts, which is used completely differently than Twitter by individuals and often has a lot of personal information that may not necessarily be the company's business knowing.  In any case, the policy has brought out Twitter's acerbic best. Here's what some of the Twitterati are saying: 

ToI is just being polite when it is asking for passwords. In reality they can just track every keystroke and click and conversation. — Ra Ch Na (@raggedtag) August 26, 2014

"TOI asked it's employees to share their FB & twitter passwords". In other words, TOI is going to lose a lot of employees! — Bewdi. (@KameeniChhori) August 26, 2014

ToI employees should ask ToI to also send anniversary and birthday gifts to their better halves automatically — YunGwan (@Gunmaster_G9) August 26, 2014

The journos at TOI & The Hindu could swap passwords & cross post each others content. I'd RT that. — Raheel Khursheed (@Raheelk) August 26, 2014

Hello TOI journos. (This is a trick question.) — Local Tea Party (@localteaparty) August 26, 2014

Times of India has just gone more cuckoo than it already was. Social media credentials from journalists? Sheesh. http://t.co/YyJ5IEE0HK — Agratha Dinakaran (@Agratha) August 26, 2014

The Times of India asks employees to hand over their Twitter/Facebook passwords and let them post for them. http://t.co/2jd0DSgxEV via @qz — Haroon Rashid (@TheHaroonRashid) August 26, 2014

I hope the @timesofindia knows that just saying all your bases belong us: http://t.co/1unxd4cB0s May not make it so: http://t.co/qKyqozpXi9 — Nilanjana Roy (@nilanjanaroy) August 26, 2014