Janis and DeCory said they are monitoring Facebook to see if there are any children in distress, and they are giving their numbers to as many people as possible.
Technically the way the app works is that you give it permission to log in on your behalf to the accounts that you wish to monitor — Facebook, Dropbox, Gmail, Evernote, Yahoo!, and Twitter are supported — and from there it continually monitors those accounts via their own respective activity logs for anything suspicious.
In May, Hun Sen ordered officials to create a special police unit to monitor Facebook for anti-government sentiment, and earlier this month, the government published a new directive nominally designed to curb "fake news".
"So often we have parents come up to us and say, 'I have no idea how to monitor Facebook,' " she said.
For example, Herman suggested that if you're trying to create a story highlighting social media posts from an event, and you want to keep that story updated in real-time, one person might want to monitor Facebook while another could keep an eye on Twitter.
During debates, they can take advantage of the "second screen" phenomenon and monitor Facebook, Twitter and other social media to see what viewers are saying in real time.
But Kevin DeShazo, the founder of Fieldhouse Media, another company in the expanding online monitoring field, said that his company does not access private information and that he is opposed to monitoring Facebook and forcing athletes to download applications or give access to password-protected content.
The NHS will monitor Facebook for comments about hospital services, the head of the health service regulator has said.
Those involved in the effort also monitor Facebook and Twitter postings for information indicating where supplies are needed.
Citing one possible downside of the new surveillance regime, Rogers said that some N.S.A. analysts who now do nothing but monitor Facebook all day report feelings of worthlessness and despair.
