Teachers’ union president Weingarten encourages educators to erase social media history

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten is evidently trying to prevent teachers from getting canceled.

In a Twitter post published Tuesday, she announced that the union has partnered with a company called LifeBrand to help teachers cancel-proof their social media profiles.

“Our union is here for you to help you future-proof your social media. @AFTunion has partnered w/LifeBrand for a 25% discount off the cost of this powerful tool that scans your social media to catch forgotten posts that may not reflect who you are today,” she tweeted.

The tweet linked to a page on the American Federation of Teachers’ website containing information about LifeBrand.

“LifeBrand scans your social media (currently covers Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok) to quickly find potentially harmful posts and then guides you to edit or delete those posts—forever! The system scans text, emojis, images, video and sound in both English and Spanish,” the page reads.

The page also contains quotes from relevant union members.

“In the course of 15 years I know I’ve changed, and so has my social media presence. It was a great opportunity to take a stroll down memory lane,” one quote from Fedrick C. Ingram, AFT secretary-treasurer reads.

“While I found some things that gave me pause, in the end, I believe my social media history reflects both who I was then and who I am today. It was good to know that if I found something that others might use for negative purposes that I could delete it with one key stroke,” it continues.

“Having been on social media for over a decade posting over a thousand times, I felt relieved to have my historical posts checked for what could be a misunderstanding or typo like in texting,” another quote from California Federation of Teachers President Jeff Freitas reads.

Dovetailing back to Weingarten’s tweet, critics were confused over why a service like LifeBrand would be needed for presumably righteous teachers who’ve been living on the up and up:

The irony is that Weingarten clearly hasn’t used LifeBrand herself, as her Twitter feed is full of tweets that contradict her public rhetoric, particularly about pandemic lockdowns.

Recall that she was an avid advocate of keeping schools shut down. Yet to hear her tell it these days, she’d be an advocate for reopening them. This is a lie. Moreover, it’s a lie that’s easily disproven thanks to her old tweets that she hasn’t deleted yet.

Here are just a few examples:

As for teachers, there have been plenty of examples of ones who would benefit mightily from LifeBrand.

For example, back in February a Washington teacher came under heavy fire after she complained on Twitter that schools’ “guidelines and laws” were doing a poor job of keeping students’ info secret from “Christo-fascist” parents.

Auburn School District 408 teacher Karen Love posted the offensive tweet after someone else tweeted urging parents to check their school district’s policy vis-a-vis secret information.

“Parents-check your school districts’ policy regarding keeping info about YOUR child secret from you. There are some scary policies out there. Schools should not have a right to keep info about your child from you unless abuse by you is suspected. There I said it and mean it,” the original tweet read.

“I cannot disagree with this more. So many students are not safe in this nation from their Christo-fascist parents. And our guidelines and laws haven’t caught up with this,” Love wrote in response.

Vivek Saxena

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