Meta employees protest against mouse tracking tech at US offices

My union is excellent but we are the exception to the rules. Our contracts always net better pay and retirement benefits. Sometimes I’m in disbelief what they sometimes get on paper. It wasn’t always like that but the protection unions bring are a huge benefit. Like them or hate them this would be something that would be a line item in a contract with protections.

Stuff like that should be regulated at a much higher level than unions.

In my EU country the national tech(IT) union is useless because they are simply toothless. Unions of teachers, airport, road, rail, etc workers are strong and always get what they want regardless of economic performance, because they can grind the country to a halt by simply not showing up to work for a day, but tech workers are under constant pressure of outsourcing and offshoring due to the globally distributed nature of work, so the unions never manage to negotiate anything against employers because they just have no leverage, when their workload can be taken over by someone from another country if they go on strike.

The local company union/workers council (Betriebsraat) si also equally toothless and didn't do much at the mass layoffs.

Unions are only as powerful as their impact to the comfort of the citizens and to the votes of the politicians.

Forays into politics? Isn’t a union inherently political?

I'm sympathetic to this view, which has merit. I'm also happy to accept any new advocates for privacy and liberty. Purity tests are counterproductive to a movement's goals. Effort should be directed toward activities that advance the agenda of the movement, directly or indirectly.

Here's a better statement "I'm glad they're seeing the light, even if they had to become victimized themselves to finally care."

I will never blame the non-management workers in this situation. Most of us are forced by modern society to work for someone else and there are a limited number of jobs available.

Not everyone who works at Meta has a better, more ethical option.

This woukd be like saying the person scanning your ticket at the concert condones Ticketmaster as a monopoly. No, they’re just trying to feed their family.

I don't think it's about trust, but they're using employees behavior for training their replacement.

It's hilariously fucked up. They pay us O($1M)/yr and treat us like we're working on an assembly line producing Jira story points. And if they don't surveil us carefully enough we might steal a point from them! Or something? Who knows. It's not just Facebook, although what they're doing here is particularly bad, but this ethos permeates the entire American tech industry. With very few exceptions, it's like this at every company.

The irony is indeed absolutely blinding

Yup. I worked for Flock for a bit. During recruitment and onboarding, it was all big on ethics and morality and slippery slopes and responsible data stewardship.

After HR pats you on the back and you met with your team and org? Mask off.

"No, we won't build controls that allow us to block [data sharing that is illegal for agencies in state] for those agencies. That's not our concern. Oh, they want training on how to do that data sharing? Sure."

Garrett would talk regularly at all hands about a very Minority Report-esque future that was driven and made possible by Flock, and he was very clear it wasn't exaggerated for example or aspirational but an organizational goal.

Anyone who stayed there more than a few months knows exactly what they're doing.

> they should shell out for dedicated labs

Seriously. This goes for all kinds of analytics. We've normalized surveillance, and if you dare suggest opt-in analytics rather than forced or opt-out you get hit with "but then we won't get enough data to improve our product." That's your problem. Do a UX study, interview people, make a focused effort to make good software. That's how we got the best interface design of all time. Now we're drowning in data and our software is fucking garbage that constantly frustrates and confuses its users. Clearly the issue is not a lack of usage data. It may even do you some good to fly blind if this is your alternative.

Really you should do the lab, though. Take this field seriously and cut out the live A/B testing.

They should be supported, but they did choose to work for a boss whose entire career has followed the path of collecting sensitive personal data from people for personal gain.

What does this mean? I thought Meta has something like 80,000 employees. Meta had about 1,400 H-1B employee petitions last year. Even if we assume that number held for Meta's entire existence, that's less than 25,000 H-1B employees. Less than a third of Meta are presumably immigrants.

Have I got something wrong or is there this belief that Meta doesn't hire any Americans?

Bootlicker mentality.

They should unionize. Then, replacing the individual employees doesn’t work.

(Much easier said than done of course)