Re:Jailed for a Text: China’s Censors Are Spying on Mobile C...
by opportune on Friday December 08, 2017 @03:58AM
(#15877559)
I used the advertising and employer situations separately. I think you're noticing that I mentioned being fired when talking about advertisement - by "advertisement" I meant by proxy all of the related data storage / exchange / leaking that accompanies it. What if Google gets hacked or sold and the new owner of their data sells a background check service on your searches? Or what if an advertiser tries to target to suspected drug addicts, then turns around and uses that info unethically?
I understand what you're saying about your employer, but there are different levels of self-censorship. My level of self-censorship for friends who work at the same company as me would be very different compared to acquaintances at the company and my boss. I'm ok with the first one because it's what I would do for my friends anyway. I know there are ways to toggle privacy/whatever to affect what people can see but at the end of the day I'm always going to assume my employer can see any regular post I make on Facebook through one means or another.
Well, the thing is that FB may have a real names policy but they really only occasionally enforce it.
Plus I think it's possible to just not be FB friends with anyone in your company or even use FB's permission system to hide controversial opinions. And I haven't heard of advertisers putting people in jail or firing them for their opinions. Here, it seems like you're confusing "creepy" and "actually has the ability to harm you".
But most people or many people, indeed connect their FB profile to their employer and wind-up censoring themselves accordingly. But that actually seems like the ordinary censoring of "peer pressure" that has always happened in among with the people who someone chooses to associate with.
If I went to the company picnic and hung-out with co-workers and boss, I would be self-censors like heck - fortunately, I'm able to avoid such situations which I find miserable experiences on all levels. God help me if I have to spend a lot of my social time like that.
It's easy to summarize this as "really what you mean is you're too lazy to set up communication which you're employer can't see" but I wouldn't want to imply the situation isn't a problem. That the medium requiring least effort broadcasts to people's employers, that is a problem, just a slightly different problem.