Users ditch Glassdoor, stunned by site adding real names without consent
Anonymous review site Glassdoor now consults public sources to identify users.
That's a fantastically efficient way to destroy their business. There's no way to get honest reviews of employers from employees who know their identities will be exposed whether they consent or not. Doesn't even matter if the review is after leaving that job, future employers can go nosing too.
Absolute techbro-brane gold.
This is what happens right before the major money holders abandon ship. There’s no way they don’t know this is business-suicide. I bet they got a big payday from some companies that paid Glassdoor to shoot itself in the face!
Good way to get yourself blackballed from the industry if you give a bad complaint from previous employer.
A former employer actually did send lawyers after me for a bad Glassdoor review. The dumb thing is that it wasn't even my review.
This is beyond stupid.
Welcome to the point of the change. Kill off the liabilty & associated damages.
Doesnt matter if the facts are true. In fact it matters more if they are!
I expect their logic is their review "curation" racket is a sideshow and the real money is selling information to agencies and sales companies.
I just went in and manually edited my display name to my previous asshole of a boss. Two can play this game. If they want to get rid of anonymous content, then let them deal with poisoned content.
😂 Awesome
Oh shit, that’s good.
This is the way
I put a review up for my previous employer a while back. My whole profile uses fake data. Even in my review, since it would be very obvious who I was, I was light on details and generalized as much as I could and used false dates for when I was hired/left.
Exactly how do Glassdoor expect people to give earnest reviews of their employers (which is literally the core of their business) if those people can't trust Glassdoor to not to throw them under the bus when they give honest reviews of malicious employers?
Talk about sabotaging your own business model - idiots.
The anonymity was the whole point to that site.
Exactly how do Glassdoor expect people to give earnest reviews of their employers
They don't. The enshitification has begun and they only care about short-term profits now that they've built up a user base.
earnest reviews of their employers (which is literally the core of their business
I don't understand the need for a site like this. I just assume that my employer is going to suck in standard corporate suck fashion.
There's the normal suck, then there's "I (been there 12 years) got passed up for promotion to replace my boss who retired because the owner's nephew who worked with us for a few years (sucked and "volentarely" left 6 years ago) decided their cyptoscheme wasn't working out and needed a job, and that was the highest one paying one avalible."
Or the "Sally got verably harassed dailiy and they did nothing because the harrasser has been there 30 years. 'He's just an old man in his early 50s, older gentlemen call ladies nicknames like sweetcakes, honey, or cutie all the time. They also like to rub peoples shoulders to show affec to help relive the tension and promote a healthier work environment' "
I've had a couple of good jobs where I was treated well and compensated well all around. Companies like that would be glad to have reviews from happy employees visible to the public on a trustworthy review site.
Some are much more capable of disguising it during the interview process.
In the tech industry around the pandemic there was the great resignation and companies were tripping over themselves to employ as many people as possible. It was great then because you had so many options and they were all seemingly similar job descriptions.
Now the site is shitty and getting a job is terrible. Woo capitalism!
It has its uses. And one bad employer can really mess you up for a while. It takes a lot of effort to have a low score on that site.
Because it's worth knowing beforehand what a company is really like behind closed doors.
Some companies are great, some suck in standard corporate fashion, but there are some out there that are exceptional in sucking...
I'll use myself an example... the last company I worked for, our team was constantly given deadlines that were impossible to meet within work hours. The company basically refused to pay for what was essentially mandatory overtime required to catch up - wage theft by a different name.
Fortunately my role allowed me to push back, but most of peers didn't - we were all straight out of university, some needed the money/job, but most just didn't know how to fight in the corporate environment.
Not to mention that a few folks who did try to complain against the company conveniently found themselves fired for some miscellaneous breaches of contract. From what I heard, one was even fired based on their reaction to being told they were being dismissed - quite literally entrapment.
If you're wondering why we didn't sue or anything like that, again we were all straight out of uni, we barely knew what our working rights were...
Which is why Glassdoor was important - it was how most of these folks got word out about the company and tried to warn other potential candidates of what they were walking into.
The company knew about it too because they posted multiple fake reviews to try to drown out the real ones. I know for a fact that if they were able to find out who posted these, they would have retaliated, likely in the form of litigation.
Glassdoor "may update your Profile with information we obtain from third parties"
Imagine Reddit does this next lmao one day you open up and all your real life social media are linked to your u/Lick_My_Fuckhole profile, your coworkers see you as "people you may know" on their profiles. Neat
Oh wow, that’s dangerous.
Yikes
This is one of the most obvious potential cases of purposeful sabatoge. They were probably bribed by other big businesses to destroy their reputation so people would stop using the site.
There's nothing businesses hate more than their workers having negotiating power, and wage transparency gives them more power than they had before. There's a reason why it's considered "rude" in the US to discuss wages with co-workers; I always make a point to discuss my wage with all of my co-workers, since it's illegal for businesses to prevent that discussion.
In most other countries, it's the norm to openly discuss your wages; unions are also more common in other countries. It's just standard toxic workplace cultures trying to prevent people from getting paid what they're worth, or god forbid, forming a union.
In what countries is it custom to openly discuss salary? In Germany and most if not all countries I’ve been to professionally it is not the norm. This is of course bad for transparency/employees and good for employers.
Germany has a principle of equal treatment. The only way to ensure this is respected is to discuss wages. There is a legal precedent that makes it completely unambiguous that discussing wages is protected. It may be uncomfortable, but that's just social pressure, encouraged by companies.
Where I live we don't really discuss salaries and I think that mostly comes down to society being tricked into believing it's a bad thing. However our national statistics agency has made salary statistics public, which means anyone easily check their salary range and see if they're being underpaid. I actually prefer that to discussing with co-workers because you end up getting a much better picture of your industry.
From the article that they acquired a professional social networking app so their intention is clearly to be like LinkedIn - real names, links, career history, "social". They want to monetize that information to sell to recruiters and salesmen.
So basically they're nakedly greedy and they continue to suck. I thought LinkedIn was awful but Glassdoor is a whole new level of awful.
Do you know when it became illegal to ban salary discussions in the US? All the companies I have worked for recently have mentioned it not being allowed at some point.
You cannot prevent your employees from discussing wages. It is literally illegal to do so, and you cannot reprimand people for doing so.
Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or the Act), employees have the right to communicate with their coworkers about their wages, as well as with labor organizations, worker centers, the media, and the public. Wages are a vital term and condition of employment, and discussions of wages are often preliminary to organizing or other actions for mutual aid or protection.
If you are an employee covered by the Act, you may discuss wages in face-to-face conversations, over the phone, and in written messages. Policies that specifically prohibit the discussion of wages are unlawful as are policies that chill employees from discussing their wages.
You may have discussions about wages when not at work, when you are on break, and even during work if employees are permitted to have other non-work conversations. You have these rights whether or not you are represented by a union.
https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/your-rights-to-discuss-wages
It's not illegal. It's frown upon both socially and at the work culture. It makes people uncomfortable.
Doesn't mean you shouldn't. Ripping farts is frowned upon/makes people uncomfortable too.
Man, people love to make up conspiracy theories.
The article explains the motivation, which is also bad and plausible. There's no need to pull stuff out of your ass to explain it too.
While I see what you are seeing, I think people will just move to the next startup.
Also by Occam’s razor, don’t explain with malice what you can explain with stupidity
There is also the growing difficulty of disseminating real information from false information, but that should have been more the reviewed company's problem than Glassdoor.
Or
Think about it for more than 1 second.
They’ve been sued for liable.
Or
They’re being shit and creating a new revenue stream because constant growth and bonuses
Or
Read the article
It seems as though nobody in this thread actually read the article. They are not revealing user names on the site. The objection here is having the real name as part of your private profile data, in case of a future data breach. It’s a real concern, but orders of magnitude less serious than what everybody is assuming.
Shame on Ars for the misleading clickbait headline.
Agree that it's misleading, but to add there is another significant concern given how glassdoor is already "pay to win" from the companies perspective: they could just offer identifying the users as a paid service.
It would be digging their own grave if that starts happening, but that doesn't seem to be stopping many companies..
You mean digging it even deeper than they already did with this?
They are not revealing user names on the site.
You mean, "They are not currently revealing user names on the site." This may easily be the first temperature increment in a frog-boiling process.
(Cynical? Yes, but the world keeps reinforcing that attitude.)
Agreed, but the article title implies that they are in fact currently revealing names, which is just not the case.
I'm more concerned that the company decided it was OK to meld the "From:" line of her email (asking for support) into her profile. If they think that's an appropriate way to handle PII, I don't trust them.
What they’re actually doing is super shady, and reason enough to cause concern without exaggerating.
It's not that, its the risk they could get subpoenaed and then they have to turn over the CSVs that could identify users inadvertently.
Financial institutions who are currently having data breaches. This is the worst time to couple PII data So tightly.
The moment Glassdoor gets hacked, it'll be absolute shit show for whistleblowers.
Highly recommend at least trying to poison your data before deactivating/deleting; they have some legalese that gives them a workaround to keep things to an extent
Note: When you close your account, you will no longer have full access to salaries, reviews, or interviews. Any content you have shared will be removed from the display on the site, but we reserve the right to keep any information in a closed account in our archives that we deem necessary to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. For more information, review our Privacy & Cookie Policy.
You also need to be careful when deleting your account - when you do, they'll send you a "there was an issue with your request" email that tries to get you to register again by prompting you to "log in" to fix it. The log in is creating a password for a new account.
Really? Wild
True, but keep in mind they likely have backups of everything. If you do this all at once it will probably be noticed and they might just roll it all back when you are gone. Case in point, reddit. If you do this slowly maybe it will stay, not sure.
I've never seen much reason to use a real name on Glassdoor. They demand visitors sign up to see information, and every logon it demands more details. So I am glad I used a throwaway account and I expect many others did too, or filled it in with junk. I hope their database is poisoned with garbage. I'm sure they will continue to turn the screws - using a mobile device? You MUST use our app etc. I hope people realise that LinkedIn already sucks and here is something even worse moving into the same space.
I wanted to leave a review a while back but when they asked for my name I figured with so many data breaches it was going to get revealed at some point, it's ridiculous they did it on purpose tho
I did the same thing twice.
Two different employers that really deserve to be absolutely thrashed but as soon as I got to the point where it was asking me my true identity I realized there was no hope it wouldn't come back to bite me in the long run.
I understand why in their business model they want to be able to verify employment. I'd even say it's reasonable. But the Privacy implications of it are just too tremendous and they I've never been practically or systemically trustworthy.
And knowing this about them means they aren't a reliable place to be warned off of a bad employer either. The primary purpose of their site is completely undermined by this bad policy.
Thanks, deleted my account
Deleted my account and then made up a fictional worker with AI who works at Glassdoor in their Albuquerque location making $5mil/year as an intern and bitching about how the pay isn't great.
Same. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Everyone thinking this was a business blunder... People got paid a lot of money to kill this site. It served in its own small way, to give workers a bit of power in relation to employers and that was unacceptable.
Yeah, this reeks of generic neoliberal sabotage to me. They do the same thing with unions and political parties. If anything is a potential threat to profits, it's infiltrated and undermined.
There's simply no way that a team focused on employee rights does something like this. Everybody working there would definitely be aware that companies routinely try to identify and punish people for their posts. That alone would end any non-malicious plans for using real names.
What possible reason could Glassdoor have invented to convince themselves this is a good idea?
Would you believe a social network?
Yes, companies will use that to justify anything
Bribery
Shit for brains manglement.
It's called an "MBA" and they are the tip of the enshitification spear
Aaand there goes another service again, which I've never used and now will probably never even think about using.
This kind of thing is what has always kept me from using Blind as well.
A site used to talk shit about your current employor that has a registration process that requires you to hand out your work email, and they pinky promise not to ever provide that to anyone?
No thanks, even if they would never do it on purpose, they are one good breach away from it getting out anyway.
Iirc the way that blind works is by verifying you work at a specific company but then that email address cannot be used again.
It's not associated with your specific account.
Someone who worked at blind explained that but there's no way to know this for sure.
PSA to use fake info for just about every site you ever sign up for. Never offer PII unless you absolutely have to like with the bank or IRS.
I have about 5 or 6 aliases, full blown characters that live in my head, each with different names, addresses and backstories that I use. Even they lie about their personal circumstances sometimes. For example, on LinkedIn, John Longson works at Longson and Longson consulting, but he's the only employee, and he actually just works at a thrift store with a side hustle of selling second hand clothes on etsy under an alias.
If I need to fudge info, I tend to put it into a password database's "notes" field for easier note-keeping, FWIW.
Not a full-on identity, but bits of info like stated name, address, etc.
Where's rusty shackleford work?
This is good.
I like to use password managers to make up names.
If I am feeling spicy. It is me. Imene Shayma. (A joke. Follow the link.)
I guess that's one strategy but that's too much work for me. I just pay for unique email forwarding addresses to my main email and use fakenamegenerator.com for filling out fake PII. Also a password manager is key
Sound advice, but if this article is any indication, corporate web2 now anticipates garbage. The junk presumably gets backfilled with their best attempt at quality data where it can be found. It true, it invites potential contributors to think carefully about their opsec.
Glassdoor is little more than a shakedown service like Yelp or Tripadvisor. It looks superficially useful but the real purpose is to suck information out of users to monetize, and extort businesses for $$$ for review "curation".
Glass door used to be interesting, but this site is total trash now. You can’t do anything without creating an account and filling out a bunch of shit. That site is basically a dark pattern hall of fame.
They probably really crippled the long term growth of that company by making stupid short term greedy decisions that killed the user experience and scared people away.
Just as venture capitalism demands.
Its almost as if they got bought out by a company that didnt want workers to have an opinion
One job.
🎶 I don't know why
It doesn't even matter
how hard you try
Keep that in mind,
glassdoor was designed
To help employees in due time
all I know
data is a valuable thing
Watch our users fly by as enshittification swings
Watch it pile out to our IPO
The clock ticks money away 🎶
Interesting.
I signed up for GD with a semi-throwaway email account - not an actual throwaway, but it’s not tied to my real identity, not used for anything but spammy sites where I didn’t want to give them my info. Every site got a made up name.
Wonder what name they’ll slap on the account when they try to farm “my” data from a broker.
I lie shamelessly to companies when signing up these days. They get fake DoBs, names, aliased emails, fake addresses, phones, the lot. Let them out that data on my profile without consent, hopefully they aren't going to expend resources to penetrate that veil.
They dont even have to pay to expend resources. People will buy that shit, sort through it, then sell it to turn a profit. The advertising industry is a cancer to the human race.
Morgan Freeman voiceover...
They did.
Butts McGee strikes again
Killroy WasHere
I guess that cinches it. If I ever want to sign up for an adult site, they’re going to know me as “Seymour Butts.”
I mean that site has always been pretty shady and likely has had paid review removals for years, but wow, that is honestly a next-level fuckup.
Are there any good alternatives to Glassdoor? The website and app were already hot UX garbage as it is so difficult to find salaries in other countries and figure out the currency without it bugging out frequently.
There is Blind (I think by Team Blind).
Blind is full of the shittiest coworkers you didn’t know you had, so take it with a grain of salt
I just went in and manually edited my display name to my previous asshole of a boss. Two can play this game. If they want to get rid of anonymous content, then let them deal with poisoned content.
Team Blind is decent, at least in the tech sector.
You quoted the wrong/other comment
What a breathtakingly stupid decision. Can't wait to see how it pans out for them.
If i understand this right, glassdoor is for anonymous tips/rating of emploers/working conditions?
Would that work as a Lemmy community?
The search and thread managment would be a nightmare, no? You'd need a thread for every company (larger ones needing multiple split by department or location).
There's probably a hundred business with in a mile of me. Even if you splinter communities by location, the search would be difficult.
Yes. Let's start it!
By Lemmy standards I'm perversely unconcerned with my privacy. But I just updated all my glassdoor info to wildly incorrect stuff (name, location, industry, job title, etc) then deleted it. Even for me this is a bridge too far.
Mike Hawk, CEO of Nunya
Luke Skywalker, Chief Financial Officer of Initech
Operation Market Garden is still paying for its failure after all these years.
I didn’t input my employer, so they just pull my email domain and it says like “Project Manager at MyEmailDomain” in my profile now. What a load of horse shit.
i genuinely cannot believe that people use their real info on these sites. Actually fucking stupid.
According to the article, people generally don't use their real info on this site, but the site is making dubious inferences that allow them to pull the info from other sources to auto-populate the 'real' fields in their site.
That's even worse. I bet there are tons of false positives and people facing consequences at job for bad reviews Glassdoor thinks they wrote.
ah yes, this definitely is legal, and will continue to be legal. I'm sure.
This cannot possibly be legal in Europe.
Account deleted. I'd love to see the exodus data trends from this decision.
I just deleted mine too.
All I have in mine is my email address. The rest is made up garbage
seems like they have legal work around . fuck them honestly.
Remember when YouTube had a use full real name policy? Arguing it would improve comment quality and would stop harassment etc. Yeah, didn't quite work out at all and thankfully they let the policy fizzle.
Also Blizzard "real ID" lol
This is the best summary I could come up with:
(Ars will only refer to Monica by her first name so that she can speak freely about her experience using Glassdoor to review employers.)
Although it's common for many online users to link services at sign-up to Facebook or Gmail accounts to verify identity and streamline logins, for years, Glassdoor has notably allowed users to sign up for its service anonymously.
The EFF regularly defends Glassdoor users from being unmasked by retaliating employers.
She decided to go through with a data erasure request, which Glassdoor estimated could take up to 30 days.
In the meantime, her name remained on her profile, where it wasn't publicly available to employers but it could be used to link her to job reviews if Glassdoor introduced a bug in an update or data was ever breached, she feared.
"No one has the ability to see your user profile and the contents within it, meaning no one, including your employer, will be able to see your details," Glassdoor's employee wrote.
The original article contains 586 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Went to my glass door app to check and the first question was "what is your name? First last?"
Don't worry they auto-fill it for you**
** Don't ask how they already know.
John Doe
Just deleted my account. I hardly used it anyway, so good job pushing me off the edge Glassdoor.
I did a CCPA data deletion request. Fuckers.
What is this and how is it done?
California Consumer Privacy Act. It gives consumers the right to tell companies to delete all data they have about you.
For glassdoor, that option is here, in their privacy requests page. Note the language "request" is just politeness for California residents - they must by law delete this info. While it's only the law for California residents, it looks like Glassdoor offers this option to everyone.
Did Glassdoor somehow force users to use their real names on the site?
They were automatically updating their profiles with info from 3rd party sources. This resulted in personal information being displayed without consent or warning, and wild inaccuracies like updating a profile to say a man was based in london when he was still very much in california
That's too bad, it saved me from a few toxic work places
I take it as stage 2 of enshittification?
Seriously. Facebook for corporate dickholes turns to shit. Who knew
Wait, what happened to LinkedIn?
Is this a US change as im not seeing names in the UK version
Hilarious anyone would put their name into something autonomous