Reputation management is a term used to describe the practice of maintaining a company’s good standing. In the old days this was a simple matter of sending out the public relations team with a carefully written press release every time a tanker dropped a catastrophically large load of oil on an Alaskan shoreline. These days, however, it extends to the practice of monitoring and attempting to influence words published on blogs, forums and increasingly, social networking sites.

It is just one of the services offered by Australian company SR7, which terms the practice “risk and reputation management,” their explanation of the service follows below.

SR7 offers a unique service by auditing, monitoring and strategically managing the risks, threats and opportunities facing companies online.

What this effectively amounts to is the infiltration of social networks with the intention of informing employers of any negative comments posted by employees. Put simply this is spying, they are actively infiltrating social networks with the sole purpose of finding dirt on employees. Searches for material are done both manually and automatically. In the case of Facebook pages, monitoring a profile amounts to manually scanning pages where privacy settings have not been activated.

SR7 director James Griffin explained the company’s practices with The Age:

If there’s a competitor or if it’s a company of interest to a journalist and they stumble across [controversial posts], then it’s out there and it’s gone. I think that whilst employees have the right to have their personal conversations, if they’re going to mention or say something or do something ridiculous online in relation to a company, then that’s what they’ve got to deal with.

When asked about their level of infiltration on Facebook, Griffin states:

If their privacy settings are set so it’s publicly viewable for Joe Average to go on there then yes, we will do that.

Is the service ethical? SR7 would have people believe that it is, but I would tend to disagree. A Facebook status update does not constitute a “publication” regardless of whether it is public or not. It is likely only going to be read by a small number of people and will probably be ignored by most of the user’s friends anyway. Most people do not create a Facebook page with the intention of using it to gain publicity; blogs and websites are much better for that. For most people Facebook is a convenient way to keep in contact with their friends. With the younger generation it is becoming an increasingly important form of communication.

I will grant that a blog is a public platform and it is reasonable to consider a blog post to be a public communication. Take this post for example, it is likely to be read by several thousand people and perhaps sourced for material elsewhere giving it an opportunity to reach more, blogging about your employer is always going to be a dumb move, but the majority of people are probably unaware that Facebook even has privacy settings, and young people especially are not likely to consider the ramifications of making a post on an unsecured account. They assume that their communications are private and between friends, and indeed they would be if people weren’t actively seeking them out.

These ethical considerations and others pointed out by David Vaile, executive director of the University of New South Wales’ Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, sum up the legal ethics that may be involved in this type of practice, but when one looks at it purely from a social justice standpoint the service still strikes me as being morally questionable.

Work causes everyone stress and a certain amount of complaining about it allows people to vent their frustrations and thus do a better job. I am presently very happy in my job, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t wake up some days and think that I work is the last place that I would like to be. Is that such a scandalous feeling to express that someone deserves to be fired for writing it for their friends to see? Does having a worker who is unhappy some of the time reflect badly on a company? The answer to both of these questions is a resounding and definite no.

While James Griffin stated that the role of SR7 was to protect companies from employees who might say ridiculous things, it is a simple fact that most of the Facebook firings have been for expressing normal feelings that a person would experience wherever they worked. In all likelihood, companies are probably making use of the information to allow them to cull staff without dealing with unfair dismissal claims. If the company has a “social networking” policy then the evidence provided by SR7 allows them to fire with impunity.

Yet, should we really blame SR7? The fact is that there is a demand for the services that they offer and if they do not provide it, someone else well. There are always going to be moral gymnasts who are able to justify anything that they do. There will always be tobacco executives, parking inspectors and debt collectors and yes, there will always be spies. The only way to stop this sort of activity is to make it illegal. Until that happens, people will simply have to be more security conscious. Clamp down on privacy settings, don’t make status updates that are likely to land oneself in trouble, when frustrations must be vented, do so privately. If people were to exercise more caution, it would make the job of companies like SR7 a great deal more difficult. [The Age]

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