4 ms·

Uh... isn't that the entire point of a background check? To see if people are dangerous before they get in? If I get a gun permit, should the cops not look at

Uh... isn't that the entire point of a background check? To see if people are dangerous before they get in? If I get a gun permit, should the cops not look at every public aspect of my history? Should we make it easier for people to have guns? Now the next snarky comment will say "guns aren't people." Yeah. But a background check is a background check. What happens when a terrorist gets in (surely that'll never happen again!) and we find out their social media history was full of death threats? Will everyone feel the same way? It seems like we've gotten to a point of public debate in this country where people completely live in fantasy worlds where they can lop off anything that happens in the real world that damages their arguments. Terrorism exists. Blame whoever you want but it does exist. And publicly posted information should be the #2 (after criminal record) thing to search. I mean... we WANT to catch the bad guys, right? Are we pretending that bad people don't exist?

matt4077 9y ago
Social media accounts aren't "public history". They're probably the single most private sphere for many people. If you got to read all my private messages on Facebook, you'd know me better than my parent and my girlfriends together. And a "background check" isn't a "background check". It's a completely vague concept, from some prospective employer calling one or two references all the way to the 8-months process of obtaining a security clearance. That's really easy to see if you consider what kind of activities involve some sort of "background check": employment (see above), getting on a plane, opening a bank account, getting a loan, taking a tour of the Capitol: while each one of these is technically "voluntary", it'd be a distinction without a difference if they added this as a requirement for such activities.
- neilalexander 9y ago
  This is the biggest mistake that people make. Social media is NOT a private sphere. There's nothing remotely private about posting things to a public service on the Internet over which you have no control. We need to stop treating them as such.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    I also don't control the phone company, the post office, or my friends' email providers. Am I supposed to never communicate with them unless it's face-to-face? I'm not talking nuclear launch codes here. It's impossible to lead a normal life without using communication services, and it's some sort of fantasy to think you could, for example, organize your social life without leaving enough clues to create a pretty accurate profile. So I think what we need to stop doing is pretending it's realistic for everyone to run around cosplaying MI6.
    - neilalexander 9y ago
      There’s a distinction to be made between communication services and social media. Personal communications should of course be private, but social media is not a form of personal communication. It’s a form of broadcast, usually to a company’s servers you have absolutely zero control over. You don’t need to “cosplay MI6” to be diligent with what you share and what you don’t. You should just be prepared to assume that anything you post on social media can and will appear in the future.

matt4077 9y ago

Social media accounts aren't "public history". They're probably the single most private sphere for many people. If you got to read all my private messages on Facebook, you'd know me better than my parent and my girlfriends together. And a "background check" isn't a "background check". It's a completely vague concept, from some prospective employer calling one or two references all the way to the 8-months process of obtaining a security clearance. That's really easy to see if you consider what kind of activities involve some sort of "background check": employment (see above), getting on a plane, opening a bank account, getting a loan, taking a tour of the Capitol: while each one of these is technically "voluntary", it'd be a distinction without a difference if they added this as a requirement for such activities.

neilalexander 9y ago
This is the biggest mistake that people make. Social media is NOT a private sphere. There's nothing remotely private about posting things to a public service on the Internet over which you have no control. We need to stop treating them as such.
- matt4077 9y ago
  I also don't control the phone company, the post office, or my friends' email providers. Am I supposed to never communicate with them unless it's face-to-face? I'm not talking nuclear launch codes here. It's impossible to lead a normal life without using communication services, and it's some sort of fantasy to think you could, for example, organize your social life without leaving enough clues to create a pretty accurate profile. So I think what we need to stop doing is pretending it's realistic for everyone to run around cosplaying MI6.
  - neilalexander 9y ago
    There’s a distinction to be made between communication services and social media. Personal communications should of course be private, but social media is not a form of personal communication. It’s a form of broadcast, usually to a company’s servers you have absolutely zero control over. You don’t need to “cosplay MI6” to be diligent with what you share and what you don’t. You should just be prepared to assume that anything you post on social media can and will appear in the future.