[ghaff]

>That brings up another issue, that employment background checks are increasingly checking social media posts for "questionable" activity.

Honestly, can you blame them in the current climate? If they can find something that is seriously questionable (I leave the definition of that to the reader), anyone else can too. And no company wants either internal dissent or an external PR hit because someone they hired ranted online about something that's outside the scope of "civilized" discourse as determined by the standards of the arbiters of appropriate public discussion.

[RonanTheGrey]

You're exactly right... In fact there is a girl on Twitter with a very large following (>800k) who spends all her time hunting down people on social media who have ever in their lives said anything that could be construed as "seriously questionable" (whose definition changes according to the times).

She's gotten incoming freshman kicked out of the colleges they were accepted to. Fired from their jobs. Businesses closed. Dozens and possibly hundreds of them. She's literally dedicated herself to destroying lives.

This is precisely why that although the 1st Amendment only specifically mentions government limits on laws regarding free speech, that free speech MUST ALSO be a cultural value that is protected and defended FIRST and the content of the speech judged SECOND.

People love to say "you are free to speak but we never said there's no consequences!!" as though that's some sort of ace in the hole. Well, sorry folks, but it isn't free speech if you are able to ensure I can never make a living for the rest of my life. The law generously limits what is illegal speech, and certain kinds of hate speech are included.

"I may disagree with every word you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" MUST be a social value for "free speech" and especially the 1st Amendment to have any meaning at all.

[ghaff]

In general, I'm very happy that I couldn't publish to the Internet unfiltered until long after I internalized "Never say or write anything in public that you wouldn't want to appear on the front page of the newspaper." I pretty much stay away from politics online, especially on anything like twitter that is public--especially any opinions that are nuanced and easily misconstrued.

I do have good professional reasons to be on twitter and I honestly don't have much inclination to have political arguments there. If I did, I'd probably get another pseudonymous handle but even that carries some risk that it could be connected to you in some way.

[kyuudou]

You make excellent points. I do not envy hiring managers, that's for sure. How to combine respect for privacy and freedom of expression with protecting a company from undeserved harm? Maybe this the problem LinkedIn was trying to solve until it became a giant spam ground for annoying recruiters and influencer wannabes.

[kyuudou]

And this is my axe to grind - that these people exist and just one misconstrued, out-of-context quote and boom, career is over.

And the degree to which this social-media-background-check crap goes - just see a recent entry from jwz's blog about this[1]. I had little idea things had gone that far already.

Sure, play stupid games/get stupid prizes but we are all human and go through phases of self-discovery. Turning social media into a saccharine, superficial cat pics trading ground where everyone is fearful of losing friendships over, say, well-intentioned analysis and opinions seems like a pathetic outcome for humanity overall. Not to mention how easy it is to miss sarcasm or other thought subtleties that can't be easily conveyed on international multimedia social networks.

I agree with others who say HN is a refreshing exception to the toxic mess that is social media, though.

1:https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/02/enjoy-your-dystopia/

[stallmanite]

So who is this horrible girl on Twitter who’s destroying lives? Surely naming names in this case would be justified.

[RonanTheGrey]

More than likely doxxing is against the rules here but her first name is Skai and shares a last name with a famous singer. Not hard to find.