r/firelookouts • u/Such_Morning4459 • 15d ago
"social media lookouts" and government ethics
tiktok lookouts making money using their federal jobs as content, am I insane or is that extremely not allowed/borderline illegal?
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u/daniwelllived 15d ago
Definitely a violation.
But beyond the actual hard and fast rules, personally I don't want my job to also become a second job nor do I want to accidentally miss something because I'm trying to record my daily routine. Of course, we all have downtime, but you can tell a lot of the content comes from on the clock activities when fires and lightning storms are happening, with active radio traffic or locations included. That's a big line cross to me.
Additionally, because it's social media that relies on clicks, there are some social media lookouts that turn things up (or rather down) for the camera and that leads to misinformation about our job being spread. In my opinion, that's where a lot of this "I want to focus on XYZ hobby for a summer and not pay rent so I should just become a lookout" attitude is originating.
Plus it's so easy to tell where some of these lookouts are working and with how weird parasocial relationships are, it feels unsafe.