Thursday, July 5, 2012

Bleep...Silence...Bleep

Censorship is a tricky thing.  People claim it's for the greater good.  I claim it's complete and total horse shit.  Censorship is marketed as many things.  Recently, my employer, whom I can no longer name publicly, instituted a social media policy. 

The SMP on the surface is good.  There are too many of us who Tweet, update statuses, check out a comment on a blog, or any other number of things that can fall into the category, while at work.  I've been guilty of it.  However, there is an additional part to the policy. 

We are no longer allowed to name or affiliate ourselves publicly with the institution unless we have an official social media account.  Hmmmm....that seems like censorship to me.  Throw it in under the guise of accountability or productivity, but it isn't.  It's preventing me from networking with other professionals who use social media for that purpose.  For crying out loud, LinkdIn is a professional networking site. 

I am not striving to change anything.  I'm just wondering what the masses think about this.  I attended a session on social media at the conference I attended in May.  It didn't go this far.  What happens in your workplace?


6 comments:

  1. Ya...It's scary how our freedoms are slowly, very slowly being taken away from us. My work tries to control what we post on fb etc..

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  2. Years ago, such policies weren't needed as the only way to leak information was to seek a journalist or reporter. I assume it was extremely rare. As an employee of a public company, any information divulged could potentially be harmful to the company and without a policy, reprimand would be difficult.

    I have a coworker on Facebook who posts about my company's layoffs, and I'd love to warn her of her actions, as nothing on the internet is private, not even your ownership of this blog and my ownership of this comment, though I attempt to keep a secret identity through use of a user name.

    Company's have people in place to make public announcements and even if a person is merely getting her day off her chest, someone could take things the wrong way and hold a negative opinion about the company who employees her.

    I doubt many folks post on social networks details, I believe they're just heading off exposure.

    By your post, I now feel the urge to remove my employer information from social networks. Rather than being upset at the SMP, perhaps consider it a heads up... they know what you're doing... ooooh!

    I think it would take too many resources to stage a flock of people to monitor all of a company's online whereabouts, whatabouts and whenabouts, however I do think it's possible for "big time company man" to contact FB and request a download file of activity.

    Probably not, but the cool thing about a conspiracy theory is 'awareness.'


    We are not independent, we are dependent on the company for which we work and we are their slaves.

    Sorry for the bloggy comment :)

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    Replies
    1. I've wondered about just going with my username for a while. Doing that now ;-)

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    2. I think user names are cool! Of course marty is justto aweful!

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  3. But how would they know if you are facebooking, tweeting, or blogging if on your phone and not their network??

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    Replies
    1. Rumor has it that there is a monitor starting soon. Walking around taking notes....phone out? Busted.

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