Right to freedom of expression…as we say it. And certainly most of us seem to be using it at any place, anytime. The recent phenomenon which has taken momentum is to make use of social media sites like facebook and twitter to voice your opinion over any issue you must be faced with. Being very active myself on sites like facebook and twitter, I have to say one thing that people are getting aggressive with such campaigns. Any issue small or big, national or international…everything is being discussed and slowly but surely, it seems to be reaching out to the masses. The best thing to happen of course is to see more and more people being part of such campaigns. In a social site like facebook, people can simply post in their comments to have their say over any particular issue or cause. And as far as I know, it seems to be working very well but at times consequences can be very adverse leading to a very similar situation like how it happened just a few days back.

Yes, posting comments on the facebook page against the services of a premiere telephone company, Vodafone became a nightmare for a person named Dhaval Valia from Mumbai. Like many other customers, Dhaval had also subscribed for the Vodafone 3G services but having been dissatisfied with the same he decided to to take some stern action and he did take some action but it was not late before his activities were monitored and finally he is being sued by the same company for his actions. Mr. Dhaval had posted some defamatory comments about company’s services on their facebook page. And he is also believed to have sent text messages to some of the senior managers of the company complaining about the company’s services. Mr. Dhaval had justified his actions by saying that he had emails from Vodafone executives in which they had admitted “hiccups” with the 3G roll-out.

Well, I cannot comment more on the same as I am myself not aware of the truth. But if I have to say anything more, I would like to put up a question here to my readers – Did Mr. Dhaval take the right step by posting defamatory comments on the facebook page against company’s services? Was he justified in making using of social media sites like facebook to vent out his frustration? Inspite of being repeatedly warned by the company, he never removed his derogatory remarks which he made against company’s services. Was it right? And on the contrary, Should any company, forget about the Vodafone, to speak in general…should any company resort to such measures like issuing a legal notice to customers because he or she was involved in some serious badmouthing? Also, speaking about the same case, Mr. Dhaval had accused Vodafone of breaching privacy laws by accessing his Facebook account. Now, how far does it look legal for any company to get into such acts?
Please have your say…I would like to know your thoughts first before expressing my opinion over these. Let me know your thoughts..!