The idea of an employer needing to judge me based on what I say/do on Facebook makes me really uncomfortable.
Facebook is my social life, not the company's time or anything, and if I'm a decent worker + programmer just let me be? For example I swear a lot on facebook about certain current events, should I stop simply because some HR person in 2 or 3 years might look/analyse my profile and see that I use profane language?
Any HR department that believes semantic analysis of Facebook statuses is a reasonable approximation of people's actual behaviour, interests and domain knowledge deserves the idiots they'll hire and the litigation they'll face.
What litigation would they face? At least in the US, it's not illegal to discriminate against job candidates based on what they post on Facebook. As long as employers are not discriminating based on race, religion, sex, disability or other legally protected attributes, they're not breaking any laws.
I don't think it's a good idea, however, just like I don't think that running drug tests or credit reports on job candidates (both widespread practices) are good ideas.
Lets say your Facebook page was public and you rant about the company you are working for. Do you think future employers won't wonder if you will do the same if you join them?
Lets say you write something about a topic that shouldn't be discussed (wasn't there a rape case that was clinched because of social media?). Who would want to risk potential backlash in the future?
While you may think its your social life, Facebook definitely has enough reach that statements made by you could reflect poorly on your employer as well as on you.
Well the first part isn't true, but what if I do? Everyone has shitty days at work where all they want to do is leave, go home and have a glass of wine and crash.
If I'm frustrated with some task, can I not say so? If I've been stuck on some problem, I can't say so to my friends?
'If I'm frustrated with some task, can I not say so? If I've been stuck on some problem, I can't say so to my friends?'
You have full right to say whatever you want, but don't expect your employer not to take notice if you say it in public. And don't expect your employer not to do anything of they hear your rant.
The problem is the implicit expectation of Facebook privacy, For which there should be none. If you want to safely rant, do it in your home with your friends in the room. Every other medium (email, Facebook, twitter etc) involves intermediaries which could leak your rant. But don't complain that Facebook isn't private.
Okay, lets say your facebook page is public and you rant about the company you work for. That, to me, indicates some incredibly poor judgement and it absolutely should come back to haunt you.
What does "public" mean? I haven't used Facebook in like 2 years, so I don't know how their new subscribe/follow model works. Would the employer be able to just "follow" him without "friending" him and still see what he said?
Putting something on Facebook means giving it to a company you're not paying and you certainly have no contract with to securely and privately store your data.
So you can safely much assume anything you put on there can be made public or at least shared with others at any given time without your consent. The model can change at any time, and of course there is that lovely incentive called "profit".
Handing over any data to Facebook and expecting it to remain "private" is extremely naive.
Of course, this is also true of your ISP, your cell carrier, your email provider, and every electronic communications system ever (except GPG). Facebook has no more reason to sell your messages and status updates than they do, and ad targeting does not cause your data to leave Facebook's servers.
Facebook's ad targeting options are out there in the open for everyone to see. This is what you get if you pay Facebook. Where would they advertise your data without getting caught? Are Facebook and your boss part of some special club you've never heard of? And if you were Facebook, would you take that risk?
I can't prove that they won't sell my data, but you can't prove that Verizon won't sell your texts, that Google won't sell your searches, etc.
Facebook is pretty complicated. For example today i had an experience like this. A friend of mine posted a photo and tagged me in it. And a friend of the friend who originally posted the photo liked it. Although the photo is a photo of me and my friend because the friend who liked the photo has a privacy setting which makes everything he likes is public the photo i'm tagged now is public and anyone who is following the person who liked the photo can now see it.
I hope this made sense i tried to keep it simple bs possible. True incident happened to me today
It is quite a bit easier than you make it sound. The photo will have been posted with a audience selected - something like "Only Me", "Friends", "Public". If people were tagged in the photo and it is set to "Friends", then those tagged and their friends can see it (the audience selector will put a little "(+)" there to let you know it has expanded it to friends of those tagged).
You can also use a custom audience selector to do things like specify a friends list (or more) to share with, not to share with friends of those tagged, and so forth.
If somebody likes that photo, that like will only be visible to those that can already see that photo. It does not give anybody the ability to see the photo that did not already.
In many cases, you can see the audience selected for posts your friends make by looking for the same icons from the audience selector next to the date and other metadata in your news feed, their timeline, or the picture page. If it is public, there'll be a little globe. If friends, then it'll be two people standing next to each other. If friends-of-friends, three people standing there. Obviously, you can't tell if it was shared with only them (since you wouldn't see it). In some cases (the person chose a custom audience), a gear icon will appear.
If after you investigate based on the information above you really think the privacy model expanded who could see the photo because of the like, please report a privacy bug: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/?id=308229232560802
(In case it wasn't obvious, I work at Facebook. But I don't work on privacy specifically.)
Thanks for the information. It was really helpful. I guess what you say is most probably correct you must know about facebook more than any of us. I'll look if anything like that happens again. Cheers mate
The idea of some sort of big data / semantic analysis being used to judge my worth is honestly rather reassuring compared to the idea of some hr drone trolling google for my name. A person is likely to unfairly misjudge you based on what they find online, an algorithm is probably a pretty fair judge of character, or if it isn't it isn't going to get used.
"BigCo. didn't engage in discrimination: your resume was rejected without a human seeing it at all."
I don't think that argument would stand up in court. If the software you contracted to use explicitly applied screening criteria based on protected classes such as race or sex, then you would be found to be discriminating illegally.
Sure it would - all BigCo. has to do is point out that no human being rejected the applicants. For example, to reject older applicants just reject people based on salary expectations: younger workers will come in under the bar. BigCo. has a perfectly "legitimate" reason for all the older workers never getting an interview.
Just be creative with the criteria and filter based on the indirect criteria.
Why does Facebook have to share this data to data aggregators? At some point, the creepy corporate use of FB data will scare people from using FB to the point that the bottom line is hurt. FB just has to shut off the firehose of data, if they have any foresight
They "have to" share the data because it's profitable to do so, and profit is the sole imperative of corporations.
"At some point, the creepy corporate use of FB data will scare people from using FB"
That was the point of the article: "Most people already know not to publicize individual things that reflect badly on them; once they realize that the totality of what they post can have serious repercussions, too, they’ll clam up. "
People here already understand the implications, but this assumes that millions of users will "get it" too. Maybe they will, eventually, but not as readily as the author assumes. The data-mining will progress even further than it has before the masses change their behavior.
Note that this all (certainly, discussion of; I don't know fully about extant realizations) goes beyond what one posts.
There is already analysis arguing (whether or not correctly) that social graphs themselves convey useful, actionable information. For example, the argument that friends of "deadbeats" are likely to be less reliable, themselves. So, if you "friend" too many people having low credit scores, this may effect you when e.g. a lender uses your Facebook graph in evaluating your suitability for a loan.
Similar concerns with regard to evaluation of insurance risk and insurability.
Knowledge asymmetry is the point of arbitrage upon which many people earn a living (and some, a quite extravagant living). Absent sufficient inhibitions (whether self-serving, e.g. Facebook's potential self-destruction; or external, e.g. regulation), people will use "big data" to this effect.
This is why I try to restrain my identity on the net not based on what I might easily be used against me today, but based on what might easily be used against me in the near future.
The general rule is that you should assume everything you say or do on the Internet is public, even if it is encrypted or purportedly private, and may be used against you in the future. Even stuff written here.
Facebook is my social life, not the company's time or anything, and if I'm a decent worker + programmer just let me be? For example I swear a lot on facebook about certain current events, should I stop simply because some HR person in 2 or 3 years might look/analyse my profile and see that I use profane language?