
I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf - danso
https://twitter.com/kmlefranc/status/1221869659139366912
======
brenden2
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)

~~~
aloknnikhil
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.

~~~
lovehashbrowns
HireRight almost failed my background check because I got the month wrong on
my graduation from high school. I legitimately don't understand why a
background check has to be this in-depth.

Edit: actually I think it was elementary school. Even worse.

~~~
chillingeffect
similar here. got laid off with severance in month x. company reported
employing ending month x+2, my resume says I started a new job month x+1. HR
calls me in a disdained huff "Sorry Mr. Effect, but we don't handle
prevarications lightly."

~~~
WWLink
Holy shit, I'm surprised they care THAT much about start date/end date. Like..
seriously? WTF? That's insane lol.

------
throwaway8291
They claim machine learning, but I'd guess their workhorse is a "grep -f
badwords tweets.json | makepdf | send boss@employer" kind of thingy.

~~~
allovernow
They're definitely using some form of sentiment analysis, but IMO these are
exactly the kind of results you'd get after setting a programmer, with little
to no actual data science background, loose to train his nets on data with a
limited or absent intuitive understanding of bias from training data. And
what's worse is that in their business false flags probably aren't even
considered. It's an extra wide supercharged net.

E.G the "BIG DICK ENERGY" post being flagged as bigotry and sexism, no doubt
they trained on limited data of hand curated "questionable posts" and I
wouldn't be surprised if they used a source like 4chan and just automatically
assigned negative labels to the vast majority of posts.

~~~
BlueTemplar
The problem here is rather likely to be to not have someone with human science
background... but then that person would likely just tell them their whole
premise is flawed?

~~~
allovernow
I don't think so. There are valid use cases for sentiment analysis, but you
need to understand the limitations of your training data and probably still
want humans to QC at least some representative proportion of flagged posts, if
you're going to do this legitimately. Of course a company like this just wants
to sell any garbage they can dig up.

~~~
BlueTemplar
Well, I will admit that I am quite ignorant of what _exactly_ a background
check is, but I just don't see how such a morally fraught question can be
legally allowed to be decided by anyone else than a psychologist.

In fact, considering the moral hazard, I don't even see how even using an AI,
even as simple as "grep", helping that psychologist in the cost-minimization
contexts of a private company would not result in an unacceptable slippery
slope where the psychologist would end up just rubber-stamping the decisions
of the AI and its creator ? Maybe someone with a dual data "science" /
psychology degree would be acceptable, but I'm guessing he/she wouldn't be
able to use any "black box" AI...

~~~
isoskeles
That’s not what moral hazard means.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard)

~~~
BlueTemplar
Right, it's probably inappropriate to use this term at this specific place in
my argument.

However, in what is probably not just a coincidence, the global issue this is
only one facet of _is_ about the information asymmetry between citizens and
corporations...

------
tyingq
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".

<b>Edit:</b> 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 wouldn't the UK want it's
own foreign policy distinct from the US policy? Downvotes welcome. I give zero
shits about my HN _" karma score"_.

~~~
bebop
I think the polygraph is really just an additional tool to aid the main goal,
which is to interrogate the participant. To this end the polygraph is a useful
tool as it provides added discomfort, which can help the interrogator get
answers from the participant.

~~~
tyingq
Depends, I guess, on what they do with it. Indicators of stress could be a
"good thing" in a lot of cases. It might show maturity and broad thinking
versus deception. I'm a bit biased in thinking they probably bias towards
loyalty and party line vs the real story. In any case, it probably excludes a
lot of real talent that won't put up with the bullshit. They are inadvertently
creating a very narrow culture that hurts their effectiveness.

~~~
lonelappde
It's just a technique to scare you into providing evidence. And in the CIA
it's a test of your resilience to interrogation.

------
marcinzm
So the company requesting the background check for a job get's to decide what
they'd like included. Which means they believe knowing what you tweet is
important. Probably due to all the public flogging of companies where someone
was found to have posted "inappropriate" things (or donated to an
"inappropriate" candidate, etc.). Where inappropriate is defined as whatever
the group of people doing the flogging think shouldn't be done so you get a
rather large pool once you combine the definitions from all groups.

------
caconym_
I don't even know what to say about this. I'm speechless.

This is so, so, so, so, stupid, yet it's presumably being used to curtail some
people's job opportunities in a society where you basically need to be
employed by a corporation to be a first-class citizen.

There need to be laws against arbitrary background checks. If only our
government had a real interest in protecting its citizens.

~~~
lightedman
There need to be laws against background checks in their entirety. People who
have supposedly paid their penitence for their crimes are still punished up to
7 years after the fact, or longer, and cannot obtain meaningful employment due
to it, and are thus stuck committing crimes to survive. Absolutely abhorrent.

~~~
jlgaddis
Yep, in the state in which I reside (Indiana), there is no seven-year limit.

Did something stupid when you were 20? It's still gonna be held against you
when you're 65.

~~~
mnm1
To change this, I think you need to change the culture first. Our culture
thinks that once you commit even the tiniest of crimes, your life is no longer
worth anything. That's why we do not rehabilitate people and have such long
prison terms. Until we fix our culture, I don't think we can get traction on
this problem. As long as we think of someone who smoked a joint as not human,
deserving not only to be thrown in jail but also to be raped (yes this is part
of our culture and there are plenty examples of it) we are not going to fix
the issue of denying people jobs for something that did 50 years ago. Culture
matters and when it comes to punishment and justice, our society is beyond
sick. To me, it's amazing it still stands and hasn't collapsed yet due to the
complete and utter lack of thought or motivation towards justice, let alone
rehabilitation.

------
ravenstine
Anyone who appreciates freedom shouldn't lend so much as a thought to a
company that tries to do something like this. Get my credit score, call my
last employer, do a criminal background check, whatever. But if you scour the
internet for any possible kindergarten wrongdoing I've made, _goodbye_. I'd
rather live in a van down by the river.

------
Jupe
Get used to it... this is the world we (the tech community) helped, even
pushed, to create.

I ask myself, would a FAANG company hire someone who doesn't actively tweet?
Somehow, I doubt it.

It is increasingly impossible to live in the modern world without using the
internet. Try buying something these days; many of the brick-and-mortar stores
are disappearing. Try getting a job without using online services. Try buying
a home or even renting an apartment without online services. The cost benefits
of leveraging the internet for most operations (help-desk, ordering, even
viewing) grossly outweigh the expense of having people perform such duties.
The digitization of life is only going to grow, IMO.

We, the people, are being (operationally) forced to use the internet for more
and more aspects of post-industrial life.

For now, our Orwellian dystopia persuades us to use the system. As the "free
market" pushes us more and more in the direction of online-only services, AI-
driven chat bots and the like, we will reach a point where you must be online
to get nearly anything done.

Treat every activity you perform on the internet as if it will last forever.
Because it will. And people can judge you for it now and forever; even after
you've passed on.

Most of us have nothing to hide; but this perspective is based on our past
experiences. We have nothing to hide if the old rules apply. But these are new
rules. I can laugh at an off-color joke in the closeness of friends. Do the
same online (via a like, re-tweet, share, whatever) and it becomes part of the
permanent BigBrother data store... discover-able, query-able, judge-able
_forever_.

Scary stuff.

~~~
lonelappde
FAANG is full of people who don't actively tweet. G+ was famous for Google
execs not using it.

~~~
Jupe
Ok, fair enough, but try and extend the pattern. What if the technical
candidates don't have a Facebook account, a twitter account, a github account,
or any other active online presence? Do you think such resume's will jump to
the top of the decision pile? I highly doubt it.

~~~
sombremesa
As someone who doesn't have Facebook, barely uses Twitter (zero tweets, I just
use tweetdeck to follow some people), doesn't share his GitHub account with
employers (just don't really care to) - my resume still jumps to the top of
the pile based solely on the big names I've worked for in the past.

So - yes.

Sure, you're going to add more qualifiers now, but I'm giving a counterpoint
to your original claim.

~~~
Jupe
I could easily add more qualifiers, but won't. I see the pattern and support
my argument: The original poster is but one example. This company (fama.io) is
in the business of performing exactly these types of social media background
checks. (Reference:
[https://craft.co/fama/competitors](https://craft.co/fama/competitors))

As the masses (and I mean MASSES) of people buy into the social media
explosion going on all over the planet, these "low-profile" individuals will
A) become rarer, and B) start to look suspicious. Whether the sub-population
of computer engineers see it for "what it is" or not; the general population
apparently doesn't.

Example: I have a friend who, begrudgingly, created a Facebook account and
used it rarely. Several months in, he started getting "friend" requests from
(presumably) middle-eastern men, often shown with photos of AK-47s. If this is
not a clear demonstration of a IS NULL business rule to figure out who might
be anti-social, I don't know what it.

I stand by my prediction as well: Over time, a lack of an online presence (in
a world where online presence is virtually required to live modern daily life)
will be deemed "anti-social".

The lure (both ease and historical/digital facts) provided by scanning social
media history will only grow in popularity.

------
Keverw
I think it's insane schools and companies are monitoring peoples social media,
should keep work and personal separate.

For example went viral that a Christian school very recently expelled a girl
because she had a rainbow cake that they seen in a photo on social media, and
then heard some kid got in trouble for going to a gun range with his dad over
the weekend and posting about having a fun day. Then there was another case
with a college student.

Looks like many of these schools are currently being sued too, but recent
developments. I think trying to control personal social media is over
reaching. Not sure if companies get sued over this, but since many schools are
government ran they are opening up a can of worms relating being subjected to
section 1983 civil rights lawsuits. Plus schools keep cutting stuff due to
funding, like one of the elementary schools nearby cut both art and music
completely so I think they should tread carefully if they are going to start
monitoring student's social media since they can't afford to be sued. One of
those schools thought is a private school, so not sure how far that lawsuit
would go since many states it's legal to discriminate against LGBT since not
as protected like race is, you can get married on the weekend and be fired on
Monday.

------
CommieBobDole
I'm torn between "My god, this is a dystopian nightmare" and "Well, you did
all that in public, in print, with your real name attached, what did you
expect?".

Maybe both things are right.

Edit: Since, looking at the downvotes, this seems to be controversial, let me
clarify that I'm not blaming the victim, I'm questioning whether it's a good
general policy to give everyone, including various bad actors, a vast database
of information about you, carefully indexed and attached to your real name,
that they can then use against you.

~~~
rakoo
Is it normal to live your private life in accordance to what a future
hypothetical employer might think ?

EDIT: private should be replaced with personal, as opposed to work

~~~
quotemstr
Isn't the OP's point that people shouldn't live their private lives in public?

~~~
rakoo
I used the wrong word: I meant "personal life" as opposition to "work life". I
don't think personal life should be done in private.

------
harrisonjackson
Let's put aside the absurd conclusion that you can actually assess job fit and
performance based on twitter engagement... you could scroll their feed for 5
minutes and have a more accurate feel for their attitude, humor, and public
persona than this keyword matching.

If you HAVE to go this route...as an employer I'd rather see something like
Github's contributions by DateTime showing me when they are most active on
social media lol. Ah 200 posts every Monday at 2PM, eh? Interesting.

------
thenewwazoo
From their "Privacy" page[1]:

\---

You have the right, and we encourage you to:

View the publicly available information that is available about you online.
Contact us at privacy@fama.io to see a copy of your Fama report, if it has
been created on behalf of a Customer. We’ll get back to you within 24 hours.

...

You can opt out of our service by contacting us at privacy@fama.io, as long as
you have not provided written consent to one of our clients so Fama may access
this information on your behalf. Further, Fama will delete all of the data
that we have collected about you at your written request pending those same
criteria.

\---

[1] [https://fama.io/privacy/](https://fama.io/privacy/)

~~~
Auslaender
Isn't this against GDPR?

~~~
astura
1) no

2) they don't appear to be doing business in Europe anyways (based in
California, only contact number is North American)

------
retrac98
Name and shame these companies until this stops.

~~~
marcinzm
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.

~~~
retrac98
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.

------
drngdds
The main thing I'm getting from this is that Twitter is terrible. Why do likes
have to be public? Why can't you choose to make some tweets followers-only?
Those two things would cripple this kind of background check.

(Mastodon has both of those, but a social network is only as good as its
userbase, and Mastodon's is small and niche.)

------
siruncledrew
300 pages is not all that surprising considering the amount of stuff that
could be requested from some assortment of background check companies by
whoever is willing to pay for it.

Even the background checks to open a bank account are commonly 50+ pages of
information.

Whether or not the information is entirely correct (or even for the right
person) is a whole other matter. Sure, a company could scrape someone’s tweets
or assign probabilities to how likely various accounts and services are owned
by that person, but at the end of the day it’s not 100%. Even alerts could
come up for news articles mentioning a person of the same name from the same
area as the person undergoing the background check, but is a completely
different person. Depending on how much someone cares to read the whole report
and the analysis versus just look at a few flag icons, that could make a
difference.

In the end, as long as background check companies can still sell fear and
risk, they can live with the tradeoffs of relying on statistical significance
determinations to assess people.

------
adrianmonk
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_in,_garbage_out](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_in,_garbage_out)

I remember back in the 1980s when large numbers of regular folks were trying
to come to grips with the question, "What the hell actually _is_ a computer,
anyway?". This phrase (GIGO) had to be repeated constantly. People had all
these wild ideas that computers were just magic and could turn nothing into
something. And that whatever information came out of a computer, it can't be
wrong, because computers don't make mistakes.

After a while, it seemed to catch on and penetrate into the collective
consciousness. People would even repeat "Garbage In, Garbage Out!" or "GIGO!"
with delight, proud that they'd learned something about computers.

Anyway (finally) my point: it seems like we've regressed. GIGO wasn't common
sense, and then it was, and now... it's not again? It feels like computer
literacy is moving backward a bit.

------
cabaalis
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?

~~~
granshaw
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.

~~~
brewdad
Exactly. I tend to browse Twitter on my phone. Judging by the number of times
I've accidentally clicked on a tweet while scrolling, I'm sure I've
accidentally "liked" more than a few tweets that I find abhorrent.

I'd hate to think that such mis-touches would harm me personally or
professionally.

------
0xff00ffee
I stopped using my real name on social media in 2016. I wonder if Fama can
still associate my posts with my fake names. Because if so, holy shit I'm
fucked for dozens of reasons.

I guess they could ask Reddit and Hacker News for IP logs of user ip
addresses, especially since HN doesn't delete accounts.

~~~
BlueTemplar
Yeah, you shouldn't count on it. Especially if they use neural networks - they
likely have the know-how to identify you using your writing patterns (though
the needle in the haystack issue might help you against not really persistent
detectives...)

~~~
0xff00ffee
"Especially if they use neural networks"

LOL.

~~~
BlueTemplar
"LOL" as in "heh, like they have the know-how to use them properly !" or as in
"duh, of course they do!" ?

~~~
p0sixlang
I think that was a LOL as in "your comment lacks understanding of the
capabilities of neural networks in it's suggestion a neural network could
identify someone in the pool of... everyone (lets even say in a certain area),
based on writing style."

You'd need countless IDed writing samples to even give yourself a 50% chance
of making a network able to with 50% accuracy match an unIDed writing sample
to an IDed one.

Facial recognition is easier (yet still very hard) to implement because
there're characteristics about people's faces that're hard to modify unless
you're really trying.

Compared to writing style which could differ based on too many factors.

~~~
BlueTemplar
> In one experiment, researchers were able to identify 80% of users with a
> 5,000-word writing sample.

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/01/identifying_p...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/01/identifying_peo_3.html)

?

~~~
p0sixlang
I'll just steal one of the comments from the article. "It isn't new, and it's
just as overstated as previous studies. The 80% accurate identification rate
applies only within the 5,000 subjects. The identification rate will plummet
when the pool of writers expands to everyone who can write in English" Like I
said, if you can narrow the pool to a small amount of people, than you
probably could accomplish this (but even then, there's always the chance two
people have similar writing styles.)

~~~
BlueTemplar
And if you had read further, you would have seen him corrected : it's 5k
words, not 5k subjects. (And, also, I do raise this potential caveat in my
mention of "needles"...)

------
Cofike
I used a script to delete all my tweets on my twitter however many years ago.
I'm not the one to say anything inflammatory/offensive but I just couldn't
risk some errant like or retweet causing me grief in the future. It seems like
that wasn't a bad move.

~~~
matz1
Having no online presence can also be viewed suspicious. Pick your poison.

~~~
arpa
Ah! He doesn't eat meat! Suspicious, suspiciuos. Perhaps a communist, or a
homosexual?

~~~
matz1
He very well maybe， the point is whatever you do there will be trade off.

~~~
arpa
My point is there shouldn't.

~~~
matz1
Likewise, making any kind of tweet including inflammatory/offensive kind
shouldn't cause grief in the future.

------
gruez
Whatever happened to the 90s where the prevailing advice was that the internet
was a dangerous place, and you should always used pseudonyms?

~~~
lonelappde
Adtech happened. Deanonymized people are more exploitable.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Adtech didn’t deanonymize people, just exploited them after everyone willingly
did that themselves, chasing internet fame under real identities.

------
t0astbread
If a company asks me to do a background check during application I will just
instantly abort. Like ok, if they don't trust me that I'm not an asshole how
can I trust them that they treat me right?

~~~
p0sixlang
What about post-offer?

------
slvrspoon
Online background checks increasingly incorporate all this social info but
ALSO link it to other identity data. Next, combine it with profiles bought
from data brokers which can include all basic personal info combined with
political affiliation and prior salary, etc. Here's some steps to opt out of
their databases: [https://joindeleteme.com/help/deleteme-help-topics/opt-
out-g...](https://joindeleteme.com/help/deleteme-help-topics/opt-out-guide/)

~~~
BlueTemplar
So, cross-referencing databases is (usually) illegal for the government to do,
but private companies can do it just fine? Am I the only one of noticing a
loophole here?

------
RijilV
In fairness I don’t use social media (well, other than posting here from time
to time), so it’s difficult for me to identify with folks who spend a
considerable (IMHO) amount of time recording their activities and thoughts on
third party systems which have dubious, at best, privacy policies. My naive
understanding of these platforms is for you to make yourself discoverable.

Can someone help me understand why after spending time over years recording
yourself it is now a surprise companies are using that data?

~~~
BlueTemplar
Not sure who the GP is (I'm not dirty myself by going on Twitter just for
_this_ ), but I assume a lot of people didn't realize at the time (and maybe
still don't), that this is the kind of public discourse that does NOT quickly
vanish into thin air, and all of the implications that follow?

------
wespiser_2018
I've built a very similar algorithm and website for a class I was taking a few
years ago, however, we never considered monetizing it like this:
[https://github.com/adamwespiser/toxic-
twitter](https://github.com/adamwespiser/toxic-twitter)

There is a large collection of "negative tweets" available in a public
dataset, and training a simple neural network will give you a rough way to
classify a tweet as either "toxic" or not with decently accuracy. However,
there are problems.

\- Basic algorithms are "context-free" and therefore don't get sarcasm or
jest. There are more sophisticated approaches that can handle these semantic
categories, but they require large datasets of tweets that do not publicly
exist.

\- The easiest thing the algorithm can learn is profanity, so for example, the
model we built classified tweets in poor taste as "okay", if they were used
with decent language.

\- There is definitely a balanced dataset issue that makes training good
classifiers harder, due to the overwhelming majority of tweets on twitter
being positive, and it being hard to find unblocked toxic users.

At the time, we figured the best use of the website was to check your own
twitter history, and although I find some of this user's tweet pretty
offensive, I'm sad the day has come where people would actually need to use
something like "toxic-twitter" to get a job! If anyone wants to fork this repo
and get it up again, please reach out!

------
coding123
The master plan of the entire real names thing juuuuust landed.

~~~
dredmorbius
You're ... a little late to that realisation, though I only learnt of this a
little over a year ago myself as Google+ was shutting down.

The project was called NSTIC: National Strategy for Trusted Identities in
Cyberspace. Alex Howard of O'Reilly's _Radar_ had one of the most
comprehensive explorations I've seen "A Manhattan Project for online identity:
A look at the White House's National Strategy for Trusted Identities in
Cyberspace."

[http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/05/nstic-analysis-identity-
pri...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/05/nstic-analysis-identity-privacy.html)

The relationship with Google+ itself was spelled out by Kristine Schachinger
at Searchengine Journal: "In Memoriam: The Rise, Fall & Death of Google Plus"

 _Google was only going to be one of many identity service providers for a
program run by the Federal Government called the NSTIC, or National Strategy
for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace._

[https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-plus-history-
deat...](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-plus-history-
death/283685/)

There were some HN submissions on the topic, but virtually no discussion:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=nstic](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=nstic)

------
WalterBright
I seriously doubt that punishing people for their opinions is going to change
any minds. Totalitarian countries tried that for decades, with severe
punishments. All it did was cause people to hide their opinions, and have a
fake society with fake consensus that everyone knew was fake.

------
xwowsersx
Fuck Fama and fuck any company using them. If you're a candidate and a company
asks you to submit to one of these, just save them the time and write a giant
fuck you on a piece of paper and hand it to them.

~~~
s45
Nah don't do that. Just ghost them like so many companies do to candidates.

------
frgotmylogin
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.

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

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

------
werber
I personally think background checks should just be like, hey are you a
violent person, but before any in person interview I’ve been a part of the
person has been internet stalked by the whole group and anyone who knows the
candidate or someone who does has gotten the tea. I just don’t see any value
in this

------
jocoda
Did you have to pay for the background check?

A lot of asset management companies require regular background checks from
their service providers and the service providers have to foot the bill.

Always wondered if there was some kind of kick back going on that motivated
the frequency or if it was a legal requirement.

------
mikedilger
The reason companies have to do so damn much checking upon hiring is because
the employment laws make it damn near impossible to recover from a mistake. If
you want to make a difference in this space, don't always vote for whatever
issue the screws the rich companies.

~~~
bsanr2
I'm not sure where this comes from. Any halfway-competent company in a right-
to-work state can drop you like a sack of potatoes with no cause or notice,
and you won't be able to do anything unless you have a documented history of
them doing something stupidly, obviously discriminatory.

~~~
mikedilger
It's coming from California. Sorry, that's my only experience.

------
1290cc
So its the equivalent of a credit check but focused on how you conduct
yourself online. I'm okay with this only if its law that the report details
are shared with the applicant.

The odds of mistaken identity are too high with an automated service.

------
underpand
How long would the report be if you have your profile privacy on lockdown? ie.
all public profiles are private and you don't reuse usernames

Are they able to do more nefarious things like use fingerprint/IP/device
history to connect random accounts together?

~~~
dylan604
Or just ask Facebook about everything they've linked together. Maybe sign up
for some sort of FB service, and then create a business model that abuses the
access you've been granted to gain the information you're ultimately trying to
get. If questioned about it, just blame some rouge employee as a scapegoat for
being a bad apple abusing the trust that FB granted.

------
wolco
Maybe I'm not understanding. How would the company know the twitter account?
Could you give them someone elses twitter account? Why did author give twitter
account and get surprised when they have a report based on it?

~~~
astura
My guess is they have an agreement with twitter where they provide the email
address and twitter will tell you the account id. They would have the
candidate's email address from their job application.

------
djhworld
Does this include retweets?

I'm mostly a passive twitter user who mostly likes/retweets tweets that pique
my interest.

I wonder if these companies evaluate what sort of things you are
liking/endorsing and associating that with your character...

~~~
aeyes
This has all tweets the person has liked that their algorithm flags as bad.
Not just their own tweets.

------
iamleppert
Startup idea: A service that seeds the Internet with only a fake, G-rated
version of yourself that shows you liking pictures of kittens, automatically
posting inspirational quotes, completely politically correct.

------
antibland
In the Twitter thread (regarding Fama):

> You can opt out of our service by contacting us at privacy@fama.io as long
> as you have not provided written consent to one of our clients so Fama may
> access this information on your behalf.

------
Waterluvian
That's wild. I got my first ever background check to volunteer at a high
school. The report was three checkboxes indicating "we found nothing wrong"

~~~
t0astbread
A background check before volunteering? Isn't that extremely counterproductive
for getting applications?

~~~
brewdad
My school district requires all volunteers to undergo a background check
renewed every 2 years. I think it's pretty basic, mainly just criminal
history. It's really a CYA for the district should anything harmful occur
between a student and volunteer.

------
Aardwolf
Running a simple algorithm that flags specific words in liked tweets: meh,
whatever.

But why waste 350 printed pages of paper for that?

~~~
doitLP
They offer the checked person the option to get a report of whatever they
found and reported to the company.

~~~
Keverw
Probably a legal requirement to provide it, such as credit reports if used for
employment or apartments, etc of providing a copy.

------
meow_mix
Of course, this stock photo looking guy started the company
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-
mones-45740a2a/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-mones-45740a2a/)

------
istorical
How do they handle extremely common names?

~~~
drdeadringer
The name doesn't even need to be common. There are a dozen's dozen ways to
spell my last name, and I've received emails intended for somebody else simply
because the sender searched the directory and clicked the first hit they got.

For extra credit, I share the same name [spelling and all] with a decently
famous musician. If you search for me you'll get him unless you
include//exclude an extra choice word or two.

~~~
JakeStone
There was nothing wrong with your name until you were about 12 years old?

~~~
drdeadringer
Specifically for the music artist, there was nothing wrong until my mid-to-
late 30s. Both myself and the musician artist in question are similar in age.

Regarding common mis-spelling, that has been as issue for decades. It is a
regular deal of "that's an 'e', not a 'o'".

------
Jenz
So, if you're not on Twitter...

------
egdod
For those wondering, as I did, who’s behind this terrible report:

> The background check company is Sterling Talent Solutions, and it looks like
> they contracted with Fama Technologies for this part of the report.

~~~
causalmodels
Sterling is terrible not only because they’re needlessly invasive, but also
because they cannot run a background check.

Before I got into software I was a model, something very obvious if you search
my name. I’ve had two background checks done by Sterling and they’ve never
connected the dots.

~~~
greenshackle2
On the last background check I had with them, they marked every one of my
previous employers as "unable to contact" and asked me to provide proof of
employment. I have to wonder whether they just didn't bother picking up the
phone.

------
leftyted
I clicked on their twitter and I'd think twice before hiring them unless the
interview went really well.

------
nickthemagicman
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?

~~~
anon_cow1111
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.

