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

Good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never used any of those services. Everyone told me I needed to take my tinfoil hat off when I told them that this would eventually happen.

FTFA

[Capt James McCarthy]

"Social Sentry draws only on publicly posted information on Facebook and Twitter;"

Talk about a cash cow. Trolling public information that may or may not be your employee is risky (duplicate names). Perhaps this will remind folks that use social networks to set their security settings up is a good thing.

I would like to know

[tist]

As an employer, I would be quite happy to know how much time is being wasted by employees on social networking sites. Of course keeping up with current events (Suff that matters) would not be included. The comments my employees make are public and I have the same right to see them as anyone. In addition, the time and resources they spend on personal items while getting paid by me is no less than stealing.

Re:This seems a little overblown

[exhilaration]

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

So I'm a software developer, in my early 30's, pretty tech-savy. It took me about 45 minutes (a long time, I think) digging around Facebook's privacy settings to properly hide everything. Not only do you have to go under "Privacy", but also "Application Settings" - would the average user know to do that? Apparently "Group" privacy settings are under applications??? Those settings are complicated And even now I can't hide 1) my friends list from the public 2) my pages from the public. So my point is it's hard to NOT share too much publicly with Facebook.

Re:'Learning" Social Networking

[Skyshadow]

Social media has a nasty learning curve when it comes to the workplace. This has always been the case in any forum where your electronic musings are available to anyone who cares to look, or even in areas where having some jerk forward a message to the wrong person.

I remember back when I was an intern at SGI, there was a big hullabaloo over the "bad attitude" newsgroup -- this was a newsgroup set up with the idea that people who had a forum to bitch about the company would be overall happier workers. In concept it was a pretty good idea. In practice, it even worked out fairly well; it created a community where people could actually get things fixed or at least have others tell them that the little issue they were overfocused on weren't such a big deal.

Of course, the regular users were people who didn't think what would happen once the bottom-feeding lawyers got ahold of it (as they did when Microsoft subpoena'ed Netscape's offshoot of BA) and then the predictable reactions of the HR drones (HR people being, by definition, the bottom 1% of humanity -- right below baby rapists). Management invented all sorts of reasons to go ahead and fire the more active participants despite the fact that the forum had been more or less sanctioned by the company in the first place.

Of course, that being SGI around 1999/2000, the people who got canned over BA were just a few months ahead of most of the rest of the company, but you take my meaning.

So if there's any difference between us and them, it's that more of us have seen how this works by now..

Re:Seriously now...

[mlts]

Even better, set your defaults so only a particular group can see what you put on your wall and other things. Then add all your friends (true friends) to that group. This way, if you add someone to friends as a diplomatic move (some workplaces require being added to friends/followers as a condition of employment), by default they do not see your posts. Same with organization fan pages that one joins.

This is not just happening INSIDE the workplace

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not just happening in the workplace. Some employers are actively watching their employee's social networking pages when they are outside the work environment!

My girlfriend was recently given a series of "guidelines" in which was outlined, procedures for proper social network use. Amongst those outlined, the guidelines state she cannot speak negatively of her employer, and may not even speak of public information such as stock price of the company. It also goes so far as to say she cannot make politically or religiously opinionated posts, and she may not post such content anonymously,

At the end of this document composed of "guidelines" (their term) is a signature and date field, followed by the threat of termination of these guidelines are not followed. Guidelines my ass, it's a contract to limit her free speech outside the work place.

We're at a lost as to what to do. Thus far she's refused to sign the document, and has attempted to contact the ACLU and several other organizations. Nothing yet so far.

Re:This is not just happening INSIDE the workplace

[phantomfive]

If she is already employed, follow these steps:

* Ignore it. If people ask her, tell them, "oh yeah, I'll get right on that." Often in large bureaucracies weird requirements come up, but no one actually cares about them so they go away if you ignore them.
* Incidental to that, don't be emotional. If you passionately object, suddenly people will start to take a personal interest in you, and then it gets harder to ignore. Bureaucratic nonsense is never worth getting emotional about.
* If that doesn't work, and someone comes to you and insists that you do it, give them a task to distract them. Say, "Have you checked with the legal department about it? Can you do so please and tell me what they say?" If you are lucky, it will seem like too much work for them and they will give up.
* If that doesn't work, try amending the contract with a pen. Cross out every part you don't agree to. Or, my preference, add a line that says, "I don't actually agree to this." Write it in cursive and if you are lucky, the corporate drone will decide, "good enough" because in reality, they are just trying to fulfill the stupid requirements someone gave them.
* If that doesn't work, try to talk to a supervisor. Try to escalate it to the person who actually created the policy (since they are the ones who understand the reasoning behind the policy). Once again, don't be emotional, and be respectful. Try to understand their position. You can also try escalating to the person above them.
* If that doesn't work, just refuse. In this case, they can't really fire you, because it's illegal. Once again, try not to be emotional, and be respectful, because otherwise it will be easy for them to make your job annoying in other ways. It's harder if you are respectful.
* It's extreme, but there is always the option to quit.

THAT is how you deal with bureaucracies.

Re:Seriously now...

[DeanFox]

If requested MySpace/Facebook will grant employers with invisible type "friend" status to any of their employee's account. Employers can monitor their employees page without the user giving individual consent (general consent was given when accepting the user agreements) or knowing they have been friended by their employer. This is not a protection by itself. It could be for this particular service as they claim it only covers "public" information but it isn't if the employer asks directly.

Re:Easy enough to avoid

[mlts]

Even without someone posting slanderous FB profiles, I have had a large number of HR people ask me in job interviews about my Twitter/FB/MySpace accounts. In the past, when I told them that I didn't have one, I got looked at like I was completely insane. One interview actually got ended when the interviewer told me that I was a fossil and too behind the times to be part of their company because I didn't have accounts.

So I created some dummy accounts. These days, I do use FB because it is a good tool for events, but I don't bother with any other social networking site.

Re:Easy enough to avoid

[xaxa]

At the risk of having my own "get off my lawn!" moment, I've never understood the appeal in social networking. Trust me, your life is not that interesting.

Yours isn't interesting to me.

But my friends' social life is -- it's often my social life too.

Re:Easy enough to avoid

[david_thornley]

Your life is not interesting to me.

However, the lives of my friends and relatives in Arizona, California, South Carolina, Ohio, and New York are interesting to me, and since I live in Minnesota I don't often actually see these people.

I'm not interested in making new friends with Facebook, but I do like keeping track of older ones.

It's a common Republican "debating" technique.

[Anonymous Coward]

What you have observed is a common Republican debating technique.

Instead of debating the issue or issues under discussion, they focus on the "rules" of debate. This is mainly done because their arguments are weak, and full of obvious holes.

So they throw out false accusations of their opponent(s) using "strawmen", or "ad hominem attacks", and so forth. Soon the debate is focusing on how the debate should be held, rather than on the original topic itself.

We see this at the highest levels, with them threatening to filibuster on a near-constant basis. Since they can't partake in honest, open, legitimate debate about real issues, Republicans do whatever they can to debate something trivial.

(I'm not a Democrat, by the way. But for whatever reason, they don't seem to stoop to the level of Republicans when it comes to using this technique. They will actually discuss issues.)

Re:Hardly enough.

[phantomfive]

I heard a historian discuss that very topic, and he said there was really no excuse for Jefferson to hold those views. In his day, there were already black and indian intellectuals, and Jefferson went to great length to try to explain why the black intellectuals weren't really that impressive (although he seemed to like the indians). Not to mention his lover and children were very likely black. But then, men don't always respect their lovers, either.

I don't take this to mean that Jefferson was a horrible person, he was heroic in some ways, but in other ways a bigot and a coward. This is OK, and it should give us hope, because all of us have a bad side, all of us have weaknesses, and yet this does not preclude us from being heros in our own way. Everyone has a heroic side, too.

Re:Hardly enough.

[Beardo the Bearded]

Libertarians assume there are no sociopaths -- a faulty assumption made also by democratic philosphies.

The problem is that some people, and some corporations, will act without regard for the safety of others. Thus, a government representing the people must be in force -- and must be a powerful force -- that protects people from harm by the malicious. However, against normal citizens the government should have no power. It's hard to describe exactly as I've only had the general idea for a week or so. Give me some time to let it ripen a bit. ;)

As for multiple parties, only 33% of the population voted for Scowl Harper, so it's a double-edged sword.

Re:Easy enough to avoid

[sbeckstead]

Trust me, your life is not
Thank you for appointing yourself the great arbiter of what is and isn't interesting to my relatives and friends. I assume since you think our lives are uninteresting that yours is also bland and boring and yes uninteresting, I'll bet this chewing out is the most interesting thing to happen to you since birth. So until you actually become the arbiter if interest in my life I'll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself! Oh and by the way Slashdot qualifies as social networking, so for someone who doesn't understand the appeal you certainly do use it frequently.