Skip to main content

FireMe! keeps you from tweeting your way to the unemployment line

FireMe!
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Thanks to social media, there are an ever-increasing variety of ways for us to say things we can’t take back – because people can screen grab them. Thankfully, a new app called FireMe! may be able to keep you out of harm’s way when your tweeting things you shouldn’t be (or if someone gets ahold of your account and tries to do the same). 

This useful tool was developed by researchers in Germany at the University of Hannover who realized that despite the “social” in social media, people don’t realize that what you say on Twitter really is public no matter how they’d argue against the point. If you don’t believe the creators of the app, there’s a fire hose of tweets from people who obviously hate their jobs. And to hit home the point that tweets are public, you can watch the steady stream of people hating on their bosses in a very public feed that FireMe! has provided.

Every time someone tweets about their awful job or awful bosses, the app automatically flags the tweet and sends the perp an @reply notifying them of what you’ve just done and asking you to reconsider the tweet (at least it’s supposed to; when we tried it, we ended up getting a notification on the FireMe! site, but didn’t receive an @reply). You’ll also be directed to your FireMeter! Score. This score gauges the chances of your being fired in general by looking at any negative tweets related to your job, and your rate of swearing on Twitter.

As ridiculous as it sounds – you’d think people have common sense – 4,304 FireMe! tweets were sent out in the last three weeks. 249 of these people deleted the tweets within two hours. The highest volume of job haters were found during one week in June when over 22,000 tweets hating on jobs or bosses were published. Blame the summer sun for the office-related anguish.

firemeter screen shot
Image used with permission by copyright holder

If you’re worried, FireMe! offers the chance for you to manually find out your chances of getting fired if your boss ever found out about your Twitter account. You can also check other user’s accounts as well, if you’re the one in the managerial position.

Amusingly, FireMe! comes with a leaderboard that displays the people on Twitter that have the highest chances of getting fired. Right now some guy that goes by @hatchet_koolaid is sitting pretty with a 181 percent chance of getting fired.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Francis Bea
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Francis got his first taste of the tech industry in a failed attempt at a startup during his time as a student at the…
TikTok’s new Stitch feature lets you quote other creators’ videos in your posts
digital trends live episode 418 tiktok phone in hand

TikTok’s messy state of affairs in the U.S. is not holding it back from releasing product updates. The short-form video app has rolled out a new editing tool called Stitch that lets you feature up to a 5-second-long clip from another creator’s video in your own post.

You can think of Stitch as a way to quote and reference other people’s work, similar to how you can quote tweets on Twitter. It allows users to pick and clip specific scenes from videos and add them to your own content. Stitch is a natural addition to TikTok and builds upon its existing set of collaborative features that have enabled its viral rise by making the platform more engaging.

Read more
Twitter iOS app update lets you choose who can reply to your tweets
Twitter logo.

Twitter just rolled out a new feature to its iOS app that lets users limit which people can reply to their tweets. 

The feature was announced in May as a test, but you can now use it in Twitter’s latest iOS app update, which rolled out late Wednesday. 

Read more
Twitter now lets you schedule tweets via its web app. Here’s how to do it
twitter suspends british journalists account over criticism of nbc

Sometimes you might have a great idea for a tweet but don’t want to post it straight away. While a bunch of third-party tools already offer tweet scheduling, Twitter itself has just launched the feature for its web app.

We first heard that Twitter was testing tweet scheduling in November 2019, and on Thursday, May 28, the company announced it was rolling the feature out to one and all.

Read more