New Software For Employers To Monitor Facebook

[#686578]

No, it's the equivalent of walking around with your e-mail address on your t-shirt and getting pissed when you start getting spam. You keep personal information private for a reason.

Your employer is not "spying" on you, spying implies that the information obtained isn't readily available.

If you post something that anyone with a computer has access to at the click of a button, it's your own damn fault if someone reads it. Especially when it literally takes 5 seconds to make your profile private.

It's more the equivalent of walking around, in your spare time, with a T-Shirt that says "I love Obama." You never wear this shirt to work, but your boss, a strident Obama disapprover sees you on your time off and fires you for it.

Or more accurately, they hire an agency who monitors heavily populated areas such as malls, movie theaters, et cetera, to look for any employees with "I love Obama" t-shirts

[Beckwin]

spam doesn't get you fired from a fucking job, ceph

[Cephius]

Ok, enough of the shitty analogies, let's focus on the point.

My point is, you should be making sure that your personal information isn't public anyway. Why would you want to leave things public? People who know you can still find you and request friend access. You act like privatizing your facebook profile (or myspace, or anything) is some complicated process that will consume hours of your time. It won't. You spend longer shredding confidential documents, or logging into secure websites to do your banking, or any number of things that have the same effect (securing personal data).

As for the "I shouldn't have to do that" comment, well of course you shouldn't. But employers also have every right to look at things you post publicly, and fire you if they don't like what they see. The fact that we're in the middle of an economic depression, where said employer can instantly find 20 people willing to do your job for less pay, doesn't exactly help your case.

[Acturus]

Is all employment "at will" employment?

Is it a federal law in the US? is it of a similar scope in other countries?

[Altariel]

Right to work laws vary by state. Roughly half are "at will" states.

[Meresgi]

Nobody would be surprised if you got disciplined for talking shit about your boss at a happy hour with your co-workers. Nobody should be surprised if the same thing happens via Facebook.

There's a huge difference between chatting in the breakroom at work about how your boss is a fuckwad, and being out in a bar with friends and talking about it. When there just happens to be a co-worker nearby you havn't noticed and overhears it. It's something my highschool tried doing to students as well, if they found out you had been at a party drinking, even if you were over the age to drink, or smoking a cigarette off school property afterschool, even if it was on your OWN fucking lawn. They could suspend straight out boot you from school. Same holds true here, shit I do at work is work business and I can be held responsible for it, shit I do on my own free time at home is my own shit.

And yeah, public settings on anything in this day and age is just stupid.

[Meresgi]

At what point would it seem like a good idea to post your personal feelings and private issues on the internet where nearly anyone can see it, with no consideration of the consequences?

If you got fired for that, you deserved it, because it's asinine.

Right because you arn't posting your personal feelings about him right there in that quote...did you forget this is the internet too?

[Acturus]

Right because you arn't posting your personal feelings about him right there in that quote...did you forget this is the internet too?

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y27...e/untitled.jpg

[Cesaria]

Generally in the UK teaching community we're being told we shouldn't be a member of any social networking site at all - that's what's coming down from Local Authorities and it fucking pisses me off the assumption that we're not allowed to be trusted to use such things. My profile's locked down as much as it can be - but I'm fucked if I'm not going to be allowed to keep in touch with old school friends because the world's gone internet-paranoiac mad. No way on this earth would work colleagues be getting friended anyway - I get enough of work between 8 and 5... sod having it intruding into my weekends and evenings!

Few of my friends who teach older kids have gone as far as making their profiles have fake names to avoid bosses/kids they teach trying to friend them.

I'm very wary about what I post on there anyway - no status updates slagging work off (I may go as far as "is having a pretty crap day" type things), nothing naming anyone, no completely stupid paralytic drunk photos and keeping an eye on my profile settings making sure they're knocked right up to private as hell... just basic stuff really.

[Nishida]

Ironic because we just had a stupid employee meeting yesterday, and one of the topics we discussed was that posting any information about the residents (at the nursing home i work at) even something as little as "my favorite resident [name of dude] just died today" was a HIPPA violation..

[Cephius]

Generally in the UK teaching community we're being told we shouldn't be a member of any social networking site at all - that's what's coming down from Local Authorities and it fucking pisses me off the assumption that we're not allowed to be trusted to use such things. My profile's locked down as much as it can be - but I'm fucked if I'm not going to be allowed to keep in touch with old school friends because the world's gone internet-paranoiac mad. No way on this earth would work colleagues be getting friended anyway - I get enough of work between 8 and 5... sod having it intruding into my weekends and evenings!

Few of my friends who teach older kids have gone as far as making their profiles have fake names to avoid bosses/kids they teach trying to friend them.

I'm very wary about what I post on there anyway - no status updates slagging work off (I may go as far as "is having a pretty crap day" type things), nothing naming anyone, no completely stupid paralytic drunk photos and keeping an eye on my profile settings making sure they're knocked right up to private as hell... just basic stuff really.

Teachers are a unique case in this because you're responsible for children. And parents are snoopy. If a parent found your profile and there was anything remotely incriminating on it that made that parent worry about trusting you with their children, they're going straight to the principal/superintendent/board and it becomes front page news. It sucks that your personal life gets scrutinized, but unfortunately I think it goes with the territory. They may trust you, but as a policy it's less of a headache to just ban social sites across the board to avoid any kind of incident.

[Tyche]

I have a novel idea. Don't post stupid shit on your facebook. I never say one peep about work. I VERY rarely even curse on mine, I think I said "bitch" in a status one day because I was paraphrasing someone else's conversation. I try not to make myself look like I'm 12 in front of 100+ people. I have one co-worker on my FB who I've known longer before I was employed here. I'm pretty sure mine's set to public as far as wall posts and photos go.

[archibaldcrane]

If you're getting fired for something you posted on facebook, odds are they were looking for an excuse to fire you anyway.

All my shit is public, both my producers on this show are facebook friends of mine, but since I'm not a shitty employee and my bosses aren't fucking retards I'm not worried about it.

[Tyche]

You should also watch what you say to others. If you run your mouth about how awesome that party was last night on your friend's wall and their profile is set to public and some sort of search crawler stumbles on your name, it could still cost you.

@Archi, it isn't unheard of for employers to screen facebook before they hire you, so it's not always a case of just preventing from getting fired, it can prevent you from getting hired.

[archibaldcrane]

@Archi, it isn't unheard of for employers to screen facebook before they hire you, so it's not always a case of just preventing from getting fired, it can prevent you from getting hired.

Not in this industry. Hell, I'm holding an alcoholic beverage in probably 75% of my facebook photos. If someone wouldn't hire me because of that, then awesome - not a place I want to work at anyway.

There is such a disconnect here - it's like the employers don't care whether you engage in activities they disapprove of, they just don't want to know about it. They should get some fucking balls and make you sign a "code of conduct" if that's how they want their whitebread army of workers to behave, or shut the fuck up about it.

[Tyche]

Well, to say you work in a niche industry is an understatement. if I recall, Film is the only industry not subject to standard labor laws regarding hours, breaks, lunches, etc.

None-the-less, if I'm an executive looking at 2 potential employees to run finances, interface with potential customers, (insert x job of importance), and I scrub one of their facebook profiles and see that he's one hell of a partying fool who uses the f-word as much as he uses the letter "e", I'm going to be a little turned off by that.

[Cephius]

Yeah, Archi doesn't exactly fit into the same category as John Q. Officeworker.

[Correction]

Discussions about privacy always seem to breed the shittiest analogies from people. Why is that?

Public Facebook pages are part of how you present yourself to the anonymous masses. If an employer takes an interest then makes a decision that impacts you, you don't suddenly get to turn around and screech 'invasion of privacy blah blah blah.' There's nothing you can to do COMPEL a large enterprise to keep you employed, unless an actual law has been broken.

[archibaldcrane]

Well, to say you work in a niche industry is an understatement. if I recall, Film is the only industry not subject to standard labor laws regarding hours, breaks, lunches, etc.

We're subject to them - talk to someone in a union, they follow that shit to the letter.

For us non-union people yeah we get abused hardcore as far as hours, lunches and (often) lack of overtime go, but it's basically a big collusion system - employees want to keep their jobs, and employers know that there's 10 other people who want whatever job you have (even if it's a lowly production assistant job). Everyone keeps their mouth shut in order to continue being employed.

If you were planning on getting out of the industry though, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get hired by someone who is particularly flagrant with their abuses and then go after them legally at the end. I've personally had jobs where I was working 20+ days straight, 12+ hours a day, where when I figured out what I should've been making after the time-and-a-half and doubletime I wasn't getting, I ended up making less than California's minimum wage for the number of hours I worked. It's illegal, and we just lie on our timecards to protect our employers and keep our jobs, but it's not uncommon.

edit: of course if you work as an independent contractor on a gig, even those protections are out the window

[Ryany]

As far as "keep stuff private" goes:

Someone where I lived thought it would be funny to post a video of him setting his hat on fire while at work. He DID keep it private in terms of who could see it, but it still got exposed. Someone on the friends list was watching it and someone else not on his friends list was in the real life room and saw the screen. The non-friend ended up copying the video, stood up on his soapbox about tax dollars, and sent it to the news stations. The news made a story out of it and multiple people got fired over it. (not just the person lighting it on fire, but the person filming it and I believe anyone watching it that could be identified from the video)

That's why I always tell people not to think that limiting access will always keep it private.