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Ask HN: My employer forces me to like company product pages on Facebook

7 points by easternmonk ↗ HN
My employer who otherwise has banned Facebook use in the company has a standard process. Whenever we launch a product, Facebook is made available for an hour in the evening where we are told to login and like the company product page.

Is this process followed anywhere else ?

11 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 35.8 ms ] thread
mariuolo
Are you likewise forced to have a facebook account?
easternmonk
Yes.
27182818284
Like fraud and Like rings are frowned upon. I'd suggest mentioning it to Facebook.
kentonfrank
This is a minefield! see forbes article on being forced to hand over your facebook password to employers: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamespoulos/2012/03/22/employers... . I can see the potential conflict in refusing but it might be pragmatic solution to set up a 'corporate you' face book account making it clear that it is set up for work and simply being used in this way. That way you are not being forced to 'personally' endorse products which is the real issue but equally are not putting yourself in a difficult position and refusing your employer.
easternmonk
May be the fight is not worth anything to me personally. But look at the larger picture. By asking you to like their product they are enforcing their opinion on you, in aspects of life that they have no right to control. If we exaggerate this scene the company might tomorrow ask you to marry your coworkers because that will help them curb attrition rates.
[dead] bluestix
"And this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers. This might be someone you've known for years. Someone very, very close to you."
dclaysmith
It all sounds rediculous. My company often sends out emails announcing a new Twitter account/FB/LinkedIn page and asks if we'll Like/Follow it. Not such an unreasonable request really (as long as it is a request).

I simply have two accounts. One for me and my personal life and then a dummy account I use for testing social network integrations and "liking" things I don't really like.

Rulero
This sounds quite ludicrous, if it was a request I would understand, but telling you to do this isn't the right way of going about it.

The underlying question here is - are you happy doing this? If your not happy doing this may be you should speak up. I personally wouldn't do it because the way I see it is, you're recommended or vouching for a product which you might not want to, and on top of that, your not even getting paid.

If your employer is really concerned about those numbers (When I'm sure he could be focusing on something else which adds more value), there's plenty of services that sell FB likes out there. Recommend that to him, or even better, resell it to him.

Lasher
I've been asked to do this before. I just put coworkers into a group and made the post only visible to them. It's ridiculous but harmless and "being right" sometimes just isn't worth the fight when there's no meaningful downside to just going along with it. Save my ammo for battles that matter. Metaphoric ammo that is of course :)
japhyr
I wonder if the best argument against this involves outcomes. How effective are these campaigns?

It seems a bunch of artifical Likes that no one will follow up on will go nowhere. In that case, someone might point out that this strategy is not working. Employee time would be better invested in improving the product, or coming up with a better marketing strategy.

If the strategy is working, then the company probably doesn't need this approach. The product doesn't take off because of these Likes, it takes off because it's a good product.

chc
I've been asked to do this before, but I just went and did some work instead. If they'd asked about it, I would have just said, "Oh, I was too busy ____ing to mess around on Facebook" -- but they didn't actually check up.