I think this mostly relies on the assumption that all of Tina's posts are public. What of by 2018 people will learn to make all of their facebook posts friends-only?
Facebook's Gen Y Nightmare
31–40 of 152 posts
Re: Facebook's Gen Y Nightmare
#32Even I breathe in the world of information management & data science, I never thought about this possibility!
I for one hope this should never happen. Mining your data to do pattern matching whether your are healthy or not? Are you kidding me? We tend to forget there is something "socio technical gap" (as demonstrated by Mark Ackerman - bit.ly/UqlNLI), meaning our social world cannot to be mapped into virtual world using technology since tech is not mature. We will never be able to close the socio-technical as our brains are too complicated.
I fear for our kids if this is future.
Re: Facebook's Gen Y Nightmare
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
As long as they don't put it in writing, there would be no case. People are not hired or fired for illegal reasons all the time. You just don't state those reasons. If it is due to blatantly obvious handicaps, that's a different story. But good luck proving you we're passed over because the employer figured out you have headaches.
So this hypothetical Narrative Data company would have a largely-illegal business plan, and nobody would notice? There wouldn't be any whistleblowers? People would be willing to contract their HR stuff out to them? In my view, there's a pretty bright line between the described business and today's background check companies.
There is illegal and un-ethical. Sometimes there is a fine line but often most people involved realize what that line is and they hang out just outside of it without stepping over.
Imagine a meeting with HR. Company is racist. They never really made it into an official police of course but just by joking or sort of non verbal communication they figure out that other higher ups hate certain races. They will talk about so and so's personality "not matching".
It is fairly easy for them to figure out an euphemism used to signal this or that other person needs to be let go because their race isn't "right". Let's call it "personality reasons" or say "restructuring reason". It doesn't matter as long as it never officially put into writing.
It would be an uphill battle to successfully sue for discrimination. One would need to compile historical data and show that people of a particular race have been consistently not hired or laid off once hired.
Re: Facebook's Gen Y Nightmare
#34I don't think this scenario could play out that way. - Facebook profiles can be made inaccessible to non-friends. People who post pictures of themselves naked and using drugs use this feature. - The hypothetical conclusions drawn are only possible if users post extremely frequently and in great detail. Otherwise, the predictive analytics will suffer from garbage-in-garbage out. Huge companies spend millions of dollar…
For last point, there is a startup that specializes in your online reputation management.
EDIT: There are lot of companies in online reputation management. Even today.
Re: Facebook's Gen Y Nightmare
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a little hard for me to feel sympathetic with the need to conceal dishonesty on resumes. Meanwhile, we talk to lots of great people who don't have LinkedIn profiles; it is by no means a standard requirement. If you can't be honest to LinkedIn, just keep your profile off it. No matter who gets elected in November, by 2015 guaranteed-issue health insurance is going to be the norm, so this health insurance story a…
It is a little hard for me to feel sympathetic with the need to conceal dishonesty on resumes. It depends what the "dishonesty" is. Claiming a skill you don't have is unethical. Bumping your college degree by 5 years in order to seem 5 years younger is, in my opinion, ethically OK. There's a difference between quackery (faking a skill you don't have, and potentially hurting people) and social status inflation. One is…
I would never want to work with someone who felt like lying about the year they got their college degree was "ethical". In fact, I'd really rather not have to think too much about where the ethical line is on "lying" with anyone.
Does that mean I never lie? Of course it doesn't. We've all done unethical things. Ethical people call those "mistakes" and don't paper over them.
Re: Facebook's Gen Y Nightmare
#36If these companies learn everything about everyone, what happens if what they discover is that most people have their own little problems and health issues and craziness? The truly awesome people with absolutely nothing wrong with them? Good luck finding them! As far as the migraine bit goes: there are already some sorts of medical discrimination that are illegal to use for hiring in the US, though I don't know exact…
The part about not hiring a young woman because there's a high chance that she is or will be pregnant is already illegal in the U.S.
Re: Facebook's Gen Y Nightmare
#37If these companies learn everything about everyone, what happens if what they discover is that most people have their own little problems and health issues and craziness? The truly awesome people with absolutely nothing wrong with them? Good luck finding them! As far as the migraine bit goes: there are already some sorts of medical discrimination that are illegal to use for hiring in the US, though I don't know exact…
As long as they don't put it in writing, there would be no case. People are not hired or fired for illegal reasons all the time. You just don't state those reasons. If it is due to blatantly obvious handicaps, that's a different story. But good luck proving you we're passed over because the employer figured out you have headaches.
Until everybody at the hiring meeting is interviewed by the EEOC or the meeting notes are subpoenaed.
Re: Facebook's Gen Y Nightmare
#38Even I breathe in the world of information management & data science, I never thought about this possibility! I for one hope this should never happen. Mining your data to do pattern matching whether your are healthy or not? Are you kidding me? We tend to forget there is something "socio technical gap" (as demonstrated by Mark Ackerman - bit.ly/UqlNLI), meaning our social world cannot to be mapped into virtual world u…
Future? I'd be shocked if most of what is outlined in the article is not already happening NOW, in some form, if perhaps a bit less developed. And we know for a fact that Facebook data is being scanned by employers, in a mandatory fashion, and being used to screen employees:
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/failing-provide-...
Re: Facebook's Gen Y Nightmare
#39If these companies learn everything about everyone, what happens if what they discover is that most people have their own little problems and health issues and craziness? The truly awesome people with absolutely nothing wrong with them? Good luck finding them! As far as the migraine bit goes: there are already some sorts of medical discrimination that are illegal to use for hiring in the US, though I don't know exact…
I suspect you are correct, if you had this data on everyone you would find that everyone had issues. Now some would have more issues than other but it wouldn't be like you had some sparkling clean alternative choice. At the end of the day the costs our blogger is suggesting are influential are, in the large, smoothed over the entire population. Now folks who've done really stupid things? They might have problems. The…
Of course, they won't have data on everyone — just young(ish) people. The result might be reverse age discrimination.
Re: Facebook's Gen Y Nightmare
#40If these companies learn everything about everyone, what happens if what they discover is that most people have their own little problems and health issues and craziness? The truly awesome people with absolutely nothing wrong with them? Good luck finding them! As far as the migraine bit goes: there are already some sorts of medical discrimination that are illegal to use for hiring in the US, though I don't know exact…
As long as they don't put it in writing, there would be no case. People are not hired or fired for illegal reasons all the time. You just don't state those reasons. If it is due to blatantly obvious handicaps, that's a different story. But good luck proving you we're passed over because the employer figured out you have headaches.
Individual instances can be difficult to prove, but a systematic effort to discriminate based on these things should not be hard to detect within a decently sized company.