This may not be a good thing. Always remember that social media is used by industry as a means of carrying out background checks. What's this? One of our job applicants has a poor mental health rating? Let's pick the other one instead.
So eventually, if you make a post with the name "Anonymous" on 4chan, the only record of your post will be on an archive website where they don't have your IP (so they can't semi-uniquely identify you) and your name is "Anonymous". That's virtually untraceable except with prior knowledge of posting habits (time of day and what board) and text analysis (which has shown to be quite effective in revealing authors behind pseudonyms).
When someone only has the content of your post, where you posted it, and at what time (the minimum amount of information 4chan lets you submit), we can express ourselves but quite effectively avoid employer snooping or otherwise.
Too many misspellings or rageful comments on social media would be a clear NO HIRE signal for me.
Why shouldn't they be?
http://work.chron.com/eeoc-discrimination-depression-workpla...
I thought you are allowed to discriminate based on disability, if it impedes work function.
Any depression that gets to the level of being qualified as a disability seems severe enough to impede work.
Isn't that kind of totalitarian?
This has always existed, and you're more okay with it than you think you are: would you hire someone who says "nigger" in public?
The above is a prime example of the 'wrong kind' of public speech that makes you unemployable, as it should. Free speech doesn't mean "speech without consequence".
Yes. Obama said it in public, after all.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/22/barack-obama...
In the US the n-word is part of common speech, especially for young blacks. If you refused to hire anyone who said it in public, that would be a form of racist discrimination against black people.
This all relates to the racial double standard over permissible speech, of course.
> Free speech doesn't mean "speech without consequence".
In that case it isn't really free speech, any more than you've got free speech if I'm holding a gun to your head and threatening to shoot you if you say something I disagree with.
Further, if you don't understand that "free speech" refers to governmental policy rather than social norms, and if you don't understand that free speech comes with limitations (shouting "fire" in a crowded place, blah blah blah), then there is no hope of a thoughtful discussion.
Not all rights that you have on paper are enforced. A right to life is not the same as being alive. A right to free speech is not the same as actually having free speech. A society where saying unpopular things will get you attacked by a mob, instantly fired with loss of healthcare/housing, etc does not have free speech, even if the letter of the law says this right exists.
> shouting "fire" in a crowded place, blah blah blah
I've said this on the internet many, many times: That quote comes from a USSC case where the right to protest against the draft in the First World War was taken away, it was not upheld, and frankly, it's fascist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
If someone lived in the USSR, wouldn't it be right for them to protest against communism, even if they had to participate in the communist system to survive?
Would you tell them they should starve if they were against communism?
A society so averse to dissenting speech that it bears comparison with totalitarianism doesn't have to be state-enforced. The internet seems to do a good job of amplifying outrage and enabling witch hunts.