New Software For Employers To Monitor Facebook

An anonymous reader writes "The NY Times reports that a new service called Social Sentry has been released to monitor employees' Facebook and Twitter accounts for $2 to $8 per employee. The service also plans to support MySpace, YouTube and LinkedIn by this summer. 'Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, a research and advocacy group, called the automatic monitoring of social networking a "disaster," and predicted that it would lead to people being fired for online griping, the airing of political views and other innocuous conversation. There is a tendency to react to an off-color joke or complaint that appears online more harshly than to the same comment made in a cafeteria or company picnic.'"

Comments

Easy enough to avoid

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Don't use Facebook on company computers
2. Keep your profile private
3. Don't post work related topics on other user's profiles (they may not be private)

Re:Easy enough to avoid

[JLavezzo]

I've never understood the appeal in social networking.

It's the white-listed email system everyone was speculating we'd need when spam got too bad.

This seems a little overblown

[grahamsz]

In particular it seems that this service is monitoring publicly available posts and also flagging how many of them happen during work hours. Considering employers are likely within their rights to monitor when their networks are used to make private posts, this doesn't really seem so bad.

It might serve as a wake-up call to people who share too much publicly.

Re:Jeebus - just block facebook, it's not that har

[dancingmilk]

Communications manager who uses Facebook for the company's Facebook group.

There's a reason for you. One of many in my place of work. Facebook access is blocked for the average drone, but there are a few folks that have reasons to use it for work purposes.

'Learning" Social Networking

[whisper_jeff]

Prior to Facebook, social networking sites were pretty much utilized only by the "geeks" of society. Now, with Facebook, everyone and their mom and their grandma has a page. With this flood of people unaccustomed to "life on the internet", people are learning how to conduct themselves on social networking sites all over again. Not only are the non-geeks learning how all this techno-babble works - geeks are also learning how the new social networking environment works. For example, prior to Facebook, on other sites (LiveJournal, for example), my contacts understood that what I said there was to remain there. They were virtual conversations with my friends. Now, however, I'm realizing that the people I have on Facebook do not have that innate understanding of "how it works." Things I say on Facebook, just as a venue to vent, become an issue. I'm being forced to re-evaluate how a social networking site "works" because of all the people who are now using it who just don't understand how it _should_ work.

All of this is to say that it's a very dangerous time to be active on a social networking site. _YOU_ may understand how it all works. Your _FRIENDS_ may understand that you're just venting about a shitty day at work or whatever. Can you be certain your MOM or your BOSS similarly understands these things?...

Hardly enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's hardly enough. Suppose you're an American who holds Democratic views. Your superiors happen to be hardcore Republicans (the fucking crazy kind).

They're monitoring your social media profiles, and see that you've joined Facebook groups supporting health care reform, joined some groups opposing the illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, you've made some comments suggesting you think it's fine for homosexuals to marry and adopt children, and you once twittered a pro-abortion news article link.

Now, they wouldn't have known this about you otherwise. But now they do know. Even if they don't fire you outright, they'll treat you differently, for sure. Maybe they won't trust you. Maybe they won't give you tasks that would allow you to further your career. After all, they probably don't like you any more, just because some political views you expressed differ from theirs.

All that can happen without you using your account at work, without you discussing work-related matters, and even if you keep your profile "private" (which for Facebook these days seems to mean it's open to just about anyone...).

Re:Hardly enough.

[iamhassi]

"Perhaps you should actually learn about our founding fathers views [wikipedia.org] on slavery before you condemn them."

Did you even read the article you linked to?
"According to historian Stephen Ambrose: "Jefferson, like all slaveholders and many other white members of American society, regarded Negroes as inferior, childlike, untrustworthy and, of course, as property. Jefferson, the genius of politics, could see no way for African Americans to live in society as free people.""

Re:Hardly enough.

[twidarkling]

How's that a strawman? The GGP said "The exact same views." The GP pointed out a view that the founding fathers had, and pointed out how that exact view is no longer universally acceptable. That immediately destroys credibility, since you can't hold *all* the *exact* same views, unless you're down with slavery.

Further, anyone who thinks the constitution is a dead document, never to be altered or changed is a fucking moron, in my books. The founding fathers never could have conceived of the world we live in today, nor of what would become hotly contested issues, and so never addressed it in the document. To hold today's world to a piece of paper that was never meant to address the state of current society is narrow-minded and specious at best.

Re:Hardly enough.

[nine-times]

The founding fathers never could have conceived of the world we live in today, nor of what would become hotly contested issues, and so never addressed it in the document.

Once, while I was advocating the government taking a greater role in regulating the Internet (in terms of infrastructure, i.e. Verizon, not in terms of content), a Republican relative of mine complained, "If the founding fathers wanted the federal government regulating the Internet, they would have put it in the Constitution!"

I literally face-palmed on that one. When I reminded him that they didn't really know about the Internet in the early 19th century, he said something like, "Well they didn't say anything about cars or telephones either!" Double face-palm.

Finally I pointed out that the most advanced technology that they would have had at the time was someone carrying a handwritten letter by horseback, and that the Constitution had specifically given the government the power to get involved in those kinds of communications. Essentially, the Constitution gave the government the power to build the most advanced communication and transportation infrastructure available at the time: to hire people to carry letters all over the country and even build a network of roads for them to travel over. He didn't believe me, and asked, "Ok smart guy. If the government was allowed to do that, why didn't they ever do it?" I would have tripple face-palmed if I had three hands.