Ask Slashdot: Companies That Force Employees To Join Social Networks?

First time accepted submitter rubeon writes "Companies can get a lot of mileage out of social networking services from the likes of Google or Facebook. Chat, document collaboration, and video conferencing using services like Google+ Hangouts or Facebook's Skype are seductive additions to an IT arsenal. But a lot of people have privacy concerns about these services, and there's no shortage of horror stories how these sites track and exploit their users' habits. Would you work for a company that forced its employees to join a social network?"

Comments

Why not, it's just another work tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Create a @ Work account, simple This also means you can easily avoid problems such as this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16338040

Re:Why not, it's just another work tool

[tepples]

Sign up with a new account and compartmentalize your activities appropriately.

Unless a network enforces one account per individual.

Re:Why not, it's just another work tool

[History's Coming To]

Good idea, but to nitpick many of these services are now insisting on your real name and details when you sign up. Yes, you can put fake details on, but try explaining it to the boss when your account is deleted for breaking the T&C. I use a fake Facebook account for work purposes, but I'm self employed so I can't get fired if it gets taken down, I just make another. If my employer insisted on me handing over my personal data to a third party I'd simply refuse outside of work bio, email and phone number. Facebook and the like collect a LOT more data than that, including people contacting me on non-work matters - you can tell them not to because it's your work account, but your employer (in the UK at least) isn't allowed to view incoming messages like that, let alone a third party (court orders aside).

Re:Why not, it's just another work tool

[Hognoxious]

As much as people like yourself would like to pretend America is 1939 Nazi Germany, it isn't.

1936 Germany wasn't 1939 Germany either. But nobody did much and three years later, bam, it was.

Re:Why not, it's just another work tool

[shish]

Step 1: Create rules that are easy to work around
Step 2: Nobody complains, because workarounds are easy
Step 3: Because everybody accepts the rules, they get turned into laws. You are now a criminal, and anyone who doesn't like you can have you arrested :P

Why not?

[jmitchel!jmitchel.co]

Why would I have any problem working for a company that forced me to join a social network? I wouldn't join with the same profile that I used personally. I would keep my business activities with the site strictly segregated from my personal persona (if any). But if the cost of losing your privacy as an employee to a google or a Facebook accrues almost entirely to your employer, not to you.

They Can Make You Join...

[Nom du Keyboard]

Maybe they can make it a condition of your job to join, but can they really make you use it? Just telling them that you don't post much because you're not that kind of guy or gal would be a hard argument for them to refute.

Re:It's a paying job.

[JamesP]

Obviously

You choose the amount of information you put there.

Unless you are as paranoid as RMS, just sign up using your company email (or a throwaway one) and put the absolutely minimum amount of info.

I'd much prefer a paycheck to a bit of already-compromised privacy.

This

Re:Roll Your Own

[Barbara, not Barbie]

There are tons of collaboration packages, and even Google Docs, without the need to join a social network.

... for now ...

Why any company would trust sensitive internal information to Google is beyond me.

Re:What?!?!

[JustShootMe]

While you are technically correct, you are ignoring economic realities and pressures. Sometimes just because you *can* quit doesn't mean that you will be able to find another job. There are places in the country where if you lose your job, you will have to move.

Business/Company account needs no personal info

[perpenso]

Sign up with a new account and compartmentalize your activities appropriately.

Unless a network enforces one account per individual.

With different emails, profiles, behaviors, etc how would they notice? Likes, interests, posts etc should be completely segregated between professional and personal. Maybe use different names as well, for example the formal Michael on the business account and the familiar Mike on the personal account. They can't really tell from IP. Maybe Michael is a father's account and Mike is a son's - again, avoid personal info like birthday's etc on the business account. A business account at a particular company has no need to contain birthdays, schools, etc.

Re:That question actually is rather leading.

[Colonel Korn]

Some customers I work with have grown so dependent on social software that they cannot tolerate even a minute of downtime. Social business is, in many ways, the wave of the future, and to criticize companies for trying to get on the bandwagon and realize the benefits for themselves is not something I'm prepared to do.

I think that corporate dependence on "social software" is kind of like dependence on crack: it's hard to go a minute without it but that's not because it's providing real benefits.

Yes, in some cases social tools are useful, but in most implementations I've heard about the users become dependent on it because it's their only option, not because it was the best option.

Another analogy: if the New York Fire Department switched from fire engines to wagons pulled by donkeys because other cities were doing it and donkey stock was through the roof, they'd use the donkeys all the time and dread donkey downtime, but that wouldn't indicate that donkeys were a better choice than engines.

Re:That question actually is rather leading.

[JustShootMe]

I'm not sure I understand your point. If they're dependent on it to the point where work stops getting done of the social network is down, and when significant and concrete cost savings can be proven (again, look at the use cases, I'm not going to repeat them here - I'll repeat that I'm not a marketer) it would become very difficult to make the case that the network being used is not at the very least *adequate* for the needs of the company whom is using it.

Some social networks and social software are better than others (I obviously have my opinions but I don't think I need to spell them out here as to which are which) but when a company is seeing tangible and measurable benefits trying to convince them that their solution is the wrong one is going to be an uphill battle.

Re:Can information leak in?

[Known Nutter]

I wouldn't friend them

I don't use any social networks, but I detected a serious problem when "friend" became a verb...

Re:My response to the manager or HR person....

[JustShootMe]

I cannot say strongly enough how horrifically bad this advice is.

If you make a habit of going to HR when they ask you to do something that is even tangentially related to your job duties and essentially demand a payoff, if you last years it's pretty much a miracle. Hallelujah.