Facebook Password Is Fair Game By Alfred Edmond Jr.

Improved Essays
Argument Analysis: Alfred Edmond Jr.
In Alfred Edmond Jr’s “Why Asking for a Job Applicant’s Facebook Password Is Fair Game,” Edmond explains his reasoning behind why he thinks that employers should be able to ask for the social media passwords for the applicant’s accounts. In his article Edmond argues the case that an employer should be able to ask a job applicant for their Facebook password as a consideration for employment from a prospective employee. Edmond raises some valid points about asking for an employee’s Facebook password, however his some of his supporting points do not connect to his main argument and his argument suffers as a whole because of it.
Edmond’s tone in this article was both casual and formal. His tone was effective
…show more content…
He goes on to explain that social media is designed for the information to be shared and mined for profit. Social media, according to the author, is built on the antithesis of privacy. Edmond’s point in this paragraph stumbles in the main argument. Data being sold to a company is different than allowing an employer to have access to your Facebook password. Data sold to a company is sorted through to find people with interests related to their product to target advertisements. The company is not scouring through the data to gain intimate knowledge about the user lives, but mining through data to find the user most likely to purchase their product. An employer, on the other hand, has met the employee and would be going through the fine details of that person’s social media to get a better idea of who you are as a …show more content…
The thought that posting to social media is like shouting your personal business in Times Square does not seem like an good comparison for a mundane action that millions of people carry out every day without any incident. In addition to that, the part where Edmond talks about it being a “ticking time bomb” insinuates that something will explode and there will be huge consequences, when really not much is likely to happen.
Alfred Edmond Jr. made some good points about why he believes that an employer should be able to ask for a potential employee for their Facebook passwords, but ultimately his argument that if anyone can see anyone else’s social media post that your employer should be able to see too, falls apart when the reader more closely examines the supporting

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