January 31, 2011
-
Banning Facebook/Xanga At Work
I was talking to an IT guy today and he was talking about some of the services he provides. He mentioned how he goes into companies and helps them set up their networks and ban their employees from using Facebook at work.
I guess I was supposed to be impressed with this. It is funny that all of these IT people who spend time on the Internet have so much passion in stopping everyone else.
If you had the power, would you ban employees from using Facebook at work?
Comments (47)
does that mean employees can use xanga? probably just no personal use at all… not on company time at any rate
I dunno. Worked for a bank who banned Facebook and everything internet related unless it was for the bank.. I thought it was dumb because the bank does NOT get busy at all except on Friday nights… It was so boring sitting around looking at each other.. HAHA
No. But I’d hack in and read through all their private messages and laugh. =D
Yes (all times) or even mention the word in the office (apart from break time, lunch time, non work areas)
This also includes Twitter, forums, emails, chatrooms, and blogs (including Xanga)
Actually, I do. All soscial networking, blog and chat clients and sites are banned. Oh and I do the banning. We have break mode, when someone is on their break/lunch, they can access some of these sites, but not the chat clients. eBuddy, Meebo and the such are all blocked. Yes, even for me. And I’m the Internal IT Policy decision maker.
Fuck that shit man! It’s censorship which is unconstitutional. If they tried to block me where I work I would sue them.
I am the network administrator, and I battle this mostly from (oddly enough) internet service providers. Any question of “how can we get better bandwidth on our shared internet connection?” is answered with “you probably have people using facebook” to which the answer has to be “i didn’t ask you to give your permission for how we use our resources, I asked you to tell me how we can get more of them.”
The business owner owns the building and pays the people. The owner gets to decide how the resources are used. If the owner says he doesn’t want to pay you to blog, then you can suck it up or you can find a new job.
It really depends on the job. There are certain jobs where i don’t think FB or any other social networking site should be allowed. For example, i don’t want to be sitting in a hospital room worried that my nurse hasn’t checked on me because she’s Facebooking.
I thought they banned FaceBook because it could be a distraction from work.
If it’s a work computer, then yes. If you use your own device & use their internet, then no because it’s your personal device. I’m still a firm believer in social networks not being searched unless it’s criminal activity involved but you do have people that abuse it & ruin it at work/school for all of us. I cant tell them what to do on their devices but if it’s mine, keep off!
It also depends on the job too. Some places are lenient as long as you do your work but if it became a problem, then I would block it. I love FB but I know there’s a time to play & a time to work.
No.
I need to ban myself from FB (and Xanga).
Where I work, I have the power to ban sites since I’m considered the IT guy, but no… I wouldn’t. As long as all the work gets done, then things will stay the way they are.
@Shinbi_Belldandy - agreed
I worked at an electronic’s store where we used computers but we couldn’t go very far on it. The internet was very limited. It just depends.
I work at a school. Everyone (teachers included) gets all pissed believing that I am in charge and decide what sites are being blocked on our network. I’m not. We pay for a filtering service and it blocks all social networking.
I think those kinds of sites need to be blocked because as everyone knows, people can get obsessive about it. I’m sure that if it were available on the school network, no one would ever get anything done. As it is, every time I walk into my boss’s office I can see him minimizing his Facebook tab.
If you have to do it to get your employees to work, then yes.
Me, I’d just hire people whose time-management skills are good enough that they can both use the internet AND get their work done.
Depends on if there’s down time and if employees were abusing internet access.
At my last job I didn’t even have computer access. I would never go on Facebook or Xanga at work unless there was down time and I had explicit permission from my boss.
Funny how you mention this. I used to be one of those IT guys that had to band all chats and media from the workplace. I was the most loved and hated. You do me a favor and I open up the internet for you. Your an ass and I will not even let you open Google.
i can see it being a problem for a lot of people but i’d only ban it if it really cut down on productivity.
I would not allow any personal use on the computer unless I had one dedicated for employee use in a break area or lunch area….only on free time. Work is not all “tote that barge and lift that bale” but something that is as time consuming and attention diverting as blogs, fantasy football, Facebook, or even games…has no place at work.
My workplace has a filter which blocks all sites designated as “social networking,” which means no blog sites, no facebook, and of course no chat functions. Sometimes it even blocks news blogs, I know because I was reading the NY Times on my lunch break and it wouldn’t let me go to read a particular article because it was identified as a “blog.” You are allowed to check personal email through Google, AOL, Yahoo, etc.
I don’t think that any of that stuff should be allowed in a workplace environment. From the employer’s point of view, you are not being paid to read/write blogs or facebook, you are being paid to WORK. I only occasionally use the internet for personal use at work, and I’m annoyed by blogs or websites that identify themselves as NSFW. If you get fired for looking at something inappropriate on the internet, well that’s your own damn fault. You should be working, you lazy slug.
only if it was a problem for the employee. I dont think it should be. But if the employee is spending more time caring about what their friends are doing then their actual work, i would see that as a problem
If I was someone’s boss and I saw them on Facebook or something, I would go on and add them and send a message saying, “thought I add you since I saw you on Facebook during work hours.” It would scare them enough that banning it wouldn’t be neccessary.
I can’t use facebook at work. Or Xanga. Or it seems like about anything. Gmail works though. It doesn’t really bother me all that much, but honestly, I’m more productive if I can take a 5 minute reset and check facebook and go back to work. Now I choose yahoo news more often.
Depends on how much work there is to do and how much of the work is getting done.
I think you are generalizing about IT guys. Some probably don’t give a crap as long as they get paid…
Yes, because they would slack off on Facebook or any other social network.
I don’t use a computer at work, but they banned all social networks at my college, last semester. It kind of sucks when you’re bored and have some time, but it’s good because when people just needed to print something out, you could wait 30 min to an hour.
I can’t leave my work space in the middle of the day. Nor can I bring in my own computer or cell phone or any kind of electronic device. So, a lot of the time, that means sitting at my cubicle for 8-12 hours a day, unless it’s a PT day. I wouldn’t want ALL social networking banned because I think productivity would actually go DOWN. Morale is a pretty significant influence on how much work gets done.
I don’t like it from the employee standpoint, but yeah, I can see how an employer wouldn’t want to be paying you to update your status on facebook.
Depends on the field of work. At my dad’s job he gets his work done, and is very good at his job but I do see him on Facebook on his free time! Lol. At my old job (desk job, with computer and internet) all social networking sites, all FUN, remotely INTERESTING sites, personal email, were blocked! If it isn’t interfering with what you came there to do in the first place … your JOB … then no problem, but if the employees are always on it and it’s getting in the way of doing their tasks then by all means … BLOCK THAT SHIT! Lol.
@leeleekicksass - I know what you mean. At my college the computer rooms are for “academic purposes only” but they haven’t blocked anything. They tell us, use it for academic purposes, no facebook, no email, but it isn’t enforced. I’m even guilty of checking my email and profile sometimes.
I used to update my blog at my last job when I had finished all my other work and was waiting for the slooooow copier to finish so I could go home. I was usually the only one in the building, though. Like others are saying, it depends on the type of business whether these type of sites should be blocked.
My office has this selective banning where the executives are allowed to sit there the whole day facebooking and msn-chatting while the non executives have totally not Internet connection so they can’t do anything.
if it’s affecting productivity, hell yeah
During work hours? Yup. They’re there to work. Maybe I’d set aside a cheap slow computer in the break room.
@blonde_apocalypse - What do you use for a gateway? Proxy? There are ways to throttle and/or prioritize traffic so that only unimportant traffic sees massive slowdowns when there’s congestion. But overall everyone focused on their job would see a speed boost when they need to do something over the internet. Use of the right tools can achieve this while your company maintains just fast enough of an internet connection to transfer files that need to be shared with another site in real or near real time.
To start with I’d put a proxy on or just inside of the gateway/firewall to cache as much data as is downloaded within a month (ten days minimum), with at least enough RAM cache to store 20 minutes worth and at most half the total RAM capacity; load the system to capacity with modules if need be. Set it to be as asynchronous as possible; tune the disk(s) and write cache to act the same; always serve non critical, or non changing, data from cache when it’s there, set default stale-while-revalidate and maximum-age very high (mine are set at ~4 years; some often used objects live longer). If you use squid, set the disk cache to twice the size you deem optimal up to 85% of the partition size (make sure it’s large enough to handle download surges; though you can figure out an overly safe level from your connection speed), low water mark at 50% and high at 99%. It’s eviction algorithm is lazy at the low and gradually gets more aggressive as it fills; this can affect responsiveness. Once that’s set up make sure to turn off the disk cache in all of the browsers. They’re slower at their best than a tuned proxy cache anyway and it would allow the proxy to be more efficient at tracking popular objects.
After that you can start researching traffic shaping, in case the proxy alone doesn’t quite help enough.
If you have an internal cloud; then this can all be done on specialized VM’s.
Disclaimer: These are mere suggestions. They work well in my use case. It is possible that others following my suggestions may encounter problems that I have not. Experiment before you settle on a solution. But don’t blame me for what doesn’t work.
Edit: Answer to the post: I personally wouldn’t care, I would just set and enforce policies based on company goals and employee performance in the least painful way possible.
Facebook is blocked at my company. What’s funny is that the company has a Facebook page, but since no one is going to actually look at the page outside of work, hardly anyone who works there has even seen the page. Even the person who is in charge of designing the page is blocked from accessing it at work. He has to jump through hoops every time he needs to make a change to it.
Yeah, I worked for a company that sells webfilters to small/med sized businesses. The funny part, we can go where ever we want on the internet at work.
yes, I would.
Well, thankfully, FB, Xanga, or any other site does not interfere with my job. I am a caregiver and I do my job, then it is a sit and wait until the next thing comes up to handle. I know that it is banned at the courthouse where I used to work. I am waffling there. I know how easy it is to let all these sites take over your day. I guess I would like to see use only on breaks and lunch. It would be a nice perk to offer.
I think I might do it, but I would also leave a backdoor, and see if people could find it.
I’m a teacher, and no one using the internet at my school can access any social networking sites, and even sometimes a few sites that are education-related! (The filter sometimes mistakes news sites as “social networking.”)
I’m OK with this blocking because we all know how much of a distraction facebook can be. I’m not just talking about students, either — if I had the temptation of facebook at work, I’m not going to lie: I would probably check it during the day. It’s just become a habit that when I’m at a computer, I check my facebook. I think that the blocking of those sites helps us stay focused on the task at hand. For another thing, it’s inappropriate to visit these sites at work. Lord knows that people don’t usually censor themselves on social networking sites, and even if it’s not YOU that’s posting the dirty pictures and curse words, chances are that some of your friends are, and that’s showing up on the screen when you view your news feed. The work place is not the place for social networking sites. Period.
To the person that said businesses should block social networking sites on their business computers, but facebook and such should be allowed if you’re accessing it from your own device….. I think you’re forgetting that you’re still using the company’s wireless internet. If you want to mooch off the company’s internet (because, you know, they have to pay for their wireless services just like everyone else), you should expect to face the same filters you would if you were on a company computer. The device you’re using makes no difference; it’s the means to which you GET to those sites (the internet) and the building you’re in (the company) that is the problem.
I turned 23 today, so I’m still a “young person,” but, at the risk of sounding old, I will say that my generation has become quite lackadaisical with their definition of “professional.” Besides clothing in the workplace, work ethic, and punctuality, now we have social networking sites that are distracting us from work. I’m all for fun and games, but you have to realize that your job is PAYING you to be there, so you have to follow their rules. It’s not taking away your freedom of speech or whatever OTHER amendment you want to complain about — it’s THEIR building, THEIR resources, and THEIR money. I understand that sometimes jobs get boring (like when I worked at a bank in college, and there was NO ONE there, but the employees still had to stay until 7 pm), but that doesn’t give you free reign to check your facebook, lol. Keep in mind that you’re still on company time… If any of my co-workers complained about being bored, my boss would say, “Well, I’ll FIND you something to do.” And I really think that’s how it should be. It’s the company’s money on the line there, and if I was a business owner, I’d be angry about paying someone to get on ANY social networking site.
depending on how much of that actually effecting their work performance. but in general, no. not when the boss also log-in to facebook and xanga during work hours
Job well done guys, quality information.Clickjacking
I dead consider joyous when I acquire articles pertinent to my process and my issue.
http://unblockfacebook.com/
The people are very lucky to have this blog because it has better knowledge.
how to get likes on facebook