Its amazing how quickly these assholes have dropped any sort of facade they were keeping up towards their public image. At best they are doing whatever they think will get them the most money, more realistically they actually support this regressive bullshit. As a non-American I am so pissed at what a good portion of that country has voted for and those that stayed home instead of preventing this.
LOL welcome to corporate America. The only reason they paid lip service to causes like you mention is because it was temporarily a pathway to more profit. Now that Trump is in office (or nearly so, anyway) they have read the room and realized these beliefs are actually a liability now. So, surprise! They dropped em like a rock in the pursuit of more profits. Never never never trust a corporation to do the right thing. They sometimes accidentally do it in the pursuit of profits, but tying your hopes and dreams to a large corporation is a foolish plan. THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU THEY CARE ABOUT THE MONEY IN YOUR WALLET.
The oligarchs have paid their tithe to king Trump and feel like they are immune to consequences. So far they have been correct.
Yeah, it is absolutely crazy how much the tide has shifted with trump’s reelection. These so-called “woke” companies (it was always performative, but they performed for the more just side) have all turned 180 and dropped to their knees to kiss the ring.
And this is because of the very real feeling that trump will abuse his power and unconstitutionally stay in office. The guardrails seem to have come down, and these fuckers are rushing to get on the fascist’s good side.
That should alarm everyone, so I’ll say it again: these companies are positioning themselves on the side of fascism because they don’t think we can stop them anymore. They are making business decisions that bolster fascists because there’s a fuckin dollar in it.
With the power of these fucking megacorps behind the fascist movement, it’s like sticking a rocket engine on its ass.
The guardrails seem to have come down
They don’t seem to, they definitely have. Remember that Supreme Court ruling that said the president can break the law?
Something something 1930’s Germany.
That’s not at all amazing. What’s amazing is that a large number of people thought it was a great idea to hand over the power to decide what’s true or not to private companies. When they rolled out this “content moderation” used mostly against Trump the political left was beside itself with joy. I remember the taunts of “haha it’s a private company, they can publish whatever they want.” So incredibly stupid and short sighted.
The “it’s a private company lolz” thing was itself a reaction to when Republicans were refusing to make gay wedding cakes, and the loss of the Fairness Doctrine long before that.
I think “thought it was a great idea to hand over the power […] to private companies” is a misrepresentation. Some moderation was better than no moderation, but obviously "the political left"would have preferred regulation rather than self regulation.
What’s the point you’re making? That nothing should have been done?
That this was worse than nothing. Time after time we fall for the old “we’ll self-regulate trust us” and all it did was delay actual action being taken while a Democrat was in charge, and now we’re stuck for at least 4 more years. It was already godawful 4 years ago, 4 years from now the state of public discourse may be beyond repair.
I see your point now and agree
I mean, I feel thats still true. And because it’s true, we need to get the f off of it, as a society.
Supposing your team had won, these people would go back to only paying lip service. Better, no doubt, but not a solution. How long did fascists and racists and misogynists lay dormant in US culture before seizing control now?
You need cleansing and systemic change. People need to internalize “no one is free until everyone is free.” Fascists and ethno-nationalists need to be afraid and culturally eliminated over generations.
Fascism is enabled by liberalism, and its capitalist ideology, and it’s promoted by capitalists when capital is threatened. Capitalism is the underlying force here, and capitalists are behaving in exactly the same way they’ve done at similar points in history and as described and predicted by leftists.
Yes Democrats losing the vote sucks and we’re all paying for it, globally, but their win would have been a delay at best. That doesn’t mean winning votes isn’t important, but it means that it can’t be your one and only political action once every 4 years. It’s time to get serious.
Now we’re doing headlines like this with tech companies in addition to politicians? These fuckers act with impunity because they can.
For some reason, it appears the unbreakable barrier for humanity is switching the fucking social media site you go to.
What would it take for people to consider not looking at Instagram and Facebook? A feed full of snuff videos?
the unbreakable barrier for humanity is switching the fucking social media site you go to.
Facebook is quickly becoming a retirement community, exclusively for me-maws and pepes. It hasn’t been the tool for college kids to organize keggers in nearly a decade.
But when alternatives to Facebook crop up - your Instagrams and TikToks and Discords and WhatsApps and Grindrs - they don’t last long before being gobbled up by the bigger social media giants or shut down by hostile state regulators.
In the end, everything returns to Facebook, because the big companies can borrow money for free and staple on whatever small firm is seeing a lot of early growth. I give BlueSky another three years, tops, before one of the big social media giants acquires it.
pepes
You’re thinking of 4chan
I agree, but we should at least have them fork over the cash to buy a new dumpster to enshittify every few years. There’s Twitter that people still cling to despite it being a superfund site since at least when Leon bought it.
Make Facebook the next MySpace, make Reddit the next Digg. Make social media sites starve to death from lack of engagement again.
Instagram and TikTok are already big social media giants in their own right.
If TikTok gets gobbled up, it’ll be because of the legal proceedings going on in which lawmakers are trying to force TikTok to allow itself to be bought up by some US company. Which is another issue altogether, cause if I start a business, the legality of the US government forcing me to sell my business to someone else, or even to be forced to sell my business to a foreign government or company and not be allowed to possess it, is a whole can of worms.
But outside of WhatsApp being shut down due to security reasons, the majority of those wouldn’t qualify as social media sites that would be gobbled up by some other social media giant.
Instagram is, uh, Meta? It was gobbled up just as it was taking off.
Tiktok couldn’t be gobbled, and is being beat down by legislators until they sell to US tech firms.
I stand corrected then. You can ignore all my bloviating.
bloviating
I love this word. TIL it.
I wish, they got rid of all the snuff sites long ago
Imagine this being your red line. Your totally prepared to work at Facebook, because there’s absolutely nothing dodgy about that, but suddenly his transphobia is a problem.
Well, Frances Haugen left a while ago. Some people did go.
And, well, the best time to leave Facebook was to never join. The second best time is now.
It’s ok to let their platform spread misinformation and hatred that affects millions, but it’s not OK when that comes back and bites them in the ass.
Nah Meta is widely regarded as one of the best employers in the world. I’d take 300k/usd year and all of the benefits too. Let’s stop pretending that traditional companies are somehow better so you either don’t work for any corporation or actually work for one that provides incredibly benefits to you so you have the luxury to give back and steer the ship towards good a little bit.
Personally, I wouldn’t but this is the reasoning most employees have when joining Meta.
Nah Meta is widely regarded as one of the best employers in the world
lolwut
They pay a lot, but everyone knows they’re overworked like hell. Meta is a shit-tier employer, but if you’re a young masochist then they’re worth a few years to pad your accounts.
Please note - 99% of the time on the internet, when someone says “in the wuuurld” they mean “In this one capitalist hellhole country” so in this case it may be correct
Expanding on to your comment:
99% of the time on the internet, when someone says “in the wuuurld” they mean
“In my very limited experience, in my tiny portion of the world, that I may have never left.”
Unless a person has vast experience and has had deep conversations with thousands of people, we as humans just don’t have the ability to appreciate just how radically different life experiences are for people we share the same block with.
Same with Apple. They pay a lot and it looks fantastic on your resume. Even though in reality the likelihood is that the job you did was basically the same as it would be in any other company, but Apple prestige is a thing.
No I understand that they pay very well what I’m saying is it just seemed odd that you would go to work for such a company without knowing that you were essentially walking with the devil.
If you make peace with that then absolutely fine, but it then seems a bit odd to turn around and be suddenly offended by something as if they hadn’t already been doing stuff like that all along.
OK Meta HR…
Nice try, Zuckerberg…
For many, I imagine it’s just the straw that broke the camel’s back
But what is your mobility as one of its workers? What other social networks can they begin working for realistically in such a small market? Maybe that’s the way to fight against Zuckerberg’s and Musk’s attempts to turn their networks into propaganda tools for the highest bidder, to encourage disgruntled workers to start their own social networks and then go support them as well. I would seriously consider paying for an adequately moderated ActivityPub alternate that truly respected its users, was truly transparent, focuses on high quality content, and prevented brigade agenda pushing.
I don’t know if they use activityPub but open source Facebook equivalence do exist.
I know because me and my friend thought we were onto a great idea with “social networks as a protocol” but it turns out that it already existed. For some reason it just doesn’t seem to have taken off in the same way that Mastodon has, not that Mastodon itself is that successful (look at its numbers compared to Blue Sky).
It’s not just transphobia in these changes. You are also allowed to say that women should be/are property.
Facebook has a history of facilitating genocide (Indonesia, Myanmar). It’s clear that if it starts in the US, Facebook will be happy to help.
So as long as the genocide is far away, is completely acceptable for its employees to work there?
Nah, it was fucked up then too.
It makes sense that US politics would be the straw that would break the camels back for most Facebook employments - I don’t think your average tech worker is too familiar with the violence organized on Facebook by Hindu nationalists, the crimes against the Rohingya etc… a lot of that was with foreign language content moderation, so I can see people reasonably not knowing.
It is genuinely terrifying though. I’m already living in a fascist state and have gone through hell; I don’t know if I’ll get to survive another term of Trump.
It is kind of a red line. First theyre going after trans people. Why do you think you hear about it every day now? It gets the hate machine going for people other than our rulers
First theyre going after trans people.
That first appears to be skipping over a whole lot of people who’ve been getting fucked for a long time.
If youre not rich youre getting fucked but not actively being demonized by the state(not yet). Well maybe immigrants are up there with them
He answered the Trump signal, walked in and plop down one mil on the man’s desk. Now he’s following the Russian handbook for censorship.
There is a vast chasm between not doing a good enough job reining in your sensors and publicly openly declaring hate speech acceptable
I know their longest tenured employee. Ran into them after 20 yrs… Different human. Nothing behind her eyes.
Others that have been there from 5 to 15 yrs…
Boiled frogs at different stages. (Yes, I know the science is debunked for literal frogs.)
What I don’t know, living in SV, is a single human that’s started a new job with them in the last… 5? 10? yrs… at this point it’s all younger people who only know a world with Meta. And this is all normal to them.
Gee I wonder why he’s suddenly decided to start moving parts of the business to Texas… little Musk-ette over here…
All of this is very likely to kiss the ring of Herr Trump
Unfortunately it’s a very rational choice to cozy up to an incoming fascist dictator.
- Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp/Oculus
- Amazon
- Apple
- OpenAI
I am surprised myself, but making progress of not using their products. For example did not buy any gift via Amazon this Christmas.
“Rational”!? No, that’s false. Though it might be reasonable for someone who works for a living. But the only thing they are risking is their “high score”, nothing else. Literally nothing a billionaire does is rational, and that goes for every single one of them. I feel like we all constantly forget how much $1 billion is. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ These people have several or hundreds of times that! Don’t forget they didn’t actually earn it. Plus, it’s still not enough. They choose to spend their time “working” and influencing governments instead of spending time with family. Power and money, they can never have enough…
Can you imagine your generational line’s entire lives being paid for before they’re even born plus the ability to literally solve suffering in society. Homelessness? Malnourishment? Drought? Hunger? The amount of wealth they sit on could literally solve any problem, anywhere in the world with a signed check and it wouldn’t even affect their day-to-day life at all. They just choose not to. I can’t imagine it. That’s what’s wrong with billionaires and why they’re not rational at all…
For some reason you are conflating “rational” with “moral.”
But I’m not. To distill my rambling: it’s not rational to feel the need to “cozy up to an incoming fascist dictator.” Because billionaires simply don’t have needs. Housing, healthcare, education, food, security, it’s all paid for, for the next 100 generations. That was my point.
The parts about morality were 100% me ranting…
Who’s making the argument that cozying up with a dictator makes the difference between them being able to meet their lowest Mazlow needs?
I’m not familiar with that term. I thought we were discussing why it’s rational?
A) then look it up; concept or vocabulary, doesn’t matter, Google it before saying it’s whataboutism. The point was salient.
B) self preservation is rational.
C) parasites kill to survive in nature.
D) something sucking for an observer, doesn’t make the observed’s rationale illogical.
All of this is very likely to kiss the ring of Herr Trump
Not likely, obviously.
That’s Führer Trump to you, worm!
i prefer to call him herr trump.
The Turd Reich is upon us.
All heil!
LMAO, employees are about to find out why a union would be a good idea. Gotta speedrun growing class consciousness.
Tech bros are too smart for that. They are true libertarians. Totally can get a better deal on their own. /S
You know what would be an effective ‘protest’? If employees started deleting important files…
Sorry, I can’t tell if you’re serious or not.
It’s extremely unlikely that facebook has in place a system that allows any lowly engineer to cause such damage alone. No hard drive hosting unique files no one else has, without backups, without security, and so on.
If you’re a billion dollar corp that depends on an important recipe to make your product, you’re not leaving the only copy of it on front desk with no oversight.
I don’t see how deleting files would work as a form of protest. Would probably get you in trouble, though.
Tell me you’ve never worked in a tech company without telling me…
Okay, so what are employees doing? The title says “employees protest”, by “protest” do they mean “complain but continue to follow orders”? Because that’s basically the norm for any job.
Don’t know. Article asks for sign-in, but much as I like 404’s reporting, I just don’t feel like creating one more account right now, so all I got is they’re unhappy and talking. Maybe they’re talking to people who can do something about it, maybe they’ll do more soon—organizing takes time, after all—or maybe they’ll do fuck all 'cause that’s what we usually do.
I don’t think 404 uses a password-based login if that makes a difference.
I personally just consume their crap via RSS like most other things I read.
Wait, isn’t their RSS feed only available to subscribers? If not, can you share the link?
I just put in the web address into my reader (Feeder).
Some articles are only for subscribers, but a lot of them are the whole thing.
I tried that and I’m only seeing truncated articles a few paragraphs long, just like they have on their paywalled pages.
Unionize tech and then it can happen.
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels … upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all
Well, yeah, if tech workers unionized, maybe they’d have some leverage. Let’s hope they get to that before the next absurd move from big tech? Fingers crossed, 143rd time’s the charm.
you have to introduce errors that are likely to not be spotted right away. Set variables that cause 1/1,000,000 errors on pages or that that move things around over time
I’m sure that meta doesn’t have backups so that makes this an effective form of protest
Meta was already enabling genocide in third world countries and countless other things but this is what caused chaos. Those employees have weird priorities, huh?
[edit] reworded slightly on the account of caused controversy
In fairness, do we know for certain what happened in Facebook back then? Maybe some employees did protest, maybe they’re the same people protesting now, even. Or they quit. Thing is, LGBT issues make engaging articles. Third world suffering? Eh, it depends.
Yet, I agree with the overall point because this is the crux of the matter: on average, one of these simply matters more—one way or another, see transphobes cheering—for people of this subgroup. This is us.
The usual notes apply: good on them for protesting, big media isn’t helping, fully ethical employment is like fully ethical consumption.
Not like they’re a bunch of committed leftists working there.
Which is more likely to impact a Meta employee personally?
The fact ur so heighly downvoted for saying this. Perfect example of weird priorities.
id say a good 80% of those downvotes are misunderstanding. something about the wording? idk. i thought they were talking about progressive folks getting outraged at first, not meta employees specifically. almost downvoted but caught my misunderstanding in time
Ah yes, the “old news theory”…
-They’ve done it already, why call them out again? It’s old news.
While they escalate and continue to go full-on hate for profit.
i was with you at first but upon rethinking i do think it’s fair to note that there was little to no internal uproar in meta over the myanmar and othe situations. of course there was uproar outside meta. when they said “weird priorities” they meant from meta employees specifically—not progressive or leftist voices in general.
hope me describing my train of thoughts helps :)
- They haven’t done “it” because it’s a different thing
- OP did not say not to call it out again, simply ask us to consider why this thing caused more chaos than others
Not sure why you’re being down voted, it’s a fair point.
This puzzles me. Why do these Meta employees care for LGBTQ people? How can anyone work for Meta and have a conscience?
Dude I’ve never had a single job that wasn’t for an entity I didn’t find morally reprehensible. I don’t think most people will ever have a choice in this matter. You have to work to eat.
There is more often than not a choice. Take what job you can get, but that doesn’t mean you need stop looking.
That’s by design. We’re all wage slaves to the rich to be exploited. Upward mobility is a myth.
Cognitive dissonance.
feel free to be heroes and leak meta’s source code before leaving.
That’s a bit like emptying the sewer into the street
i think I’ve finally reached peak zuckerberg, i don’t want to read one more thing about facebook or meta or whatever
Same. Luckily you can add his name to the block list.
He is going to be bare ass naked running down the halls screaming for employees to “come at me bro”
He’d probably win ngl.
I’m not glad that someone stood up for the billionaire.
But good for you ?
I aint standing up for him just pointing out hes been trained to fight by professionals. Ohh and hes won competitions for it.
Yeah people drastically underestimate the gulf between randos and anybody who’s had even a little decent training.
Good to know that there’s still some decent people there.
Anyone ‘decent’ there is a wage-slave that doesn’t have an out. If you can leave meta and don’t there’s no decency there.
announced content moderation changes that will allow users to say that LGBTQ+ people have “mental illness,”
Someone gets triggered by free speech here.
Anyway, wind blows the other way now. Zuck doesn’t want to piss against it
deleted by creator
I think community notes is a better form of moderation. And focusing on stopping the more extreme bad shit instead of thought crimes seems like a good thing too.
who is talking about thought crime? spreading fake news can be dangerous in a way that results in actual deaths.
“In modern usage, the term “thought crime” is often used metaphorically to describe situations where individuals are penalised or ostracised for holding unapproved or unpopular opinions, or for expressing dissenting views.” - dr gpt
Seems to fit pretry perfectly
thats different from fake news, still
Please define “fake news” and dont say news that isnt true because then u have to decide who chooses what is objective reality.
When a judge decides to convict someone of murder, we all know they might be wrong. The judge is not entitled to decide what objective reality is, he just decides how the judiciary system sees and treats the situation, as someone has to do it.
The same thing should be applied to fake news, which is sharing (dis)information with the false appearance of some verified news piece to influence people into making certain decisions.
Of course, there’s a big potential for censorship in how we treat fake news. So this treatment should follow clear objective criteria and be absolutely transparent.
I see ur point but just kinda sounds like censorship with extra steps. For example we have seen the american courts are racist, sexist, classist, unfair cesspools, its nessasary evil to maibtain civil order but i dont want those same standards applied to speach.
Also from a philosophical point of view free speach and the marketplace of ideas is the fundamental building block upon which democraticy itself is build.
Etc etc insert George Orwell quote here
transparency is precisely what can make regulations not be censorship, or I should hope so.
In the context of trans people, anti trans rhetoric goes away beyond “unapproved” or “unpopular” though. It’s straight up non-factual pseudoscience at best. A lot of it is straight up lies and libel/slander. It does real, lasting harm. That’s not “thought crime” as you describe.
That exactly fits my definition. My definition says nothing about outcomes or if its true or not my definition is simply about expressing an opinion and you disliking it is proving me right.
Indeed, the whole point of my comment is that your definition is bad because it doesn’t take into account if something is true or not. Edit: Or, and this is much MUCH more important, whether the statements in question cause real harm to other people.
I’m not accusing you of thought crime, I’m accusing you of stupidity and you disliking it is proving me right.
your definition is bad because it doesn’t take into account if something is true or not.
My interpretation of 1984 was that a thought crime had no regard for the truth.
Edit: Or, and this is much MUCH more important, whether the statements in question cause real harm to other people.
Words that are not calling for actionable violence can offend nothibg more nothibg less. And u taking offence is your choice and yoyr problem.
I’m not accusing you of thought crime, I’m accusing you of stupidity and you disliking it is proving me right.
I wasnt aware that anyone who disliked your ideas was stupid, thanks for enlightening me. Seems kinda self centred to me but i would be stupid to disagree with on that point.
My interpretation of 1984 was that a thought crime had no regard for the truth.
Only because The Party has no regard for the truth. If, in 1984, The Party were concerned with truth at all then thought crime would also be concerned with the truth. This is because the real definition of thought crime in the context of that story is any thought that isn’t approved by The Party.
But you’ve brought the phrase “thought crime” out if that context and into the real world. Here, truth matters.
Words that are not calling for actionable violence can offend nothibg more nothibg less
Completely untrue, and very disturbing that you’d think otherwise.
anyone who disliked your ideas was stupid
That’s not why you’re stupid, it has nothing to do with me.
For all the crap on X, the Community Notes I’ve seen have been actually kinda good. Not that I’ve seen a lot, because algorithmically sorted public microblogging is still discursive cancer with ideological hepatitis that I mostly try to avoid.
