Thread by @WolfieChristl

argyle.com, a US startup that aims to aggregate employment records across employers, including data on work activities and reputation, and sell it to recruiters, lenders, insurers. It claims it has already access to 40m records.

This is terrifying + shouldn't exist.

"The short term objective for Argyle is access to 100% of employment records; the reason for fundraising at this moment is to quicken the date of 100% access"

From the company's "funding memo":
notion.so/Argyle-A-Round…

Argyle has raised $20m+ in funding:
crunchbase.com/organization/a…

"We started with building coverage where Equifax has not - in the gig economy"
notion.so/Argyle-A-Round…

US data brokers have been gathering+selling data on work history/salary for decades, which also shouldn't happen. Argyle's sales pitch suggests they want to go far beyond that.

Argyle claims to have access to 80% of employment records for gig workers, 50% of startup employees, 15% of 'deskless' workers (e.g. Fedex, Walmart, Kroger) and 10% of knowledge workers:
notion.so/Details-Source…

Tbh, this and the claim of 40 million records seem fishy to me.

I don't buy this, perhaps they have very basic records, but.

Anyway, if I get it right, then they plan to offer 'incentives' for sharing employment records rather than harvesting them without people's knowledge, at least in part.

In their sales pitch, they claim:

"It's not that lenders, mortgage underwriters, insurers, banks, and countless other industries don't leverage real-time access to employment records because they don't find it valuable - it's because until now it has not been possible"

And:

"Similar to how Plaid changed the fintech industry by opening up access to financial institutions, Argyle is doing the same with employee databases. Argyle ... maintains a live data feed to the systems these employers use to manage employment records"

If sharing employment records against incentives and bonuses became the norm and inevitable, this would, in combination with the existing credit and risk scoring infrastructure, lead to a system that is much worse than the worst misunderstandings of China's social credit system.

"With Argyle, we believe [payday lenders and gig work insurers] can reinvent themselves by leveraging ongoing, real-time transparency into an individual's work activity"
notion.so/Real-Time-Work…

Really, this is just totally evil.

No policy based on individual 'choice' will prevent this.

Possible fixes:

1) ban companies like Argyle from processing this data for this purpose

2) ban companies from asking ppl for this data for this purpose

3) ban companies from using it for profiling and decision-making