Popular Culture Review 30.1
teria applied by the algorithm affects each of these protected classes cannot be ignored , and those coming from a marketing background may not understand the legal ramifications for certain criteria . Imagine a potential employer is heading into a very busy year and does not want to risk losing any of its new hires to maternity leave . Adding a variable to exclude any applicants who have used pregnancy in their social media posts , or who have searched for fertility treatments , could quickly lead to a Title VII violation if discovered . What if the criteria , similar to those used in the Target Pregnancy Prediction Score , were used to exclude applicants ? Employees could be excluded from consideration due to pregnancy who either had no idea they were pregnant , or had no intention of becoming pregnant but had preferences that corresponding to the algorithms expectations .
People living with disabilities are especially at risk . Many innocuous behaviors can show a correlation with mental illness . For instance , academic research has shown that certain patterns of usage of social media platforms can be related to mood disorders . 42 In 2014 , The Samaritans , a British Suicide-Prevention group , developed an application that would notify users when someone they followed on Twitter posted certain phrases that indicated they might be at risk of killing themselves . 43 While the application was later disabled over privacy and stalking concerns , it highlighted the ability for a potentially employer to review a person ’ s entire social media history and develop a profile of an employee ’ s potential mental illness . If a machine can determine , or think it can determine if certain social media posting patterns correlate with heightened absenteeism or desire to change jobs , 44 an employee could experience a loss of promotion or preemptive disciplinary behavior without any understanding of why . For existing employees , the EEOC has offered guidance on
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