Top
Best
New

Posted by reasonableklout 2 days ago

Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models(mcipetition.com)
78 points | 81 commentspage 2
JSR_FDED 2 days ago|
Quoting Zuckerberg on Meta’s code of conduct is hilarious.
supertroop 2 days 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.
tdeck 2 days 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.
dieselgate 1 day ago|||
> People sell out in order to get better conditions for themselves.

I agree in part about what you're saying but think it's more money for FAANG+ employees. Sure the conditions can be or were good but the primary motivation is financial gain and I think the proverbial employee-frog can tolerate quite a bit of increasingly hot water if paid enough.

supertroop 1 day ago|||
lol people sell out for a paycheck. That doesn’t mean better conditions.
laweijfmvo 1 day 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.

supertroop 1 day ago||
Good on them. Now go make the world a better place somewhere else besides that shithole company.
mikelitoris 1 day ago||
>Surveillance for thee but not for me...

Yeah, no thanks (or "how the turn tables")

yieldcrv 2 days ago||
unionize stoopiiiid

a documentable unionization effort also overrides the “at will” part of getting laid off

sirsinsalot 1 day ago||
Nobody should be strong armed in to training models whose intention is replacing them.

Technology has become a societal torture device and AI is the largest power grab in history.

How dare humans be able to leverage their reasoning for a wage. To the machines I say!

foltik 2 days 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 days 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 days 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 1 day ago|||
Programmers aren't that special once they get a mortgage and a family.
tdb7893 1 day ago||||
I've found that everyone has some hypocrisies that they cling to (it's really hard to see it in yourself). I believe I do a better job of it that Facebook employees, it would be really hard to be more blatantly hypocritical than this, but it's not like I don't make similar errors all the time.

Especially on a post about them doing something decent, I can accept they are obviously hypocritical and just not be concerned with it right now.

Edit: for something like this I think about the advice "don't punish someone for doing what you want them to do". This is Facebook employees publicly signing a pro-privacy document. It's obviously self serving so it would be weird to really praise them as people who protect privacy but I'm happy to support them in this regardless.

w4yai 2 days ago|||
Basically, yes.
ElProlactin 2 days ago|||
If this is "how humans work", do you feel sympathy for the Nazis who were "just following orders"?
ianm218 2 days 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 2 days 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 days ago||
Yeah, this is very much a "leopards ate my face" moment.
siren2026 2 days 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 days 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 2 days 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 2 days 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 days 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.)
gacgacgac 1 day ago||
I ... actually agree with this. But I think we gotta deliberately select who that applies to. Is it everyone at Meta? Like, are we all culpable for our employers sins? Or are we all squeezed by a system where we gotta work to eat and the people who decide what jobs exist are the capital class?

Like, obviously cops aren't workers, but what level of culpability does a person working in Meta's disability accommodations team have? I dunno. Hard question.

tibbar 2 days 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.

BrenBarn 1 day ago|||
I think the level of surveillance Meta inflicts on the population at large is also something the law didn't anticipate. The solution is new laws that illegalize broad swaths of what Meta currently does.
avaer 2 days 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.

codemog 2 days 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..

wahnfrieden 2 days 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 1 day 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 2 days ago||
[flagged]
dylan604 2 days 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 2 days 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 days 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 days 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?
steele 1 day ago||
I hope the vocal cynicism expressed in the "told ya so" replies weren't developed after reading the list of names.
cmoski 2 days ago||
Surely anyone working at Meta sold their soul long ago. Do yourself a favour and quit.
1vuio0pswjnm7 1 day ago|
"Journalists and others: we request that you do not directly link to the site on the web, social media, etc."
More comments...