Employers pre-scan your name on Facebook, to determine whether or not they will hire you. Science Daily covered the release of study results that delved into this most interesting and disturbing question.
Your inappropriate Facebook profile, posts and photos could lose you your next job, according to an in-depth study of employers from six different industries. Science Daily
Now would someone like to make a list of behaviors in photos, that constitute "Inappropriate". Because that is quite a departure from behavior that would be deemed *Unlawful.
This is how the plutocracy will eventually have a profound chilling effect on American Freedom of Expression.
Basically Americans are "free" to get paid, as long as they toe the line of the person scanning their social media.
Now I don't have an facebook account, but thanks to the Aurora Colo, massacre perp, who incidentally, *also didn't have a large online presence, that too is now considered a questionable trait. A notion that was brought up in conversations past in similar diary entries, oddly enough.
If you are on, don't show anything some random person might believe is inappropriate, but don't be absent, because that could be the sign that you are a *dangerous deviant, as opposed to a simply, embarrassing one.
Wow. Talk about molding and shaping.
There have, of course, been numerous celebrated instances of a person's Facebook activity allegedly leading to summary dismissal because it was perceived as compromising the integrity of their employer and their company brand. Ibid
Maybe sometimes it might be compromising, but where does that interlock with protected speech? Should employers now hold the powers that Churches held during the Elizabethan era over the social lives and social viability of citizens?
"While employers are using Facebook to monitor their employees, they have also begun to use it as a screening tool when considering potential candidates," says de la Llama and colleagues, "Because this is a fairly new trend, a standardized set of guidelines has yet to be established, with employers often assessing job applicants in a subjective manner. Ibid"
Subjective is not a good word to use in a situation that is supposed to be the very paragon of objectivity, ethics and fairness.
This last block quote indicates that subjectivity could revolve around issues that are not supposed to be used when screening job applicants, such as race, religion, gender, pregnancy status, political affiliation or speech, nationality or creed, and no doubt in some cases, sexual orientation.
Employers should be restricted to using resumes and interviews for their hiring practices.
Background checks should be restricted to legal records such as arrests, or convictions etc.,
They have no business poking their long, unnecessary noses into the private lives of law abiding citizens.
Or do we have to start reversing this trend and looking up the interviewers on social media and bringing our own dossiers of damning inappropriate evidence?
The notion of *Inappropriate could cover a lot of things.
Did you mix plaid with stripes? How you do you hair? Do you have a lazy eye? Were you caught with a beer in your hand? A risque or tasteless Halloween costume? Did you ever participate in what you [subjectively] thought was a righteous rant? Share a personal experience online? Over share? Perhaps you are not the right color, or too fat, or in a wheel chair, or you have a photo of you hunting. Maybe you went to Burning Man or Comic-Con--in character! Did you ever confess to being a victim of a violent crime? Or discuss your medical conditions online?
GASP! You Cad!
Well it's a life sentence for you! No more employment, you will never work in this town again! Perhaps these employers should dig up Joseph McCarthy and reanimate his corpse, so they can have the benefit of his expertise in the matter of arbitrarily blackballing citizens from a decent living while violating their rights and scaring them shitless with the threat of a lifetime of poverty regardless of past accomplishments, or expertise.
Only this time we can call it the House-of-Unemployable-Citizens. Your private life is now put on trial to see if you are worthy to lick the boots of a burgeoning plutocracy.
In the mean time I leave you with this rather salient music video regarding patriotism and weirdos.
The point isn't to protect the business from weirdos. Ultimately what this does is force conformity on individuals using *implied and direct threats. Corporate Micro-Management of your very life, right down to who you talk to online, when and how and what you claim to like, this is a direct threat to personal authenticity. In addition to that, political activism online has been a huge thorn in the side of the parties and the corporations. Using the internet to monitor our activities and then reward or punish us with professional prestige and a pay check, based on their desires is awfully convenient.
Lines are being set up here. Will you fit in?
The thing I am most interested in, is when you get sick of this, will you be willing to create a new separation clause? One that creates a Wall of Separation between Corporation and State?
Companies wouldn't be so bold, if they didn't feel that our federal government has indicated that they--the corporate powers can act any old way they want to, with impunity.
With this topic, it doesn't matter if you are on the left or on the right. What matters is how your personal activities please and comfort whomever is interviewing you for a job, or how those activities conform with the unofficial, corporate policies with regards to "proper individual comportment," in your off time.