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Here's the company doing this: https://fama.io/ https://fama.io/ The idea that you can assess someone's workplace performance based on automated screening of t

Here's the company doing this: https://fama.io/ 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 Twitter bot to delete my tweets because I was worried about how someone might misinterpret them: https://github.com/brndnmtthws/tweet-delete https://github.com/brndnmtthws/tweet-delete

quotemstr 7y ago
> If anyone works somewhere that uses this tool, or anything similar to it, you should run far, far away from that company. You might not even know --- and it could extend beyond hiring. Didn't get promoted? Maybe it's because someond keyword matched you for "toxic". The only real way to safeguard yourself is to keep your identity as small and bland as possible, and that's no way to live.
- ardy42 7y ago
  IIRC, aren't employers required to provide some notice of background checks, especially in the case where they're used to justify adverse actions?
  - chroem- 7y ago
    It's usually a generic checkbox on the same order as the "We care about your privacy!" tracking notifications.
  - seanmccann 7y ago
    You're absolutely right. Background checks for employment purposes are covered under FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) and a myriad of other laws at various levels. Complying with these laws is not trivial, but the onus is on the employer to handle compliance if they are using data sources like this. I work at a background check startup that puts a focus on fairness and compliance.
  - astura 7y ago
    Yes.
- achillesheels 7y ago
  Or become financially independent? That does not necessitate Uber riches just a healthy customer base that mutually feeds each other over time.
- allovernow 7y ago
  I agreed with you except for >that's no way to live. You know it's still well within the range of possibility to live a healthy, fully actualized life without a named online presence, right?
  - quotemstr 7y ago
    > 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.
    - cortesoft 7y ago
      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 their job, it is entirely reasonable to have that affect their employment.
      - leereeves 7y ago
        First I'd want to be sure someone was actually "posting publicly that women are intellectually inferior and shouldn't be allowed to work professional jobs". Sometimes people post something completely different and it gets twisted into something like that that's obviously offensive but isn't what they said. In much the same way this report twists the meaning of every tweet.
      - wolco 7y ago
        So you want to force this person to work for themselves and be responsible for hiring. Maybe putting your company out of business and ensuring his viewpoint continues. I think you give the person a chance and use training if a problem exists.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  In the past, this was called "professionalism", and private lives were kept private.
Aloha 7y ago
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 justified for normal employment.
- coldtea 7y ago
  No, it's OK if it happens to "bad" people. People who have bad opinions should not of course have jobs. They should die on the streets, as untouchables... Of course this holds as long as "the good side" has the power to make companies fire people for their tweets. If and when conservatives get this power (like e.g. they did in the Hoover or McCarthy era), this practice would be wrong again, and it should all be about "freedom of speech" and right to work, etc. /s
  - komali2 7y ago
    "Bad opinions" is a pretty remarkable simplification of the concept of someone that doesn't think you're fully human based on the color of your skin or your sexuality. Would you want to work with someone that didn't think you should be allowed to exist?
    - javagram 7y ago
      > doesn't think you're fully human based on the color of your skin or your sexuality [. . .] didn't think you should be allowed to exist Words like "racist" or "transphobic" go well beyond that - what you are describing is someone advocating for outright Nazism and the execution / capital punishment of anyone they don't like. I think most of us would be uncomfortable working with someone who is trying to have us literally killed. For instance, a doctor who doesn't want to perform a sex change operation or administer hormones to young children, because they think it is harmful to them, would be considered transphobic by many advocates. Even though this position might be considered normal by 50% or more of society it still gets an "-phobic" and advocates would try to have such a person fired, even if they tried to accommodate by e.g. referring patients to another doctor or so on. Look at the case of Brendan Eich who donated to a referendum that won, it was supported by more than 50% of his state's voters - he was still forced to resign his job and leave despite his record of treating coworkers fairly, giving them benefits despite not being married, etc. I think when people worry about this they are less worried about the literal Nazis (richard spencer types, who are an incredibly small minority even today) and more about the people who may be 10, 20, 30%, even 40% of society. If you are seeking to attack such a large number of people that's a recipe for trouble.
aloknnikhil 7y ago
Looks like Hire Right (https://www.hireright.com/ https://www.hireright.com/) uses this. And a lot of the FANG tier companies use Hire Right. That'd a exclude a lot of the tech companies.
- ZhuanXia 7y ago
  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.
  - kennywinker 7y ago
    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, consciously or unconsciously, to enforce a homogeneous work force (racially, sexually, politically).
    - coolspot 7y ago
      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.
    - em-bee 7y ago
      exactly that. and forget freedom of speech if sharing your opinion reduces your chances of getting a job
    - non-entity 7y ago
      Marketted as "AI" lmao
  - greenshackle2 7y ago
coldtea 7y ago
>The idea that you can assess someone's workplace performance based on automated screening of their tweets is utterly absurd. It's not about "workplace performance", it's more about "can PC nuts target our company for hiring this person because of something this person said/liked? Let's cover our asses like cowards and not hire them if so".
- calcifer 7y ago
  That's an interesting way of spelling "could we accidentally hire a decent person who would blow the whistle on our shitty politics and toxic culture? Let's cover our asses like cowards and not hire them if so"
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
appleiigs 7y ago
On a related note, I declined a job interview when a company wanted to do the interview process via HireVue. Has the Orwellian telescreen feel. The process includes candidate recording interview responses and uploading them for AI to evaluate. HR must not realize that as part of the interview, candidates are also evaluating whether the company is a good place to work at.
- ianai 7y ago
  Oh, HR does and laughs at the thought. But we live in a political system where corporations have seemingly unalienable rights above their workers. “Want to afford things? Then succumb to the dictates of corporate America or else.” All the while, these same corporations benefit from unprecedented federal deficit spending at the cost of the individual citizens.
  - sneak 7y ago
    As long as there are other places to work, we can and should avail ourselves of them.
    - ianai 7y ago
      There are entire industries insulated enough for illegal HR practices to prevail. “Other places to work” line of reasoning is tone deaf and functionally abusive.
      - sneak 7y ago
        I’m not sure how privately holding the opinion “anyone who can choose non-abusive employers should choose them over abusive ones” is itself “functionally abusive”. Freedom of association is a powerful tool.
        SAI_Peregrinus 7y ago
        The problem is that it gets advocated as "anyone can choose non-abusive employers over abusive ones", which is simply false.
heavyset_go 7y ago
> 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. Background reports like these, along with drug testing for office jobs that don't deal with heavy machinery, are indicative of companies that have unhealthy views of the employer-employee relationship, especially in a country with at-will employment. Steer clear of them.
- ci5er 7y ago
  Often the drug-testing things are related to contracts with either the (US Federal) government or contracts with companies that have contracts with the (US Federal)government, such as O&G, Healthcare and Banking. That is to say: Sometimes companies don't have much choice in some of this. EDIT: I just remembered that I was talking to my corporate attorney's office recently (medium-size-law), and they say that if any applicant's facebook page over spring-break was too salacious (for example), they wouldn't be willing to hire them, because they didn't want the client to think that they were not 'conservative and judicious and considered' (when I say 'conservative' here, it has nothing to do with left-/right- wing politics in the US) Employees in a client-facing role have the potential to harm a company badly. Companies are cautious. Now, I believe this twitter thing in the OP is ridiculous, and their faulty use of NLP is beyond atrocious, I think that it is fair for employers to be concerned about linking their reputation to that of "proven" rogues, renegades (I can't even spell renegade, George), party-animals, and revolutionaries. Do you disagree?
  - heavyset_go 7y ago
    > Do you disagree? Not at all. I understand that drug testing is required due to contractual obligations and things like security clearances. However, I choose not to apply to such jobs because what I do on my own time doesn't need scrutiny from my employer. I've heard from colleagues of companies in the consumer app space sometimes requiring drug tests for their engineering and non-engineering roles, which is more of what I'm addressing. There just isn't need for that beyond an employer or HR department not liking the idea of someone smoking a joint on the weekends. People who choose to allow their public online presence to be unprofessional are allowed to be scrutinized by those who care about those things. However, if your employer is hiring companies that use bots to friend your private profiles and mine content from them, that's an overstep in my opinion. Wanting a dossier on an applicant's likes, opinions and a sentiment analysis on their posts is kind of absurd in my opinion.
a-wu 7y ago
Oooooooh I’ve been meaning to write a similar tool but you already did it so that’s perfect! Quick question: is it possible to specify a date to delete tweets before or do I need to calculate the number of days? Also what happens if the number of tweets is greater than 3200?
slg 7y ago
I am curious if people here think there is a different standard for high profile hires. This happens all the time in the entertainment industry. There are plenty of examples of PR disasters that occur when someone's old offensive tweets are resurfaced. Knowing about those tweets beforehand allows a company to either advise that the tweets are deleted or that the potential for future PR problems means someone else should be hired. https://deadline.com/2018/07/james-gunn-fired-guardians-of-the-galaxy-disney-offensive-tweets-1202430392/ https://deadline.com/2018/07/james-gunn-fired-guardians-of-t... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/arts/television/shane-gillis-snl.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/arts/television/shane-gil... https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2018/12/06/kevin-harts-homophobic-tweets-resurface-after-he-is-announced-oscars-host/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2018/12/06...
- maverick2007 7y ago
  And sports too! Josh Hader from the Brewers and Kyler Murray from the Cardinals are the first ones to mind. It'd be interesting to see how much vetting goes into this before the draft and how much of a hard no certain things are
- itronitron 7y ago
  There is probably a much lower standard for high profile hires.
arbuge 7y ago
> If anyone works somewhere that uses this tool, or anything similar to it, you should run far, far away from that company. For sure. But their customers are equally suspect. If anyone's prospective or current employer is actually paying for and using this tool, that's a big red flag in my opinion. At the least I think it betrays very poor judgement.
syshum 7y ago
So as some who has never, and will never use Twitter I wonder what my performance grade would be?
otabdeveloper2 7y ago
So don't use Twitter. Problem solved. Unless you're getting paid handsomely to do it, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to broadcast your personal life to the Internet.
thrwaway69 7y ago
I wonder what happens in those echo chambers. Some great people I know use twitter regularly but is that safe? How can someone handle that atrocious interface which doesn't work 50% of the time outside of the app? Can you even be real on twitter without getting lynched by someone? Maybe someone should make social media where promotion, influencers, marketing companies, etc are banned or not allowed.

quotemstr 7y ago

> If anyone works somewhere that uses this tool, or anything similar to it, you should run far, far away from that company. You might not even know --- and it could extend beyond hiring. Didn't get promoted? Maybe it's because someond keyword matched you for "toxic". The only real way to safeguard yourself is to keep your identity as small and bland as possible, and that's no way to live.

ardy42 7y ago
IIRC, aren't employers required to provide some notice of background checks, especially in the case where they're used to justify adverse actions?
- chroem- 7y ago
  It's usually a generic checkbox on the same order as the "We care about your privacy!" tracking notifications.
- seanmccann 7y ago
  You're absolutely right. Background checks for employment purposes are covered under FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) and a myriad of other laws at various levels. Complying with these laws is not trivial, but the onus is on the employer to handle compliance if they are using data sources like this. I work at a background check startup that puts a focus on fairness and compliance.
- astura 7y ago
  Yes.
achillesheels 7y ago
Or become financially independent? That does not necessitate Uber riches just a healthy customer base that mutually feeds each other over time.
allovernow 7y ago
I agreed with you except for >that's no way to live. You know it's still well within the range of possibility to live a healthy, fully actualized life without a named online presence, right?
- quotemstr 7y ago
  > 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.
  - cortesoft 7y ago
    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 their job, it is entirely reasonable to have that affect their employment.
    - leereeves 7y ago
      First I'd want to be sure someone was actually "posting publicly that women are intellectually inferior and shouldn't be allowed to work professional jobs". Sometimes people post something completely different and it gets twisted into something like that that's obviously offensive but isn't what they said. In much the same way this report twists the meaning of every tweet.
    - wolco 7y ago
      So you want to force this person to work for themselves and be responsible for hiring. Maybe putting your company out of business and ensuring his viewpoint continues. I think you give the person a chance and use training if a problem exists.
lonelappde 7y ago
In the past, this was called "professionalism", and private lives were kept private.

Aloha 7y ago

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 justified for normal employment.

coldtea 7y ago
No, it's OK if it happens to "bad" people. People who have bad opinions should not of course have jobs. They should die on the streets, as untouchables... Of course this holds as long as "the good side" has the power to make companies fire people for their tweets. If and when conservatives get this power (like e.g. they did in the Hoover or McCarthy era), this practice would be wrong again, and it should all be about "freedom of speech" and right to work, etc. /s
- komali2 7y ago
  "Bad opinions" is a pretty remarkable simplification of the concept of someone that doesn't think you're fully human based on the color of your skin or your sexuality. Would you want to work with someone that didn't think you should be allowed to exist?
  - javagram 7y ago
    > doesn't think you're fully human based on the color of your skin or your sexuality [. . .] didn't think you should be allowed to exist Words like "racist" or "transphobic" go well beyond that - what you are describing is someone advocating for outright Nazism and the execution / capital punishment of anyone they don't like. I think most of us would be uncomfortable working with someone who is trying to have us literally killed. For instance, a doctor who doesn't want to perform a sex change operation or administer hormones to young children, because they think it is harmful to them, would be considered transphobic by many advocates. Even though this position might be considered normal by 50% or more of society it still gets an "-phobic" and advocates would try to have such a person fired, even if they tried to accommodate by e.g. referring patients to another doctor or so on. Look at the case of Brendan Eich who donated to a referendum that won, it was supported by more than 50% of his state's voters - he was still forced to resign his job and leave despite his record of treating coworkers fairly, giving them benefits despite not being married, etc. I think when people worry about this they are less worried about the literal Nazis (richard spencer types, who are an incredibly small minority even today) and more about the people who may be 10, 20, 30%, even 40% of society. If you are seeking to attack such a large number of people that's a recipe for trouble.

aloknnikhil 7y ago

Looks like Hire Right (https://www.hireright.com/ https://www.hireright.com/) uses this. And a lot of the FANG tier companies use Hire Right. That'd a exclude a lot of the tech companies.

ZhuanXia 7y ago
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.
- kennywinker 7y ago
  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, consciously or unconsciously, to enforce a homogeneous work force (racially, sexually, politically).
  - coolspot 7y ago
    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.
  - em-bee 7y ago
    exactly that. and forget freedom of speech if sharing your opinion reduces your chances of getting a job
  - non-entity 7y ago
    Marketted as "AI" lmao
- greenshackle2 7y ago

coldtea 7y ago

>The idea that you can assess someone's workplace performance based on automated screening of their tweets is utterly absurd. It's not about "workplace performance", it's more about "can PC nuts target our company for hiring this person because of something this person said/liked? Let's cover our asses like cowards and not hire them if so".

calcifer 7y ago
That's an interesting way of spelling "could we accidentally hire a decent person who would blow the whistle on our shitty politics and toxic culture? Let's cover our asses like cowards and not hire them if so"

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

appleiigs 7y ago

On a related note, I declined a job interview when a company wanted to do the interview process via HireVue. Has the Orwellian telescreen feel. The process includes candidate recording interview responses and uploading them for AI to evaluate. HR must not realize that as part of the interview, candidates are also evaluating whether the company is a good place to work at.

ianai 7y ago
Oh, HR does and laughs at the thought. But we live in a political system where corporations have seemingly unalienable rights above their workers. “Want to afford things? Then succumb to the dictates of corporate America or else.” All the while, these same corporations benefit from unprecedented federal deficit spending at the cost of the individual citizens.
- sneak 7y ago
  As long as there are other places to work, we can and should avail ourselves of them.
  - ianai 7y ago
    There are entire industries insulated enough for illegal HR practices to prevail. “Other places to work” line of reasoning is tone deaf and functionally abusive.
    - sneak 7y ago
      I’m not sure how privately holding the opinion “anyone who can choose non-abusive employers should choose them over abusive ones” is itself “functionally abusive”. Freedom of association is a powerful tool.
      - SAI_Peregrinus 7y ago
        The problem is that it gets advocated as "anyone can choose non-abusive employers over abusive ones", which is simply false.

heavyset_go 7y ago

> 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. Background reports like these, along with drug testing for office jobs that don't deal with heavy machinery, are indicative of companies that have unhealthy views of the employer-employee relationship, especially in a country with at-will employment. Steer clear of them.

ci5er 7y ago
Often the drug-testing things are related to contracts with either the (US Federal) government or contracts with companies that have contracts with the (US Federal)government, such as O&G, Healthcare and Banking. That is to say: Sometimes companies don't have much choice in some of this. EDIT: I just remembered that I was talking to my corporate attorney's office recently (medium-size-law), and they say that if any applicant's facebook page over spring-break was too salacious (for example), they wouldn't be willing to hire them, because they didn't want the client to think that they were not 'conservative and judicious and considered' (when I say 'conservative' here, it has nothing to do with left-/right- wing politics in the US) Employees in a client-facing role have the potential to harm a company badly. Companies are cautious. Now, I believe this twitter thing in the OP is ridiculous, and their faulty use of NLP is beyond atrocious, I think that it is fair for employers to be concerned about linking their reputation to that of "proven" rogues, renegades (I can't even spell renegade, George), party-animals, and revolutionaries. Do you disagree?
- heavyset_go 7y ago
  > Do you disagree? Not at all. I understand that drug testing is required due to contractual obligations and things like security clearances. However, I choose not to apply to such jobs because what I do on my own time doesn't need scrutiny from my employer. I've heard from colleagues of companies in the consumer app space sometimes requiring drug tests for their engineering and non-engineering roles, which is more of what I'm addressing. There just isn't need for that beyond an employer or HR department not liking the idea of someone smoking a joint on the weekends. People who choose to allow their public online presence to be unprofessional are allowed to be scrutinized by those who care about those things. However, if your employer is hiring companies that use bots to friend your private profiles and mine content from them, that's an overstep in my opinion. Wanting a dossier on an applicant's likes, opinions and a sentiment analysis on their posts is kind of absurd in my opinion.

a-wu 7y ago

Oooooooh I’ve been meaning to write a similar tool but you already did it so that’s perfect! Quick question: is it possible to specify a date to delete tweets before or do I need to calculate the number of days? Also what happens if the number of tweets is greater than 3200?

slg 7y ago

I am curious if people here think there is a different standard for high profile hires. This happens all the time in the entertainment industry. There are plenty of examples of PR disasters that occur when someone's old offensive tweets are resurfaced. Knowing about those tweets beforehand allows a company to either advise that the tweets are deleted or that the potential for future PR problems means someone else should be hired. https://deadline.com/2018/07/james-gunn-fired-guardians-of-the-galaxy-disney-offensive-tweets-1202430392/ https://deadline.com/2018/07/james-gunn-fired-guardians-of-t... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/arts/television/shane-gillis-snl.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/arts/television/shane-gil... https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2018/12/06/kevin-harts-homophobic-tweets-resurface-after-he-is-announced-oscars-host/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2018/12/06...

maverick2007 7y ago
And sports too! Josh Hader from the Brewers and Kyler Murray from the Cardinals are the first ones to mind. It'd be interesting to see how much vetting goes into this before the draft and how much of a hard no certain things are
itronitron 7y ago
There is probably a much lower standard for high profile hires.

arbuge 7y ago

> If anyone works somewhere that uses this tool, or anything similar to it, you should run far, far away from that company. For sure. But their customers are equally suspect. If anyone's prospective or current employer is actually paying for and using this tool, that's a big red flag in my opinion. At the least I think it betrays very poor judgement.

syshum 7y ago

So as some who has never, and will never use Twitter I wonder what my performance grade would be?

otabdeveloper2 7y ago

So don't use Twitter. Problem solved. Unless you're getting paid handsomely to do it, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to broadcast your personal life to the Internet.

thrwaway69 7y ago

I wonder what happens in those echo chambers. Some great people I know use twitter regularly but is that safe? How can someone handle that atrocious interface which doesn't work 50% of the time outside of the app? Can you even be real on twitter without getting lynched by someone? Maybe someone should make social media where promotion, influencers, marketing companies, etc are banned or not allowed.