Working Boundaries

For social media platforms, having duplicate or fake accounts is against their terms of service. Since the platforms also track the IP addresses of people who set up the account, and people who manage accounts. At any time they can shut down the fake account, as well as any or all of the accounts connected to IP addresses that have used that account. The platforms have set up ways for businesses to invite and manage users to administer a business account. Violating terms of service can affect not only your account(s), but our own business accounts, our personal accounts, as well as all of the accounts of all of our clients.

Because it is against TOS and can impact all of our clients in one fell swoop since they may block our IP address or block every account that we work on, we will not set up fake accounts on your behalf. This could include using a “personal” profile as a business; or setting up a second “fake” personal profile that is only used for you to log in to administer a connected business page. We also will not log into fake accounts to manage your work.

We will set up a personal account on your behalf if you do not already have one and will actually be using it as your only personal profile with accurate profile information. All other work will strictly be done through business accounts on the various platforms. The only exception to this is the few platforms that do not have business options.

We understand that not all of our clients regularly keep up with the laws and guidelines around copyrights, since it’s not part of your ongoing work. We do. Because of this, we will not knowingly use copyrighted material in our work on your behalf.

There are legal implications to improperly using copyrighted materials, and we refuse to put you or ourselves at risk. We access only stock photo sites for using images or videos in your work. We will not use copyrighted material in a way that does not comply with the license of that work, even if you ask us to. This includes even if you tell us that you assume all liability and release us from liability.

This may include images that you supply to us if we know that it is being used improperly. A common scenario might be if you send us the link to an image to use, and when we visit the link we see that the image is not available for commercial use. Or you send us a link to a Google image but have not verified for yourself what the requirements are surrounding the copyright. Since we know this can be a confusing topic, we have provided you with an overview of copyright issues. Like with any legal situation, we remind you that we are not lawyers and recommend that you consult with one.

This relates to the copyright issue above and also includes any other legal circumstances. We would hope that it could go without saying that we would never knowingly ask our contractors to break a law, we wouldn’t knowingly do so ourselves, we wouldn’t ask you or your team to, and we understand that you will not ask us to as well.

Since we are not lawyers, we try our best to keep abreast of laws and guidelines that cover our work, and expect that you will be doing the same for yours. If you ever present us with a situation (a good example is a copyright issue as noted above) and we realize that it would entail breaking a law or guideline, or even coming to a point that it’s close without actually breaking it and we do not feel comfortable at that point, we will refuse to do so, for all of our best interest. Like with any legal situation, we remind you that we are not lawyers and recommend that you consult with one.

There may be unforseen circumstances that could make our staff or contractors, ourselves, you and your team, or the clients of anyone, feel unsafe or worried about health or wellness. A good example is a natural disaster or epidemic. Or bad air quality for someone with asthma. I’m sure there are tons of examples that we could share, but hopefully this gives you an idea of what we’re talking about – and this covers them all.

Similar to how we will not ask for someone to break the law, we also will not ask someone to put themselves into a situation that makes them concerned or uncomfortable for their health, safety or wellness. We will not dictate to anyone what that point of concern should be, but rely upon all adults to use their best judgement and respect the judgement of others that maybe different from our own.

In some cases, ignoring the concerns of any of the parties could also result in legal implications, and as noted above we do not want to put any of us in that position. Like with any legal situation, we remind you that we are not lawyers and recommend that you consult with one.

As a regular business practice, we do not make payments to third party vendors on your behalf. This could include things such as pay-per-click accounts on various social media or other platforms, commercial printers, etc. These items are not included in your quote or invoice, and your quote notes that we do not handle these items. We will, however, help you find the best vendor, recommend some of our favorites, and even help you with obtaining quotes from them as needed. We will also help you set up those accounts such as providing instructions as needed. This does not include our payments to our own freelancers for work performed on your account – those pieces are built into your quote and we handle their payments.

While we will add to these points when we have additional examples, we also realize we cannot cover all circumstances. We simply know that everyone involved will adult our way through.