New Software For Employers To Monitor Facebook 342
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.'"
The airing of political views (Score:3, Informative)
Hey, people in the work place have to keep their mouths shut already about politics without Facebook.
Re:Jeebus - just block facebook, it's not that har (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't about monitoring people facebooking at work, it's about monitoring facebook profiles around the clock to check up on your employees' personal lives and rants.
Re:Hardly enough. (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps you should actually learn about our founding fathers views [wikipedia.org] on slavery before you condemn them.
Re:Hardly enough. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Easy enough to avoid (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hardly enough. (Score:1, Informative)
Too bad you guys didn't get yourselves a single-payer system. You'd have single-handedly stuck it to the insurance company monsters who have been sodomizing you and your friends/family financially for.. well, ever.
I'm Canadian. I pay about 35-40% of my salary into taxes before the salary ever reaches my bank account. Do I mind? No. Probably because this is the way it's always been for me (I'm 37, i'm not old...) To be fair, a good chunk of that comes right back to me in the form of a tax return because my salary is in a middle bracket.
I don't need an insurer for anything except my car. I CAN (and my company does) pay into a private insurer for things like life insurance or access to private rooms or semi-private rooms in the Hospital if I need to go and stay. My private insurance covers all the fun stuff like death&dismemberment, long and short-term disability. The pubic health insurance is run by my province, and is funded in part by the income taxes that came off my paycheque in my 2nd paragraph.
I found myself in the hospital for 3 days a few years ago. I had a monster kidney stone that was blocking the path from my kidney to my bladder and my torso was filling with urine. I was borderline septic when I got there. 3 days in hospital, 2 surgeries and 2 follow up appointments. Total out of pocket cost to me: $0.00. Total worries about my financial future - absolutely nothing.
So I have to say I'm sorry USA. I'm sorry you didn't get a solution to the pressing issue of healthcare, but at least you got a start. Hopefully it won't be another 250 years or so until you take the next step towards a modern society that cares about its citizens instead of the "me-first, gimme-gimme" system you seem to still be playing at down there.
Oh and sorry, single-payer healthcare isn't any more (or less) socialism than Medicare, VA hospitals or Social Security.
At least they reined in those fucking insurance company assholes though. Holy crap - if there was ever a reason to break out the well armed militias, they sure looked like it to me.
Re:Easy enough to avoid (Score:3, Informative)
"Joe NotAnActualSpammer has just planted a fucking tree on his farm!"
As of right now, my main Facebook page has exactly 1 item that I might be interested in....my brother in law posted some pictures he took on spring break. The rest is all kinds of nonsense. And that is with being selective about friend requests. I have 21 "Friends" (still probably too many) and 47 "Friend Requests". I can't imagine how much garbage would be on the page with 68 cabbage planting friends.
Re:Easy enough to avoid (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Easy enough to avoid (Score:3, Informative)
Uhhhhh. Ok, so I'm an idiot. I went plugging through the options one day to try to find a way to not display certain things. I assumed the "Hide" just meant to hide that one post.
But still....My page now looks like "Relative A doesn't like being sick", "Person 1 commented on their own status", "Person 2 likes Person 3's status.", "I just won 1 Swagbuck" (Ok, something new to hide), "Relative B says it is going to be a Marvelous Monday.", ."Person 4 commented on PersonIDon'tKnow's album.", followed by 6 more "Commented on Status" posts. I can't hide those unless I hide the person.
I'm sure it works out well for some people. For myself, even after knocking out the Farmville updates, it is just a wild mess of random clutter. When I open my Gmail account I see 23 messages without scrolling down at all. Of those 23, 16 of them are things that I have read/will read. Four of them are "You have a comment on Slashdot" alerts (I am going to shut those off), one is a receipt from an online order I placed, one is a weekly mailer from a discount electronics site (I glance at this about half the time), and one is a newsletter that I used to read but have not been lately. Considering the messages that ARE from real people contain actual useful content that I want/need to know, it is much more of a White Listed inbox for me than my Facebook account is.