Corporate Surveillance and the Normalization of Workplace Monitoring
By
limbicsystem
Kettled twice. Extra chewy, extra trustworthy.
Summary
The article reflects on the author's experience working at an enterprise social network company that essentially created a corporate version of Facebook. It explores how surveillance and data collection have become normalized in both personal and professional digital spaces, examining the psychological and social implications of constant monitoring in workplace environments. The piece questions whether our mundane daily activities become meaningful when subjected to corporate surveillance and data analysis.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledFacebook was moving all of our personal communication out of emails and into a shared feed of posts and replies; our product was designed to do the same thing for our professional communication.
That meant our product was also designed to look like Facebook. There was a newsfeed; there were messages and threads; there were users; there were user profiles. There was a like button. It was Facebook, in a small corporate sandbox.
Do our dull lives become worth watching?
For a while, I worked at a company that branded itself as the 'enterprise social network,' though for all intents and purposes, it was the enterprise Facebook.
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