No they do not.

Anyone who has worked in hiring for any big company knows how much goes into ensuring hiring processes don't accidentally touch anything that could be construed as illegal discrimination. Employees are trained, policies and procedures are documented, and anyone who even accidentally says or does anything that comes too close to possibly running afoul of hiring laws will find themselves involved with HR.

The idea that these same companies also have a group of people buying private search information or ChatGPT conversations for individual applicants from somewhere (which nobody can link to) and then secretly making hiring decisions based on what they find is silly.

The arguments come with the usual array of conspiracy theory defenses, like the "How can you prove it's not happening" or the claims that it's well documented that it's happening but nobody can link to that documentation.

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