The Law and Business of Social Media
November 07, 2016 - Terms of Use, UK, Big Data, , Litigation

Social Links: LinkedIn’s new feature estimates salaries; states grapple with digital-asset-inheritance laws; insurance company wants to base rates on applicants’ Facebook posts

Because it bases its assessments on job title, location and industry, LinkedIn’s new Salary feature might be more accurate than are other online compensation estimation tools.

States are trying to pass laws that balance bereaved people’s desire to access their deceased loved ones’ social media accounts with the privacy interests of the account holders and the people with whom they corresponded. Without such laws, access to a deceased person’s digital assets might depend on the various social media platforms’ terms of use.

In lawsuits, social media has occasionally made it easier to serve process on adverse parties, but it has also made it more difficult to ensure that jurors remain unbiased.

A UK company wants to set car insurance premiums using an algorithm that analyzes car owners’ Facebook posts for pertinent personality traits?! The plan likely won’t go far; it violates Facebook’s platform policy.

Kenya deported a registered refugee for posting to social media his support of the U.N. secretary-general’s firing of a Kenyan commander of a peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, the refugee’s native country.

Thinking of posting a photo of yourself in the voting booth on Tuesday? Not so fast. In many states it’s illegal to share on social media photos of completed ballots and photos of yourself inside a voting booth. Courts all over the U.S. are hearing challenges to these so-called “ballot selfie” laws.

Does a lawyer violate ethics rules by purchasing the names of competing lawyers or law firms as keywords that improve the purchasing lawyer’s own rank in Google search results?

In the three years since its launch, an app called Scholly, which matches students with a personalized list of scholarships, has been downloaded over a million times. Here’s some advice for other social entrepreneurs from the company’s 25-year-old founder and CEO.

Some researchers believe the likes, status updates and photos posted to social media platforms will someday be the source material for breakthroughs in the field of psychiatry.

A UK solicitor was fined by a professional conduct regulator for posting a series of “unprofessional and offensive” tweets bragging about his victory over vulnerable adversaries.