Generally speaking it’s easy to argue that employees have no expectation of privacy on the work network for the following reasons:
1. Regulation in most countries requires it to be this way, we’ll most countries any of us is likely to work in. Which is to say: The Law Hath Spoken, which is to say: The People Hath Decided.
2. The employer should have spelled this out to you at time of hire, and had you sign a document to verify you understand.
The problem here isn’t that the direct messages take place in the workplace, it’s that they take place on infrastructure owned by the workplace.
I didn't actually argue that there was an expectation...
I only said that the comment I replied to relied on a purely arbitrary definition for what an invasion of personal privacy was... He argued that because "your company is not recording your activity in the privacy of your home or on the street" it wasn't unreasonable (or totalitarian), because the company was "protecting itself and other employees from potentially problematic abuse scenarios." Even though it's amusingly easy to imagine that a totalitarian regime would make the same argument for its own surveillance practices....
1. Regulation in most countries requires it to be this way, we’ll most countries any of us is likely to work in. Which is to say: The Law Hath Spoken, which is to say: The People Hath Decided.
2. The employer should have spelled this out to you at time of hire, and had you sign a document to verify you understand.
The problem here isn’t that the direct messages take place in the workplace, it’s that they take place on infrastructure owned by the workplace.