The guide on making comments through social media channels, issued by Public Service Commission boss John Lloyd on Monday, says "liking" a post on Facebook or Twitter "will generally be taken to be an endorsement of that material as though you'd created that material yourself".

On two recent occasions Mr Morrison has raised eyebrows after his Twitter account was seen liking problematic posts, including one critical of government budget cuts.

In April last year, he said the account had been hacked after it liked a post calling for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to get tough with China on the sensitive issue of human rights.

In July, the same account liked a post from Labor demanding Mr Morrison and Financial Services Minister Kelly O'Dwyer provide more funding for the Tax Office to sort out its repeated IT meltdowns.

Hardly an endorsement.

News of the new social media guidance quickly prompted criticism from the unions, the opposition, the Greens, workplace law experts and online advocacy group Digital Rights Watch.

Mr Lloyd issued a statement saying a News Corp report had misrepresented the status of the guidance, arguing it served only to "amplify" existing rules on social media activity and provisions of the APS Values and Code of Conduct.

He made the straightforward point that public servants' social media activity required discretion and careful judgement.

The new guidance, more than 3000 words covering everything from the vexed question of if a retweet equals an endorsement and just how potent is an angry face emoji, seeks to clarify the parameters around what public servants can and cannot say and is designed to give individuals greater confidence.

While high profile cases including sacked SBS journalist Scott McIntyre highlight the risks of contentious social media posts, arguably the most worrying elements of the new guidance include warnings that private emails sent to a friend could breach the rules and that doing nothing about objectionable material posted by someone else to a public servant's social media page could be considered endorsement.

Would every government department and agency meet this test in their online activity? Even a quick search revealed derisive and baseless information about drug smugglers on one Facebook page on Monday.

A smart public servant already takes seriously the need for impartiality and wouldn't jeopardise his or her work or future employment prospects by being seen to criticise the government or opposition in public.

Importantly, how many department secretaries or senior managers would consider a "dob-in" from a private email sent from a private account to be a breach of the rules?

How many would take action against a member of their team who did not delete from their page content written by someone outside the public service because it contained a political message?

Effective and enforced rules protect the public's view of their public service, but with Labor now calling on the government to clarify the guidance, the latest update appears to have done more harm than good.