I'm going to posit that most of us are spoiled by how much attention we get from recruiters, which is why the attention on this article seems to be on the legal

I'm going to posit that most of us are spoiled by how much attention we get from recruiters, which is why the attention on this article seems to be on the legality of scraping someones site are not. The focus should be on how disturbing it is that a company is using metrics like "independence from employer brand" to take the power out of the hands of the worker and put it into the hands of the corporation who already wields so much power and influence over our society. Programmers are lucky, a last bastion of decent treatment by corporations. Companies like HiQ are looking to tip the scale back in favor of the corporation, run by people like Mark Weidick who want to be a useful and well kept pet and identify as a "Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Hollywood wanna-be." (twitter) I fear secretive preemptive firing and hiring. "Talks" from your manager, based on encroachments into your private internet browser. This will force developers to combine their personal identity with their corporate identity (which far too many developers do already wearing their respective companies t-shirt like a big walking free advertisement) and curate their online life to reflect how grateful they are to the lords of their fiefdom.