Feeling social? Feds to keep close eye on tweets, Facebook posts, YouTube vids

OTTAWA – Big Brother is watching you… on just about every social-media platform you can imagine.

Soon tweets, public Facebook posts and YouTube videos could be subject to scrutiny round-the-clock by the federal government.

Welcome to media monitoring in the 21st century, when simply leafing through a stack of newspapers in the morning is about as antiquated as, well, newspapers.

The federal government is seeking a firm that “continuously monitors social media content on a daily basis in near real time and provide web-based, online media metrics and reporting capabilities.”

A contract document specifies that the contractor must provide the service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Part of the job will be to gauge the sentiment and tone of posts and to determine their reach.

Public Works wasn’t immediately available to comment.