Fama Unveils Fama Lens on You Should Know Podcast

In a newly released episode of the You Should Know podcast, hosts Ryan Leary and William Tincup sit down with Ben Mones, founder and CEO of Fama, to explore how artificial intelligence is transforming social media screening in hiring. Published November 4, 2026, the conversation marks the first public announcement of Fama Lens, a product category Fama calls policy-based screening. The timing is critical: employers face growing legal scrutiny over AI in hiring, and vendors must now demonstrate that their systems are explainable, auditable, and firmly anchored to documented employer policy.

Mones traces Fama’s evolution from its 2015 flags-and-keywords approach to today’s agentic model, explaining how Fama Lens deconstructs a customer’s governance policy into a multi-agent consensus architecture. The discussion covers regional context—such as why KKK in Portuguese often means laughter, not a hate group—and real-world edge cases, including a Fama test that flagged an ice cream cake recipe because it contained rum for an influencer vetting client marketing to kids. Mones is candid about what the product does and does not do: “We’re still not scoring people. We’re not giving you like a yes or a no. It’s not a thumbs up or a thumbs down. But instead what this is, is like a fully auditable, fully observable, fully traceable AI system,” he tells Tincup. Every agent decision is traceable back to a specific policy element, and Fama now ships customers the governance policy for the software itself, including kill switches and active model drift controls.

The episode also delves into memorable edge cases from Mones’s years in HR tech: a customer service applicant who had publicly flamed Verizon and Chili’s, a principal posting racist content about students, and a doctor allegedly selling body parts on Twitter. They revisit the 2020 UK health agency engagement where Fama helped vet nurses administering COVID vaccinations using keywords tied to Bill Gates and WHO conspiracy content. Mones addresses the surge in identity verification driven by North Korean applicant fraud, referencing State Department guidance to employers and background screeners, and shares advice from the founder of Indeed about staying focused on a core product. You Should Know reaches more than 3.9 million verified listeners monthly; learn more and subscribe at wrkdefined.com/podcast/you-should-know.