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996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

chanind.github.io

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Re: 996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

#61

Post by narag »

bendbro wrote: post #8
munk-a wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was never on a schedule this bad but when I was doing regular overtime (~52 hrs/week, the worst weeks coming in at 60) I found that my work drained me physically to the point where I just lost all ability to enjoy my life and do... anything - I just sort of collapsed through a work day into the next work day with a blearily remember transit ride and face-stuffed-with-pizza home time between it. As one of the two ba…

+1 for "tranform calories into money," it brought me a small chuckle.

That was an old joke with caffeine instead of calories.

I worked seven days a week for two months. We were paid double salaries and some perks, but no amount of money would have convinced us to keep that schedule longer. It was absolutely crazy.

Re: 996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

#62

Post by skybrian »

redwall_hp wrote: post #30
saagarjha wrote: post #7

> At the time of writing, the 996 website isn’t blocked in China, but greedy tech companies have decided to block it themselves. Tencent’s Wechat refuses to open the site, as does Alibaba’s UC Browser and Qihoo’s 360 browser. This is what you get when you give companies to power to censor information…

I've been saying this for years: censorship, like many things, has been privatized. Things like the First Amendment in the US are inadequate for the modern age, because the majority of our discourse touches multiple intermediary businesses on its way between individuals. There is no "just herpderp yourself" when communication and publication in our digital society involves information coming in contact with a handful…

On the other hand, switching to private communications has never been easier, at least for person-to-person chat. (Signal, etc.)

Re: 996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

#63

Post by ardy42 »

ezoe wrote: post #15

> Ironically, given that China is a communist country, workers’ rights movements and unions are extremely uncommon mind-boggling.

>> Ironically, given that China is a communist country, workers’ rights movements and unions are extremely uncommon

> mind-boggling.

The CCP feels threatened by any kind of idependent political organization that's not the CCP or directly under its thumb. This includes students that actually take Marxism seriously:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/asia/china-maoists-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/world/asia/china-student-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/world/asia/chinese-univer...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/world/asia/china-marxist-...

Re: 996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

#64

Post by indigo945 »

zorked wrote: post #53
redwall_hp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been saying this for years: censorship, like many things, has been privatized. Things like the First Amendment in the US are inadequate for the modern age, because the majority of our discourse touches multiple intermediary businesses on its way between individuals. There is no "just herpderp yourself" when communication and publication in our digital society involves information coming in contact with a handful…

Hmm, mass communication wasn't easy back in the time the First Amendment was written and the problem was "we don't have enough free communication". You could just as well argue that it wouldn't exist if written today. There were never practical limits on 1:1 communication even in the worst dictatorship because you can't have a policeman in every house. The first amendment was always about public discourse.

You can't have a policeman in every house, but you can have an Amazon Alexa.

I think the privatization of surveillance is much scarier than the privatization of censorship. To escape the latter, I can just visit my local library, whereas the former is growing at such alarming rates that it might just make that impossible very soon. The chilling effects are real.

Re: 996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

#65

Post by IloveHN84 »

bjackman wrote: post #59
reverite wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently tweeting the 996.icu website from the official Twitter Android/iOS clients causes it to refuse to send at all. You don't even need to be in China to see the result, because it blacklists the link globally. It allows the link on web and 3rd party clients, though.[1] [1] https://twitter.com/copiesofcopies/status/111403968059961344...

Have just tested. I get "Failed to send tweet" if sending from Android client, and I leave in the page preview when composing the tweet. - It works fine from web interface, problem is specific to Android - The problem doesn't show up for "123.icu" so it seems specific to 996.icu

What's your phone maker?

Re: 996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

#66

Post by est »

girzel wrote: post #21

The term for this strategy is "collateral freedom": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_freedom

And collateral freedom converges to no freedom. That wikipedia page used to have list of available working "domain fronting" list, and not it's all gone.

People seems don't to remember Github was blocked several times in China before. Each time the developers united to file complaints to central government to get it unlocked.

Still today all gist.github.com is blocked. http is blocked. God know when will github be totally blocked.

Re: 996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

#67

Post by est »

j16sdiz wrote: post #10
gpickett00 wrote: post #4

Wow, that's a brutal work schedule. Hard to believe it's the norm. Isn't there enough demand that tech workers could elect to work elsewhere if their employer enforces this?

996 is illegal in China. Tech company do it anyway with no consequences. This is selective enforcement of law.

To clarify, 40 hours was explicitly guaranteed only for civil service staff. For private sectors, working hour is unspecified. However working 996 without compensation is illegal. In theory the employer has to triple hour fee for >40h over time.

Re: 996, GitHub, and China's digital workers rights awakening

#68

Post by est »

ezoe wrote: post #15

> Ironically, given that China is a communist country, workers’ rights movements and unions are extremely uncommon mind-boggling.

Workers’ rights movements happening on the streets all the time. Search for 讨薪 you get tons of results.

However workers’ rights movements and unions get reported by Chinese media are extremely uncommon.

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