I'm not sure what you mean about the photos thing, but there is obviously a benefiting party from the digital background checks. People can get a sense of folks they might date, and potentially avoid dangerous situations. It sucks that that hurts you (assuming your criminal record is not one that people ought to consider dangerous -- if it is, I'm really not sure what to say). But there is a huge group of people that benefit from the increased safety potentially offered by the ability to check up on potential dating partners.
Or, to put it succinctly, why does your interest in hiding your past outweigh the interest of others to know who they are dealing with?
In terms of Social - Look at youtube videos with millions of views, people spending more time than ever reading about celebrities every ten minutes instead of people around them. Before internet people look at celebrities once a day during their TV sessions, and even before that, only listen about them on radio.
And because people's attention is generally a zero-sum pie, without taking into account population growth, people who weren't good at attracting attention to begin with will lose out.
Not sure. Some seem to benefit small groups while having negative consequences for the larger groups.
Say you do a background check on a promising candidate and they have a felony. You may automatically pass on them. Even if they don't, you're branded as a risk for ever.
Let's say you murdered someone and you e done your time. You're a risk. Maybe it was a crime of passion, but you're more liable to do again than someone who has never done it. So, pass.
While it makes sense from a cold, society level view, what is that person supposed to do if they really want to rehabilitate? Start an online ebay business I suppose...
Build trust - it will literally take years, or even decades, but with time and effort you can earn the trust of the person in front of you, and build from there.
A quote from Diogenes:
When some one said, "Most people laugh at you," his reply was, "And so very likely do the asses at them; but as they don't care for the asses, so neither do I care for them."
I found some people who felt like me by doing that, and we became better friends then I think most normal people ever do.
However, where we could escape the confines of the small-town community by moving to the city or even further away, nowadays even moving to the other side of the world isn't going to help much any more unless you find someplace off the grid. It is something to worry about.
Maybe changing your name might work, though, as long as Internet search engines aren't smart enough to connect your new name to your old one that's plastered all over the Internet.
What? People do this?
To the OP though - if you have a serious criminal record you're going to have to disclose that up front. That's the way it is these days, and as the majority of people don't have a criminal record at all, it's not going to change. You can hardly blame them, as past behaviour is an excellent guide to future behaviour.
Oh really. What a very shallow view of things.
Now, as for causality, the more social and economic opportunities you withhold from ex-felons - never allowing them to vote, continually expanding the scope declaration requirements, etc. - the more attractive an option recidivism into criminal activity becomes, in proportion to the degree to which you discount their likely future contribution to society. Put another way, if there's no benefits on offer for going and staying on the straight-and-narrow, then why bother?
The belief you're expressing is known as the 'fundamental attribution error' - a tendency to overestimate the explanatory power of inherent characteristics and discount the role of circumstances. This is no wiser than taking the view that everyone is fundamentally good and that they're mindlessly conditioned by social factors.
As far as I'm aware, there's not any conclusive data to show that rehabilitative approaches are much better for recidivism. I'm in favor of the state doing whatever it can to make a more peaceful society. But that does not extend to assuming in my personal life that treating felons as if they were not makes them equally safe to people not already known to have committed serious crimes.
Ah, downvotes for supplying actual research, gotta love it.
This sort of thinking has historically led to a lot of problems. It is also trivially false. For example, the United States would be a perfectly peaceful place if all Americans were dead. Would you implement such a solution?
Assuming a society must consist of humans, a peaceful society depends on the existence of a society and thus the existence of humans, so you can't just kill everyone.
And if you would, good on ya. You can be the one to give everyone second chances.
And I think that the inverse is what creates the whole US mess with huge incarceration rates and a doomed black population...
"Tell the truth, because sooner or later the public will find out anyway. And if the public doesn't like what you are doing, change your policies and bring them into line with what people want."
* Do not have a background myself but I have a family member who does and has been through all of this. He has a loving family, is a brilliant man, and it is very unfortunate he still can't get a job (or at least hold on to) worth anything.
You could always meet them face to face and, if you're not comfortable with your past, you need to find a way to be so that you can sell that "the past is past" to those potential partners. Convince yourself in order to convince others.
And then they're released back into the general population, expected to be upstanding, rehabilitated citizens that want to (and can?) contribute back to society.
I think that such a crime does not merit being placed on a list that is presumed to be comprised of rapists and child predators.
All I was saying is that these individuals are now part of a permanent underclass. This after they've supposedly "paid" their debt to society by serving their allotted jail sentence.
Whether there should be a registry for sex offenders, or anything else. That's a really big, and complicated problem, though.
How can someone who suffers from a pretty serious criminal record ever feel comfortable meeting new potential partners who will almost surely run a background check and discover unsavory things that really cannot be explained away?
I ask these question because I live them every day.
Self-esteem and confidence about your looks is the elephant-in-the-room here. I often feel Social is like welfare for the rich.
The people whom benefit the most are perhaps the same ones whom need it the least.