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I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

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Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#191

I wonder how long it will be before someone competent starts doing this and including deanonymized data from places like HN, Reddit, Twitter accounts without your real name attached, phone location, etc.

What makes you believe there aren't already dozens of companies working on exactly this?

Ha, absolutely nothing. I'm sure there are people working on it, not sure if they are in the pre-employment job screening space.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#192
post #33
post #4

Here's the company doing this: https://fama.io/ The idea that you can assess someone's workplace performance based on automated screening of their tweets is utterly absurd. If anyone works somewhere that uses this tool, or anything similar to it, you should run far, far away from that company. This is a terrible precedent, and much too much Orwellian for my taste. EDIT: somewhat related, but a while back I made a Twi…

I'm curious about something, would most of the people who are aghast at this be as aghast at it if this had flagged someone who was racist, sexist, transphobic, or homophobic? I would be, but I wonder if I'm in the minority or not. This pilfering of your digital history is on the order of what's needed to get a security clearance - where it's at least somewhat justified. There is no case where I can see this being ju…

Pilfering digital-social-media history is not on the order of what's needed for a security clearance.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#193
post #9

Name and shame these companies until this stops.

I mean, as I see it the reason companies are requesting these checks is because of all the naming and shaming of companies whose employees were found to have posted inappropriate things (or done other actions). So naming and shaming them seems sort of ironic to me.

It’s about power dynamics. Generally speaking, one bad employee isn’t going to tank a company, whereas this makes it possible for one bad tweet to tank a person’s employment prospects.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#194

It seems against the grain on this board, but people actually think airing all their little annoyances publicly online is a good idea that will never affect their actual lives?

You’re missing the point. This is a bad algorithm that is in effect nothing but false positives, and not even on his posts, but on posts he _liked_

Do you want to live in a world where you don’t dare to do or say _anything_ online that can be traced back to you, cause now you even have to factor in shitty algorithms like these? I sure don’t.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#195
post #18

Oy. Similarly, I'm mystified with the CIA's and NSA's fascination with mandatory recurring polygraph tests. It's pretty well known the whole area is flawed bullshit. It doesn't measure anything remotely related to "truth". Edit: I know we aren't supposed to discuss downvotes here, but the activity on this comment and my replies are very interesting. It's curious why discussion on this topic is so controversial. Why w…

IMO discussion forums should show the user comments that they'd likely agree with instead of comments that some majority-of-the-moment agrees with.

Sorting comments on a majority average is such a dumb metric. The Internet would be a better place if forum discussions more closely modeled real life, where we simply don't have disagreeable opinions constantly shoved in our face because we don't hang around with those people who have them.

One simple way I'd do it: If I upvoted someone in the past, I'd give their comments and upvotes more weight. I'd also give people a way to visit the other side and break free of their bubble if they wanted to.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#196

What ever happened to anayomous message boards like 4chan? We demonize those people but they're the ones not letting their freedom of expression be repressed by future job prospects?

From what I can tell, 4chan went downhill after smartphones became the norm, then very fast after 2015-16. If you're asking 'how could it go downhill any more than it was?' that means most of the hobbyists and content creators left. Most of the popular boards seem to be spam or copypasta threads only vaguely related to the board subject.

8chan was taken down after some mass shooters posted there but I don't know if it's gone permanently or just went to an onion server.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know it's still well within the range of possibility to live a healthy, fully actualized life without a named online presence, right? It's possible, sure. But why should anyone have to hide like that? It's the principle of the thing: an ordinary person shouldn't fear for his livelihood just because he exercises his right to speak in public.

If someone is posting publicly that women are intellectually inferior and shouldn't be allowed to work professional jobs, you think this should have no effect on their job? You think they are going to leave those beliefs at the door when they go to work? You think women who work for this person are going to be evaluated fairly? If someone does something in their personal life that shows they would be unable to do the…

If the company genuinely cares about not hiring people like that then they will read up on the job candidate before interviewing them. Passing this off to a 3rd party service basically just shows that the company doesn't really care about knowing any of the people they are hiring.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically an algorithmic filter for wokism. A lot of innovative people tend to be unswayed by our strange moral fads. Seems like talent is being left on the table. Good news for startups.

Not really “for wokism” - some of the tweets captured are “woke” but still flagged for the language used. As one reply pointed out “fuck racism” would get flagged. It seems like it’s more just scanning for expressions of opinion, good or bad. “I like alcohol” - flagged bad. “I love charity” - flagged good. So these can be used by employers to determine “culture fit” which (opinion here) will probably largely be used,…

Hmmm... Looks like it is time for me to make a tweet storm using template “I love {equality|charity|people|community|...}” to increase my chances on future interviews.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#199
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine and dandy for people in tech but if you're a single parent with a narrow set of skills who's struggling and been applying for jobs for over a month then you're going to take the offer. And then you're not going to have much time to continue job searching.

Who’s responsible for you being a single parent with limited skills? The corporation?

Statistics tell us: their ancestors. (as in: the best predictor for personal success is the income of ones parents)

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#200
post #83
post #18

Oy. Similarly, I'm mystified with the CIA's and NSA's fascination with mandatory recurring polygraph tests. It's pretty well known the whole area is flawed bullshit. It doesn't measure anything remotely related to "truth". Edit: I know we aren't supposed to discuss downvotes here, but the activity on this comment and my replies are very interesting. It's curious why discussion on this topic is so controversial. Why w…

In France, until not so long ago, analysing your hand writing was a commonly accepted form of background test for any large company!

Similarly..unverified but word of mouth, they use face analysis in Korea for hiring.
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