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newtonianrules 4 minutes ago [-]
Petition by resigning. Tomorrow. Stop supporting this company.
mattoxic 3 hours ago [-]
Sure if you've signed this you've have added your name to a list, while someone in HR has added your name to another.
disqard 3 hours ago [-]
Yup, Dilbert's "easiest round of layoffs ever".
quietthrow 49 minutes ago [-]
The way I look at it is this:
There is an entity that provides product/service and makes money. A lot of money. Like mind boggling sums of money. That entity has made a deal with a set of humans to give some of that money (which for the humans is very large and or at least hard to ignore) in exchange for their time and skills. The deal is mutual.
This entity is now changing the deal somewhat and the set of humans don’t like it. But not to the point of walking away from the deal. They are used to the money and walking away from it has severe repercussions that only some can absorb. Most can’t absorb. So these humans are doing what they can to alter the recently altered deal as much as possible.
The entity knows for the most part these humans have little to no leverage. There is an extremely rare (almost black swan event) chance that the entity could lose its leverage. The black swan event is that the almost entire set of humans that it made the deal with walks away from the deal. In other words the set of humans transforms from elements of a set in one homogeneous entity or at least behaves like one. Beside this the set of humans individually have very little real leverage. This letter which is from a subset of the original set of humans is an example of an attempt to become a relatively small entity.
Here is the kicker - the original entity is actually emergent entity that emerged from within the set of humans in the first place. Each human in the set has a weight and it’s unequal. And ultimately since from a set of humans multiple entities can emerge entities are simply the sum of weights of the humans that make up that subset. The entity with the most weight(not most humans) has the most leverage.
Does this situation really matter?? Especially since It’s just (largely) two entities and Given the number of entities that emerge and exist from the larger set of 7 or 8 billion humans?
Humans generally relate to other humans that Are like them. If you are a human who is part of a similar low leverage entity you will sympathize with the humans who don’t like the new deal. If you are a human part of a very high leverage entity you probably can’t sympathize with the low leverage entities as much. In the large scheme of things it really dosnt matter for us HN outsiders. And for those humans within meta all I will say is know which entity you are part and if you don’t like the leverage it has, keep working towards changing the situation you are in.
titanomachy 36 minutes ago [-]
I wouldn’t put it past meta leadership to just fire the lot of them for daring to make a “demand” of their betters. The only thing that might restrain them is employment law, but they have good lawyers and might find a way around it.
And meta engineers will never bargain collectively. If you’ve spent time there you understand that it is some of the least fertile ground in the world for such ideas. Anyone who entertained thoughts of collectivism, or in fact anything beyond naked self-interest, has probably left some time ago.
quietthrow 27 minutes ago [-]
It’s that self interest is what got them to meta in the first place. These people are highly skilled and smart at what they do. They worked probably extremely hard for a large swath of their life to get where they are with meta. It’s one of those classic what got you here won’t get you there scenarios. Self interest has its limits (and so does collectivism). The real intelligence is in knowing when one has stoped working for you and when it’s working against you. Self interest / collectivism etc These are all just tools. We as humans are best when our indentity is that of a tools user (and not that of a single tool user - it’s possible and you may be rewarded for it well but it has its limits and it certainly confines what you can do has a human. It’s a limiting way to live at best )
clapthewind 47 minutes ago [-]
> almost entire set of humans that it made the deal with walks away from the deal
You missed mentioning a million new humans will gladly walk into the deal.
This is a list of 1600 people who should be alrady looking out because meta won't be after this signature.
quietthrow 32 minutes ago [-]
It’s implied in someways I would say. that’s why these folks creating any meaningful leverage is a black swan event. Say all of them walk away and meta can get a million new people it’s still a massive risk for the meta (entity) as they may never be able to recover fully. The million new people when band to gather will not form the same larger entity that was existing earlier that made a lot of money. They are not going to be productive day one or year one. What will emerge is a new entity and it could make even more money or even less money as things may never be the same. And that’s a large risk that Meta may or may not take. But without leverage created by banding together / complete solidarity Meta will never be forever to face the risk of it being transformed into a completely different entity that may or may not be as successful as it’s today. And that’s the power of leverage.
tdeck 3 hours ago [-]
People who are focusing on whether we should have sympathy for Meta employees here are missing the point.
Meta employees have some of the strongest bargaining power in our industry. This particular imposition is undesirable to almost everyone. There is no upside in it for employees.
Therefore, if Meta employees can be forced to accept it, everyone will be. And you'd better believe that there will be a flood of companies happy to set this up for your employer at your workplace.
That's why, as someone who wouldn't consider working at Meta for ethical reasons, I'm hoping this pushback succeeds. A win for Meta here throws the floodgates wide open. A loss helps put the brakes on a bit.
Furthermore, collective action that starts like this (and keeps pressure up) is much more effective than a bunch of individuals quitting their jobs. That's why employers would much prefer the latter when they're up to no good.
titanomachy 32 minutes ago [-]
> Therefore, if Meta employees can be forced to accept it, everyone will be.
Meta also has a strong bargaining position. The attractiveness of the job is almost entirely money, which is pretty universal, so they can quite easily replace individuals. Other (less wealthy) companies might rely on goodwill and sense of belonging or purpose to retain employees, which weakens their ability to do things like this.
phyzome 3 hours ago [-]
Try unionizing rather than just asking nicely.
dccoolgai 3 hours ago [-]
It's so hard to do that but it's really the only way. I had this idea that tech companies should organize _each others_ unions. Like Google employees should organize Meta's union and visa versa so no one is "sacrificing their career" by doing it.
wolvoleo 3 hours ago [-]
Or living in Europe where workers have actual rights.
nbardy 2 hours ago [-]
Signing this sounds like a good way to get fired. Executive in corporations gets to make the decisions. Employment is at will, if you don’t like it you get to leave otherwise you’re not fulfilling your contract
zeroonetwothree 1 hours ago [-]
NAL but it may be protected activity to improve working conditionals. I would guess Meta leadership doesn’t actually care very much if someone signed it. And typically the people making firing decisions are not necessarily the ones that want the AI training data anyway.
laweijfmvo 60 minutes ago [-]
also NAL and i think you’re right, the petition even says as much. but at-will employment means they can fire you for basically any other reason, and they probably have at least 10 to choose from at any given time.
4fffs 3 hours ago [-]
The only right course of action for Meta Mates is to eventually be hired by other firms who then squeeze everything out of them. Repent your sins and all that.
Soz but zero sympathy if you chose to work there.
JSR_FDED 2 hours ago [-]
Quoting Zuckerberg on Meta’s code of conduct is hilarious.
dvt 4 hours ago [-]
> Indexing by search engines is fully suppressed by robots.txt
Ah yes, the companies that have ignored robots.txt to scrape your website for 20+ years will now not totally, most definitely not ignore (wink wink) polite requests to not use your data for AI training. Also, haven't Meta employees been complicit in getting teenagers addicted to social media and violations of PII until they got caught?
Respect goes out to mathematicians and their Leiden Declaration, which is an actual level-headed approach given the complexities of AI training and usage.
steele 44 minutes ago [-]
I hope the vocal cynicism expressed in the "told ya so" replies weren't developed after reading the list of names.
yieldcrv 1 hours ago [-]
unionize stoopiiiid
a documentable unionization effort also overrides the “at will” part of getting laid off
cmoski 2 hours ago [-]
Surely anyone working at Meta sold their soul long ago. Do yourself a favour and quit.
supertroop 4 hours ago [-]
If I was Mark my answer would be “or what?” These people already work at a vile company. Which means they sold out already. If what mark does to other people doesn’t bother them they probably won’t have the backbone to leave if he says pound sand. “Oh it’s ok if you do it to other people just not me.” Get bent.
laweijfmvo 36 minutes ago [-]
His answer was “or what?”. And then enough people they cared about quit, and now you’re seeing the articles about them apologizing, saying they care, etc.
So the petition didn’t work, exactly, but served as a warning: employees said, fix this (or else). Mark said “or else what?”, and enough people said “I quit” to make them look bad.
tdeck 3 hours ago [-]
If this is what you get for selling out, just imagine what those of us who didn't sell out can expect? People sell out in order to get better conditions for themselves. Furthermore, this monitoring only strengthens Meta's ability to effectively surveil the rest of us.
foltik 4 hours ago [-]
It’s a bit hard to feel sympathetic here. Those signing this petition actively enable and profit from one of the most pervasive surveillance networks ever built.
Funny how much easier it is to tolerate something when it only affects other people.
tdb7893 2 hours ago [-]
People uphold a million cruel systems every day, their sort of hypocrisy is so common I've found it just to accept that it's how humans work (especially in a situation like this where their paycheck requires them to not see all the privacy problems they all support). I know I'm hypocritical about a bunch of stuff in my life.
Your perspective might be the more reasonable one but the way I see it, the hypocrisy is frustrating but it's sort of like getting mad at a dog for barking through a fence (dogs gonna dog) so I personally don't find it hard to be sympathetic still.
compass_copium 2 hours ago [-]
...it's the intrinsic nature of the programmer to have no scruples and work for the shittiest company that can employ them because it offers a big paycheck?
EPWN3D 28 minutes ago [-]
Programmers aren't that special once they get a mortgage and a family.
w4yai 1 hours ago [-]
Basically, yes.
ElProlactin 1 hours ago [-]
If this is "how humans work", do you feel sympathy for the Nazis who were "just following orders"?
ianm218 3 hours ago [-]
I find Metas work very unethical but me but I think they should have basic workers rights still. Like yes what Meta is doing is legal and it’s at will work, but this level of surveillance feels like something the law didn’t really anticipate.
foltik 3 hours ago [-]
I don’t disagree. It’s dehumanizing, and they have a legitimate complaint. In almost any other context I’d be on the side of the workers here. I just have a hard time seeing Meta employees as innocent or helpless bystanders.
jakelazaroff 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah, this is very much a "leopards ate my face" moment.
siren2026 3 hours ago [-]
> I think they should have basic workers rights still
You make it look like they are underpaid poor manual workers.
Those are people that chose to make >500k$/year by joining a company that is known to be one of the most toxic tech companies. Mos tof those people had probably multiple offers ad decided to optimize for money besides anything else. I have a hard time to feel sympathy or petition for their "worker's rights"
xboxnolifes 2 hours ago [-]
The thing about workers' rights, is that they are rights. They don't go away when you get paid more, and they apply to everyone.
BrenBarn 1 hours ago [-]
But that is also the thing about everyone's rights. No one should be subject to Facebook's surveillance, whether they work for Facebook or not.
gacgacgac 3 hours ago [-]
Workers are workers. We have so much more in common with one another than we do with the capital class.
Turning against a worker because they are doing better than another worker is giving in the divide and rule.
Historically, this is exactly how factory owners tried to get the white and Black workers to schism rather than unionize.
Workers deserve workers rights, and we should have solidarity towards all workers.
compass_copium 2 hours ago [-]
I guess man. This kind of doesn't apply to workers who are enabling the bourgeoisie state (cops, programmers making systems to feed data to the NSA, etc.)
tibbar 3 hours ago [-]
This feels overly cynical. My long-time friend took a job at Meta (over equally compelling financial alternatives) because the manager pitched the team and growth prospects well. (Meta turned out to be quite disappointing on these fronts. I never heard money as an important factor for joining or for leaving.)
In general, the kind of people who get an offer from any particular big tech company probably can get similar money elsewhere, so it's unlikely to be as big a factor as you suggest.
avaer 3 hours ago [-]
Presumably the employees didn't ask for this, now they have to choose between accepting this and not having a job.
You could argue they knew the company was horrible when they signed the deal with the devil, but this kind of bait and switch isn't the typical employment relationship; there is room for some sympathy.
3 hours ago [-]
codemog 3 hours ago [-]
We’re supposed to have sympathy for techbros making half a million or more a year because.. they have to have their computer use monitored? Not even getting into the numerous list of unethical behavior of meta..
What a bizarre timeline..
3 hours ago [-]
wahnfrieden 2 hours ago [-]
The workers deserve better conditions without full accountability for leadership's decisions.
If Meta's workers were organized enough to improve their conditions, they could organize to shift company mission and tactics. They are nowhere near organized enough.
slim 55 minutes ago [-]
it's not about symathy. Tactically, would you like your enemy to have this kind of control over its employees ? if the answer is no, you should support them
cyanydeez 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dylan604 3 hours ago [-]
Did you honestly just compare getting paid large six figure salaries in comfy workspaces with spoiled children like perks to slavery and expect people to accept your premise? You look foolish if you're joking and you're a fool if you're serious. Either way, not a good look
thin_carapace 3 hours ago [-]
why should i feel bad that people are treated like slaves because they chose to do the bidding of a supervillain? those people made the decision to sell their souls and act as conduits for evil. personally I'd rather focus on the other people affected by supervillains ... because there are billions of us and we didn't choose to be treated this way.
jeltz 2 hours ago [-]
Because if we don't then the rich can divide and conquer. We need to stand united, even with the Meta techbros.
thin_carapace 2 hours ago [-]
could you please explain why should I unite with people that are actively working against my interests? getting paid a meta salary means they are richer than any other salaryman on earth. so meta workers are not humble salarymen working humble jobs, they are craven sycophants doing the bidding of a man who is openly happy to rape his fellow men for personal profit. why would it benefit me to unite with somebody who thinks it's okay to profit from the suffering of his fellow man?
btbuildem 3 hours ago [-]
Petition? What do you think this is, a democracy?
All* corporations are dictatorships, and you're disposable machinery in one.
Irony is off the charts here, given what you helped build.
*not Mondragon, but like, pretty much all.
dylan604 3 hours ago [-]
What does a petition have to do with democracy? They are not suggesting putting it to a vote. They have a grievance with authority and are attempting to show how widespread that grievance is with signatures of those aggrieved.
tdeck 3 hours ago [-]
Also historically something like a petition seems to always be the first step in any kind of pressure campaign. It's a relatively low stakes (but not completely risk free) way to count support.
DrJokepu 51 minutes ago [-]
> first step in any kind of pressure campaign
Not how corporate politics work.
> low stakes
Not how corporate politics work.
zeroonetwothree 1 hours ago [-]
Petitioning a king is very traditional.
postsantum 1 hours ago [-]
Have they tried to stage a strike and block the road?
In Meta Quest of course
irishcoffee 4 hours ago [-]
Oh man, a petition. Now stage a walk out, maybe a protest. They’re all equally effective.
supertroop 4 hours ago [-]
If you think walkouts or protests don’t do anything, you might want to brush up on history. Or maybe discover it. Google is your friend. I mean everything from suffrage to organized labor to civil rights in the US was the result of massive coordinated action. You do know that right? Maybe even read up on Gandhi, or more recently French labor protests.
refactor_master 3 hours ago [-]
> Google is your friend
But really, it's more like tolerated business partner, right?
soundworlds 3 hours ago [-]
I've been using Kagi for the last year, and it is like an actually helpful business partner.
Even if you use another one, we need to break the myth that Google is the only option out there.
Fnoord 2 hours ago [-]
If you're not paying Google, you're the product. Same with Facebook. Both of these companies are data mining/harvesting and advertising.
I'm also a Kagi user, but the index they mainly use is Google's. So I am paying for a good UI, a couple of nice features, and a frontend/proxy.
The only independent index I am aware of, is Mojeek.
3 hours ago [-]
irishcoffee 4 hours ago [-]
If you think they’re effective in this current day and age you should also read the news.
There is an entity that provides product/service and makes money. A lot of money. Like mind boggling sums of money. That entity has made a deal with a set of humans to give some of that money (which for the humans is very large and or at least hard to ignore) in exchange for their time and skills. The deal is mutual.
This entity is now changing the deal somewhat and the set of humans don’t like it. But not to the point of walking away from the deal. They are used to the money and walking away from it has severe repercussions that only some can absorb. Most can’t absorb. So these humans are doing what they can to alter the recently altered deal as much as possible.
The entity knows for the most part these humans have little to no leverage. There is an extremely rare (almost black swan event) chance that the entity could lose its leverage. The black swan event is that the almost entire set of humans that it made the deal with walks away from the deal. In other words the set of humans transforms from elements of a set in one homogeneous entity or at least behaves like one. Beside this the set of humans individually have very little real leverage. This letter which is from a subset of the original set of humans is an example of an attempt to become a relatively small entity.
Here is the kicker - the original entity is actually emergent entity that emerged from within the set of humans in the first place. Each human in the set has a weight and it’s unequal. And ultimately since from a set of humans multiple entities can emerge entities are simply the sum of weights of the humans that make up that subset. The entity with the most weight(not most humans) has the most leverage.
Does this situation really matter?? Especially since It’s just (largely) two entities and Given the number of entities that emerge and exist from the larger set of 7 or 8 billion humans?
Humans generally relate to other humans that Are like them. If you are a human who is part of a similar low leverage entity you will sympathize with the humans who don’t like the new deal. If you are a human part of a very high leverage entity you probably can’t sympathize with the low leverage entities as much. In the large scheme of things it really dosnt matter for us HN outsiders. And for those humans within meta all I will say is know which entity you are part and if you don’t like the leverage it has, keep working towards changing the situation you are in.
And meta engineers will never bargain collectively. If you’ve spent time there you understand that it is some of the least fertile ground in the world for such ideas. Anyone who entertained thoughts of collectivism, or in fact anything beyond naked self-interest, has probably left some time ago.
You missed mentioning a million new humans will gladly walk into the deal.
This is a list of 1600 people who should be alrady looking out because meta won't be after this signature.
Meta employees have some of the strongest bargaining power in our industry. This particular imposition is undesirable to almost everyone. There is no upside in it for employees.
Therefore, if Meta employees can be forced to accept it, everyone will be. And you'd better believe that there will be a flood of companies happy to set this up for your employer at your workplace.
That's why, as someone who wouldn't consider working at Meta for ethical reasons, I'm hoping this pushback succeeds. A win for Meta here throws the floodgates wide open. A loss helps put the brakes on a bit.
Furthermore, collective action that starts like this (and keeps pressure up) is much more effective than a bunch of individuals quitting their jobs. That's why employers would much prefer the latter when they're up to no good.
Meta also has a strong bargaining position. The attractiveness of the job is almost entirely money, which is pretty universal, so they can quite easily replace individuals. Other (less wealthy) companies might rely on goodwill and sense of belonging or purpose to retain employees, which weakens their ability to do things like this.
Soz but zero sympathy if you chose to work there.
Ah yes, the companies that have ignored robots.txt to scrape your website for 20+ years will now not totally, most definitely not ignore (wink wink) polite requests to not use your data for AI training. Also, haven't Meta employees been complicit in getting teenagers addicted to social media and violations of PII until they got caught?
Respect goes out to mathematicians and their Leiden Declaration, which is an actual level-headed approach given the complexities of AI training and usage.
a documentable unionization effort also overrides the “at will” part of getting laid off
So the petition didn’t work, exactly, but served as a warning: employees said, fix this (or else). Mark said “or else what?”, and enough people said “I quit” to make them look bad.
Funny how much easier it is to tolerate something when it only affects other people.
Your perspective might be the more reasonable one but the way I see it, the hypocrisy is frustrating but it's sort of like getting mad at a dog for barking through a fence (dogs gonna dog) so I personally don't find it hard to be sympathetic still.
You make it look like they are underpaid poor manual workers.
Those are people that chose to make >500k$/year by joining a company that is known to be one of the most toxic tech companies. Mos tof those people had probably multiple offers ad decided to optimize for money besides anything else. I have a hard time to feel sympathy or petition for their "worker's rights"
Turning against a worker because they are doing better than another worker is giving in the divide and rule.
Historically, this is exactly how factory owners tried to get the white and Black workers to schism rather than unionize.
Workers deserve workers rights, and we should have solidarity towards all workers.
In general, the kind of people who get an offer from any particular big tech company probably can get similar money elsewhere, so it's unlikely to be as big a factor as you suggest.
You could argue they knew the company was horrible when they signed the deal with the devil, but this kind of bait and switch isn't the typical employment relationship; there is room for some sympathy.
What a bizarre timeline..
If Meta's workers were organized enough to improve their conditions, they could organize to shift company mission and tactics. They are nowhere near organized enough.
All* corporations are dictatorships, and you're disposable machinery in one.
Irony is off the charts here, given what you helped build.
*not Mondragon, but like, pretty much all.
Not how corporate politics work.
> low stakes
Not how corporate politics work.
In Meta Quest of course
But really, it's more like tolerated business partner, right?
Even if you use another one, we need to break the myth that Google is the only option out there.
I'm also a Kagi user, but the index they mainly use is Google's. So I am paying for a good UI, a couple of nice features, and a frontend/proxy.
The only independent index I am aware of, is Mojeek.
Thanks for the sermon though.