Oh what a fun headline to write although technically banned is the wrong word. “Blocked” by corporate IT is more accurate. Early last week one of Consuming Louisville’s most loyal readers and supporters sent me an email with this subject line: “Now this is some bullsh*t right here.”
How great of a subject line is that? It is awesome.
Turns out this reader’s employer, one of Louisville’s Fortune 100 health insurance companies that rhymes with “Shumana” decided to block Consuming Louisville for being a “web log.” Apparently being a “web log” is a bad thing. Who knew?
For some reason this feels like an accomplishment. I’ve never really been a controversial person and I’m too much of a nerd and goody-two-shoes to ever be in any real trouble with either school officials or the law so this is like the next best thing. Banned! Blocked! I think that means I can call myself a badass now right?
Kidding aside it makes me a little sad that this company blocks blogs. Sure it sucks that this Louisville company doesn’t want its employs to read a site that’s all about Louisville but it’s not really about me. It’s about this medium of communication and it sucks that this company doesn’t see any value in it for its employees. Then again I know of at least one blog that the company itself has so I wonder it IT also blocked it for being a “web blog.”
December 28th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Yeah…. The Nazi’s at that same corporate company blocked the Broken Sidewalk site too. You know… they certainly don’t want their keyboard-slaves looking at any web content resembling support for the community in which they reside. I love corporate concentration camps!!!
:/
December 29th, 2009 at 7:17 am
Web content filtering isn’t a science, it’s a deeply hated art.
I’ve noticed that “web logs” are commonly filtered by default for any web content filtering that is aimed at business/enterprise use. The solution is probably a simple matter of white-listing Consuming Louisville in the software, which probably is very low on the corporate IT priority list, especially in lean times such as these.
December 29th, 2009 at 7:27 am
I’m sure you’re absolutely right Thomas. The person tells me that Louisville.com has been blocked for quite sometime but Consuming Louisville was only blocked quite recently.
Apparently one of the things that bothers this person about CL and other Louisville sites being blocked is that the company makes a big push to seemingly engage their employees in the community (including the opt-in program of donating to the Fund for the Arts directly from your paycheck) so it seems counter-intuitive to ban sites that are all about community engagement. I guess my take on the whole thing is sort of Yoda-esque: “Ban or do not, there is no try.” Meaning if you don’t want or trust your employees to be on the interwebs then pull the plug. Or instead of blacklisting have a very small white-list of “work relevant” sites that can be accessed.
I don’t care that Consuming Louisville is blocked, I care that it’s blocked for being a blog. I care that whoever makes the decisions on internet content has arbitrarily deemed blogs to be bad and worthy of being blocked. I believe wholeheartedly in blogging as an important communication channel and it makes me sad to see it viewed (even by a software algorithm because that had to be programmed by a person) as a monolithic “less-than” communication mechanism. And if I were really bratty I’d want to know if ESPN, CNN, Salon and Amazon were blocked as well.
December 29th, 2009 at 7:36 am
Unfortunately, IT security and compliance is often reduced to “shoot first, ask questions later” game.
As for blocking blogs, experience tells me that no one [especially outside of the team that configured the software] has even realized that “blogs” as a category are blocked, or taken the time to understand what that means.
Some filtering software makes the improved distinction for blocking “personal blogs”, recognizing that the elite blogs are at least answerable to large advertising groups. However, I have found many solutions to obscure problems on individual techie’s blogs.
Bottom line, aside from the company producing the software and filter list, it is very likely that this is an error of omission rather than a conscious to block Consuming Louisville, or any other blog for that matter.
December 31st, 2009 at 10:00 am
Humana is a joke when it comes to ‘new media’. I worked in web marketing for them and most destinations were blocked. You had to go through some TPS Report type ticketing/approval system just to get anything reviewed or reinstated. My supervisor at the time said it wasn’t worth challenging a blocked site, so just view it from home. These were sites I used to do my job, you know WEB MARKETING. Web marketing happens on the web ya know. Their policies are antiquated and straight up ignorant. Which is why I quit. Best decision I ever made. Maybe in 20 years, they’ll catch up to the 90′s.
January 4th, 2010 at 10:06 am
So, everyone is upset because a company is eliminating opportunities for their employees to slack off? Seriously? (And no, I don’t work in management or IT for this company, nor have I ever.)
Look at it this way – this company has taken away the opportunity for their employees to view web content that is NOT work related during work hours on company owned computers. If you want to look at a BLOG – i.e. SOMEONE’S OPINION (which obviously I enjoy doing) that has nothing to do with filing Medicare claims or processing a medical bill or anything else job related, DO IT AT HOME ON YOUR OWN TIME. A company can push employees to be community minded without providing them the opportunity to do it while on the clock.
January 4th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
The way that a lot sites get blocked at Humana are by traffic. They actually have a team that reviews the sites that their employees visit and block the non-work related ones that reach a certain number of visits by employees. It is a badge of honor indeed!