Surveillance and bigotry

So a short term rental service has been using a surveillance service to judge people on the basis of, in part, what is said about them on social media. This plays right into the hands of despots like Putin, who lie about people and use such blatantly false accusations as a way of attacking and harming people they don't like. 

It also plays into the hands of gossipers, who are a particularly vile expression of hate, in my experience, and bigots.

When such apps are used by companies, it is also a potential limitation of freedom of political expression - too many corporations are pressuring their employees to toe the company line, or even to become conduits for advertising in their personal life. Decades ago I worked for a psychopath who even tried to tell us what party to vote for!

Not attacking one's company publicly is, in most cases, a reasonable requirement (I'd rather take problems up directly with the organisation and work at changing the problems) . . . but what if, if we go back a few decades, your company was helping build gas chambers for the nazis?

What if your company was evading lawful sanctions against wrongdoers - whether in relation to Putin and his cronies' illegal invasion of Ukraine, the genocide against the Rohingya in Burma, or some other human rights abuse? 

What if your company was exacerbating the existential climate crisis? 

Petty, vindictive and unjustifiable criticism of companies is wrong, and companies are entitled to expect their employees refrain from that (and I'll add that no company I work or have worked for has been part of such egregious actions, except for a company in Queensland decades ago, which no longer exists, that helped facilitate coal mining), as well as to give appropriate levels of effort (matching the levels of pay) from their employees, but employees are employees, not slaves or some other form of property of that organisation, and the organisation is best served by enabling people to be their authentic selves at work, to have a decent and rewarding life outside of work, and encouraging independent, innovative & flexible thinking - including the company being resilient and robust enough to accept valid criticism (as is the case for my current employer, but hasn't always been the case for past companies).