Introduction
Information systems often create value by reducing search costs, accelerating decisions, and giving organizations access to data that was previously difficult to obtain. They also create new ethical responsibilities because technological capability can expand faster than rules about fairness, privacy, and accountability. Two apparently different cases illustrate this tension. The first concerns employers who search the internet and social media for information about job applicants. The second concerns streaming technology and the disruption of the physical video-rental industry. In both cases, information becomes easier to collect, analyze, and distribute, but the resulting efficiency changes who controls data and who bears the risk of error.
Employer screening is not ethical merely because information is publicly visible, and streaming is not important merely because consumers no longer need to visit a rental store. Online screening can expose protected characteristics, old mistakes, misinformation, and private-context material that has little relationship to job performance (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2026). Streaming transformed an entire value chain by replacing local physical inventory with digital infrastructure, subscription models, behavioral data, global distribution, and algorithmic recommendations, illustrating how information systems can redesign end-to-end business processes rather than merely automate existing steps (Van der Aalst et al., 2016). These cases therefore show why management should evaluate both the strategic value of information systems and the safeguards that should govern their use (Pearlson et al., 2016).
Internet Screening in Employment Decisions
Employers may review résumés, references, education, employment history, professional profiles, criminal records where lawful, and other background information. Some also search public social-media accounts, blogs, photographs, news reports, or online comments. Such a search can reveal genuinely relevant information, including a public professional portfolio, false credential claims, disclosure of confidential employer information, or credible public threats. It can also reveal religion, race, disability, age, pregnancy, family circumstances, political activity, sexual orientation, and other information that should not become hidden hiring criteria (Federal Trade Commission, 2026).
The ethical question is therefore not whether an employer can physically find information. It is whether the search has a legitimate purpose, is consistently applied, is reasonably related to the position, uses accurate information, and complies with applicable law. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission states that employers may consider background information, including social-media information, but may not obtain or use it in a manner that produces unlawful discrimination. The same standards must be applied regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, religion, disability, genetic information, or age where federal protections apply.
This makes informal curiosity a poor basis for screening. If one hiring manager searches every candidate while another searches only candidates who seem unfamiliar or “suspicious,” applicants are exposed to different levels of scrutiny. A defensible policy should specify which jobs are subject to online review, when the review occurs, which sources may be used, who performs it, which findings are relevant, and how disputed information can be addressed.
Privacy, Relevance, and Accuracy
Public visibility does not erase context. People often communicate online for a particular audience, and a photograph or joke created years earlier may later appear in a very different setting. Employers should avoid attempts to bypass privacy controls, impersonate other people, pressure applicants for passwords, or collect private information unrelated to the job. Even where a particular search is legally permissible, unnecessary intrusion may still be ethically difficult to justify.
Job relevance should be the central filter. A professional publication, evidence of work product, or a public disclosure of confidential business material may be relevant to employment. A lawful political opinion, family photograph, religious event, or ordinary social activity usually does not demonstrate whether a person can perform the job. Employers should be especially cautious about turning personal lifestyle preferences into moral-character tests unrelated to actual duties.
Accuracy is equally important. Names are not unique, accounts can be impersonated, photographs can be misidentified, satire can be taken literally, and old allegations can remain searchable after being corrected or dismissed. Search engines rank visibility, not truth. Before adverse information influences a decision, identity and source should be verified and the applicant should have a reasonable opportunity to explain an apparent inconsistency.
Time also matters. A foolish adolescent post should not necessarily determine an adult applicant’s future. A fair process considers seriousness, frequency, age at the time, evidence of later behavior, and relevance to current responsibilities. Otherwise, digital permanence can turn ordinary human development into permanent punishment.
FCRA, Discrimination, and Automated Screening
When an employer uses a third-party company that is in the business of compiling background information, the Fair Credit Reporting Act may apply. Federal Trade Commission guidance explains that employers using covered consumer reports for employment decisions generally must provide a stand-alone disclosure, obtain written authorization, and follow required procedures before and after taking adverse action based on the report. Applicants must receive relevant notices and an opportunity to review information that may have affected the decision.
Antidiscrimination responsibilities apply regardless of whether information is obtained from a formal report or another source. A company cannot apply different background standards to candidates because of protected characteristics. Even a facially neutral practice may create legal problems if it disproportionately excludes a protected group without being job-related and consistent with business necessity. The practical lesson is that “we found it online” is not an adequate decision rule.
Automated screening adds further risk. Vendors may offer systems that score language, personality, social-media activity, or supposed behavioral risk. Such models can misread dialect, humor, quotation, activism, or cultural differences and may generate conclusions that are difficult for applicants to challenge. Employers remain responsible for employment decisions even when a vendor supplies the technology. A system should therefore be validated for the actual job purpose, tested for bias and accessibility, limited to necessary data, and subject to human review.
A strong governance model separates the search function from the final hiring decision where feasible. A trained reviewer can screen out protected or irrelevant information and provide only verified, job-related findings to the decision-maker. This reduces the chance that a hiring manager will unconsciously rely on information that should never have influenced the decision.
How Streaming Transformed Video Rental
The traditional video-rental model depended on physical stores, local inventory, tapes or discs, membership accounts, due dates, and return trips. Customers selected from titles physically available at the location and paid per rental or under a membership structure. Streaming replaced the physical transfer of a copy with remote access to data delivered through broadband networks. This change removed several transaction costs at once: travel, shelf availability, physical handling, late returns, and the need for a separate disc for each simultaneous rental.
Digitization and compression made this transformation technically practical. Video must be encoded so that acceptable quality can be transmitted at manageable data rates. Adaptive streaming can adjust quality to network conditions, while content-delivery networks place copies of popular material closer to viewers to reduce congestion and delay. The operational center of the business therefore moved from local stores and physical stock toward software, servers, licensing, cloud infrastructure, network capacity, and cybersecurity.
Connected devices accelerated adoption. Personal computers were followed by smartphones, tablets, smart televisions, streaming sticks, and game consoles. Consumers already owned the device needed to receive the service, allowing one account to function across multiple locations and screens. This created enormous convenience, although households without affordable broadband or compatible devices did not benefit equally.
Business Models, Netflix, and the Decline of Physical Stores
Streaming also transformed revenue models. Physical rental stores earned money from individual transactions, memberships, concessions, and sometimes late fees. Digital platforms introduced subscription video on demand, transactional digital rental, advertising-supported viewing, premium purchases, and hybrid plans. Technology enabled these models, but licensing agreements, consumer willingness to subscribe, and studio strategy determined which platforms could sustain them.
Netflix illustrates the transition particularly well because it first disrupted stores through mailed DVDs and then made streaming central to its business. Mail delivery had already weakened the requirement to visit a physical outlet; streaming removed the physical return process entirely. Blockbuster attempted mail and digital strategies, but its store footprint, debt, strategic delays, and changing consumer expectations limited its ability to adapt. Its decline therefore cannot be attributed to one invention alone. Technology interacted with organizational choices and financial structure.
Digital distribution also changed inventory economics. A local store could stock only a limited number of titles and copies. A streaming service can offer a much larger catalog and serve geographically dispersed demand for niche content. Yet digital libraries are not permanent public collections. Licensing agreements expire, exclusivity fragments content among services, and titles can disappear. Consumers gained immediate access while often losing the permanence associated with owning a physical copy.
Algorithms, Consumer Data, and New Frictions
Recommendation systems are another major change. Rental-store employees, shelf placement, advertising, and word of mouth once helped viewers select a title. Streaming services can analyze viewing history, completion, searches, and similarities among users or titles to recommend content. This can reduce search effort and expose viewers to programs they might never find manually, but it also makes behavioral data commercially valuable.
The relationship between customer and platform is therefore more data-intensive than the traditional rental relationship. The service may know what a person searches for, watches, abandons, repeats, and when they use the platform. This information can improve personalization and product design while also creating privacy, security, and recommendation-bias concerns. The convenience of streaming is partly financed by deeper measurement of consumer behavior.
Streaming also created new forms of inconvenience. Households may need several subscriptions to access different catalogs. Services can raise prices, introduce advertising tiers, restrict account sharing, remove titles, or limit access by region. Digital delivery solved the inconvenience of physical rental but did not eliminate scarcity or commercial control; it redesigned them.
Release windows also remain governed by rights and strategy. Technology makes near-immediate digital distribution possible, but not every new film appears legally on a subscription platform at release. Theaters, premium digital rental, purchase, streaming, television, and international markets may follow different schedules. Unauthorized distribution should not be confused with legitimate streaming.
Strategic and Ethical Lessons from Both Cases
Employee screening and streaming appear unrelated until they are viewed as information-system problems. Both reduce transaction costs and increase organizational knowledge. Employers can discover digital traces that would once have remained outside the hiring process, while streaming platforms can observe viewing behavior at a level impossible for a neighborhood rental store. In both cases, the organization gains informational power over individuals.
This asymmetry creates similar governance requirements. Information should be collected for a defined purpose, used proportionately, protected against unauthorized access, checked for accuracy where consequential decisions are involved, and not reused casually for unrelated purposes. Individuals should receive meaningful transparency and, where appropriate, an opportunity to correct or challenge information.
The cases also show that technological disruption redistributes costs rather than simply removing them. Streaming eliminated many retail-store costs but created major infrastructure, content, cybersecurity, and licensing costs. Online screening reduces the effort required to discover applicant information but increases discrimination, privacy, verification, and governance risks. The best information system is therefore not necessarily the one that gathers the most data or automates the most decisions. It is the one that creates useful value while controlling predictable harms.
Conclusion
Employers can use publicly available and lawfully obtained online information for legitimate employment purposes, but unrestricted searching is difficult to justify. Ethical screening requires job relevance, consistent procedures, verification, proportionality, antidiscrimination safeguards, and FCRA compliance when covered third-party background reports are used. Personal information that has no meaningful relationship to performance should not become a hidden employment test.
Streaming transformed video rental through digital compression, broadband networks, cloud infrastructure, connected devices, subscriptions, large catalogs, recommendations, and direct consumer data. It increased convenience while disrupting stores and creating new concerns involving privacy, licensing, labor, subscription fragmentation, and platform power. Both cases demonstrate the same management principle: information technology expands what organizations can do, but responsible management must still decide what they should do and what safeguards should accompany that capability.
References
Federal Trade Commission. (2026). Background Checks: What Employers Need to Know.
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2026). Background Checks.
Pearlson, K. E., Saunders, C. S., & Galletta, D. F. (2016). Managing and Using Information Systems: A Strategic Approach. Wiley.
Van der Aalst, W. M. P., La Rosa, M., & Santoro, F. M. (2016). Business process management. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 58, 1–6.
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