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Comment by cblconfederate | Hacker News Reader

but if a future employer asks to see some social credentials and they don't see any, they ll be suspicious

If a future employer expects such social "credentials" from me, I'll be suspicious and tell them where to go.

My favourite take I read about was to give them the credentials for a social-media account that is full of personal information that directly fields the "illegal interview questions"[1] (in US law, at least) - assuming one gets a rejection from the company you have grounds to sue them for discrimination because they essentially asked questions they're not allowed to.

[1] https://www.betterteam.com/illegal-interview-questions

I recall a case around 8-10 years ago when an employer or university admissions dept forcefully asked someone for their Facebook username and password - she declined but offered to login on a computer in the office for them to see - which they agreed to, and her profile had details the interviewers were not legally entitled to receive, and she sued and she won... - or something. Does anyone else remember?

I'd ask them where I should report phishing attempts.

If said employer is asking for your private social media, then they're probably not worth working for anyway.

Tens of millions of people in the US alone don't have the privilege of being on the supply-side for a high-demand skillset. "they're probably not worth working for anyway" is not a reasonable nor helpful response to people in that situation.

That's a sad thing though, that people don't have enough leverage against their employer for more benefits.

I think this is what unions are for. Powerless alone but strong together.

I've been anti union for almost my entire life as you cannot really be a member of a union without at the same time supporting a number of unrelated cases that I disagree wildly with.

That said I am starting to feel that we could need something like unions, only they should avoid messing with international affairs, avoid supporting any political parties and stick to working for their members directly.

> avoid supporting any political parties

Unions represent their workers and by extension must advocate politically for workers' rights.

How can a union fight for workers' rights if they're barred from political activity?

If companies can engage in political activity, it follows that workers' unions are just as entitled.

> How can a union fight for workers' rights if they're barred from political activity?

You are replying to something I didn't write.

I want them barred from supporting specific parties, not from influencing laws, negotiating, organizing, providing legal support etc.

Around here unions largely align with what is probably Labour elsewhere, which makes sense. But I personally feel I cannot in good conscience be found supporting someone who directly time and time again organizes boycotts against middle Easts only somehow working democracy.

I cannot live with supporting companies that are openly hostile to values I find important.

So I end up outside the unions, at least until someone creates one that promises to not do that.

> If companies can engage in political activity, it follows that workers' unions are just as entitled.

Yep. And that's ok. But I won't support them as long as they try to meddle in international affairs or even push national lawmaking in directions I think are abhorrent.

Social media accounts are not credentials, and that requirement is bogus for 99% of jobs unless your job is social media publicity

Call it "bogus" but the evidence suggests it's happening - most likely by old-world companies run by paternalistic owners big enough to care about their PR but not big enough to hire competent HR lawyers to advise them not to do that at all.

...otherwise we wouldn't have law bloggers writing articles like this: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-employers-ask-pa...

Forget about credentials, hiring someone is a risk and you basically go into it as an employer flying blind.

I request social media links (not passwords, just profile links) from everyone I'm considering hiring, because any/all information I can use to winnow potentially problem hires out before I make an offer is extremely valuable to me.

You can tell a lot about a person from their social media profiles and posts.

Is this satire? The fact that you even specify that you "do not ask for passwords" for social media accounts of potential hires, is sketchy as fuck. I'm sorry for the desperate people that go along with this shit.

I wanted to clarify as there are reports of employers asking for people's social media login credentials (to log in as them and archive/review old/private posts) as a condition for hiring.

I think that's insane and abusive.

Asking to see someone's public webpage isn't.

Do you drive by their home before hiring them? Maybe peek through the windows? Obviously you can’t ask for a key to their house, that would be insane and abusive. But anything you can see from the street is fair game, right?

If I thought that such public information would yield information useful to a hiring decision, relative to the time and resources required to obtain that information, then yes.

The exterior of someone's house isn't useful in hiring. Their thoughts and opinions they choose to publish to the billions on the internet generally are.

I'd say you could learn almost as much about a person by looking at their house as by looking at their profile on the internet (that is until they learn that you will check their house. Once something gets measured it stops being a good way to measure or something like that)

Edit: and I kind of agree with the others.

Do you even have social media accounts yourself? It seems very contradictory coming from someone who announced he is leaving LinkedIn and Twitter

I run a whole-ass BBS, several chat servers, and a mailing list, and have personal websites in the wayback machine going back to the 90s. I am extremely online.

I don't care to what degree you're online, I asked about social media accounts. If you yourself don't have them, it's weird you'd ask others for them.

> I request social media links (not passwords, just profile links) from everyone I'm considering hiring

I don't have a Facebook account, nor Instagram, but would my Fetlife profile be okay?

* If not, why is Fetlife exempt from your idea of what a social-network is?

* If so, what business does my employer have at all seeing my Fetlife account?

* If you decide not to hire me entirely on the basis that I have a Fetlife account then you're opening yourself up to an unlawful discrimination lawsuit.

Not having Facebook or Instagram accounts is a positive hiring signal for me. Having a Fetlife account, regardless of content, is another positive hiring signal for me. (I tend to preferentially hire nonconformists.)

Also, the last point is incorrect: being kinky is not a protected class, and one does not even need to be kinky to be on Fetlife. Not hiring someone because they are on Fetlife isn't protected class discrimination even if their Fetlife profile happened to disclose they are in a protected class. It's a social network like any other.

Interviewing someone opens oneself up to a potential lawsuit, period. Asking for information about a candidate that has nothing to do with membership in a protected class (such as "show me your public websites", which is what such a request amounts to) is no more risk than asking in what city someone went to university (the city for which, for example, could suggest they attended an HBCU). The whole process is fraught with risk; we should not allow that to prevent us from learning a detailed picture about a candidate's lifestyle and character (assiduously avoiding specifically seeking out information associated with protected class membership).

It's already common to ask for a LinkedIn or GitHub profile for hiring certain types of roles. There's no difference asking for Facebook or Instagram or Twitter.

Would you hire a photographer without seeing their Instagram?

It's also entirely legal to discriminate against someone for the specific set of social media services they do or do not have an account on, as long as they aren't serving as a proxy for protected class discrimination (eg ChristianMingle).

All of hiring is a process of discrimination: against the less skilled, less diligent, less suited to a particular job role. More information helps in that process. One has to always be careful to avoid discriminating against protected classes, but most attributes of most people, even outside of the professional sphere, are not protected and are legal and prudent grounds for hiring discrimination.

> There's no difference asking for Facebook or Instagram or Twitter.

LinkedIn is a professional networking - and resume/CV hosting site. Facebook and Instgram are for friends, family, hobbies, and the like. They're worlds apart and it's intellectually dishonest of you to equate them.

> Would you hire a photographer without seeing their Instagram?

No, I wouldn't. Instagram isn't Flickr, deviantArt, nor their professional portfolio.

> They're worlds apart and it's intellectually dishonest of you to equate them.

Absolutely not; public webpages are public webpages. What someone chooses to publish, and where, is an important measure of their personality and attitude.

Facebook profiles aren't necessarily public. If I have a private Facebook account that's reserved solely for family matters, what right do you as a prospective employer have to expect to see it?

- I see your point is based on the notion that "if it's public in one space, you intend for it to be public in all spaces in your life" - but that's an incorrect assumption: Fetlife profiles aren't "public" (insofar as Google can't see them), and I don't have my real-life name on it, and I certainly don't intend to share it with anyone whom I want to maintain a strict separation from my private life.

Am I not entitled to a private life? What right do you have to enter my private life?

Can I see your Fetlife account? Can I see inside your house from the street-level windows? Can I bring a ladder to the side of your house and peer into your upstairs bedroom? Where's the limit for you?

As I mentioned, I don't ask for passwords, and I don't have an FB account myself to "friend" anyone. Any information they don't publish to the whole world isn't my concern.

I am talking about public webpages.

As for my Fetlife account, my username is the same there as it is here, and on IRC, and on Wikipedia, and on GitHub, et c.

I have blackout treatments on my windows.

The aptitude for being aware of what is or isn't public/published is something I hire for, too. Then again, I work with data and customers that live and die by such things.

Whatever happened to interviews and CVs? Since when must employers do incursions into private lives of their prospective employees in order to sign off on a hire?

This sounds like a recipe for discrimination claims.

> future employer asks to see some social credentials

So it's no longer enough to just keep your "wrong" opinions to yourself, you have to actually prove that you have the "right" opinions. Enjoy having the right opinions at the moment, I guess - until fashions change, anyway.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the employer is asking about this, it's to make sure that you don't post anything stupid that would get them on the wrong side of the in-group. If you were in this position, your tepid kid and travel photos would get a passing grade.

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