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

Are you likewise forced to have a facebook account?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 :)

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.