It's even harder to tell them apart in a bear market where the job market is stacked in favor of employers (for the moment).

With the current glut of laid off engineering talent in the hiring pool, if an employer cannot find a candidate, they are not really serious about hiring. Yes, there's more filtering involved now, but you can't say that the candidates don't exist.

Maybe, but it's too hard to distinguish between the jobs that were posted with intention to not be filled and jobs that were posted with intention to be filled but through other circumstances weren't. So the distinction is moot.

It's a lot like this website. It used to be pretty obvious which comments were trolls and which are real people but more and more the people have gotten dumber and the trolls gotten smarter so it's almost impossible to tell the difference between maliciousness and stupidity and for the rest of us it doesn't really matter one way or the other. A person wasting our time is a person wasting our time, the intentions aren't important.

> So the distinction is moot.

From the perspective of an applicant's emotional response, sure, but it's absolutely relevant in order to have a conversation about how to solve it since the different causes may need different approaches, or may occur in sufficiently differing rates to influence which should be addressed first.

The distinction is also moot from perspective of an individuals's time being cavalierly wasted by a large corporation.

Just wait until you start thinking about dating.

But if we’re claiming fraud, either way the intent is actually the deciding factor. You can’t commit fraud without a guilty mind (mens rea)- at least in any jurisdiction I’m aware of.

Modern dating sucks, but at least half the time there's a real human on the other side that isn't a corporation trying to sell me something.

And yes, that's what audits are for. To deduce intent by investigating from within, something we could never do.

nah, fake profiles are a huge problem. depending on the site, it could easily be 1 to 5 real:fake or more.

I did say 1 in 2 weren't bots. I wouldn't say that's great in any measure when your goal is some form of companionship.

A fine large enough to make bad job postings (genuine or not) unprofitable is fine. We don't need reducto ad absurdum here.

Just make businesses put thought into their postings and not let someone who has no idea of the qualifications right them up themselves.

There is nothing wrong with reductor ad absurdum to make a point about dependency and categories. It is the primary use case.

I think there are a million practical challenges to implementing a fine. I wonder if there is enough incentives to draw employers to a verified list service.

Sure there is, it's in the name. We don't need an absurd argument for a punishment that is straightforward to explain. You usually use absurdum to simplify complex topics.

Or I suppose to win a presidential debate, these days.

I brought it up because people seemed genuinely confused on the idea that job listing background could matter for one person and not for another.

Of course it is subjective until you introduce a context.

Every posting needs to have an honest attempt to fill it. I don't know the exact numbers, but if there 1000 applicants per posting and you end up reposting your job 4 times, there's clearly something amiss.this overlap of 1-4000 applications and not one of them are worth a call? Even if we accept 90% is spam, that's still hundreds of candidates in a "recruiters market" being passed over.

The challenge of course is that ‘I just didn’t like them’ is a valid form of discrimination.

So while it may be obviously bullshit (what, you can’t find anyone you actually like out of thousands?), it takes a non trivial amount of paperwork right now to prove it’s bullshit to the degree you could actually punish anyone for it. Especially with the recent administration change.

Yeah, the usual product of excessive greed. It's on the exploited to prove stuff with info they don't have access to. At least Lina Khan gave voided non-competes before capitalism took the reigns again.