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

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

#71

Post by AFascistWorld »

sitharus wrote: post #37
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...

Just tested myself and the official client refuses to send. Third-party clients are unaffected, good thing I still use one really.

Not to defend twitter, but could this be an anti-spam measure?

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

#72

Post by AFascistWorld »

microsage wrote: post #28
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…

For what it's worth, I just tried opening the supposedly blocked site using Wechat, in China, on a Chinese phone (xiaomi) with a Chinese mobile plan (China unicom) and it works fine. Not sure if that's because it was never actually blocked or because they realized blocking it was a bad move and rolled it back.

I just tried in wechat this url https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU, it's OK now instead of the warning "harmful" just couple days ago.

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

#73

Post by salty_biscuits »

sytelus wrote: post #56
ezoe wrote: post #15

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

The idea of communism is that government is your employer and you trust your government to re-distribute product of all labours fairly among all participants. Given that workers unions exist as an adversarial or at the very least opposing power to employers, they are explicitly not allowed in communism because otherwise (in theory) you hurt government's ability to meet its goals for fair redistribution. Another reaso…

No, that is state capitalism. It is where all communist revolutions seem to get stuck. Seems to be a bit of a fixed point and the idea that you can transition through this to the workers owning the means of production is deeply flawed.

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

#74

Post by spectramax »

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…

This is what you get when you have an authoritarian government in bed with big corporations and the lines have been blurred between them.

Let’s get to the root cause.

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

#75

Post by Frqy3 »

indigo945 wrote: post #64
zorked wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is exactly the problem.

Imagine if every single law on the books is enforced 100% of the time. No leeway, no margin for discretion.

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

#76

Post by njepa »

baroffoos wrote: post #55
tiredyam wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... we do not have the same problems. Every single software engineer I know does not work 996 even if they work at a fast-paced startup

I don't even understand what the point of 996 is. I work normal hours and I find by the last hour I'm mentally done and I become totally unable to do anything more, staying extra hours would get nothing extra done.

There is no point other than opportunism. The same reason kids were working in textile mills last century and why housing costs are multiplying now in the western world.

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

#77

Post by wenbin »

Some Silicon Valley VCs seem to love 996.

- An article from VC https://www.google.com/search?q=mike+moritz+ft+996&ie=UTF-8&... (first result; paywalled, but okay to read via google search results)

- A 996 podcast from VC https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/996-podcast-by-ggv-capi...

Edited: update the FT article url

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

#78

Post by baroffoos »

njepa wrote: post #76
baroffoos wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even understand what the point of 996 is. I work normal hours and I find by the last hour I'm mentally done and I become totally unable to do anything more, staying extra hours would get nothing extra done.

There is no point other than opportunism. The same reason kids were working in textile mills last century and why housing costs are multiplying now in the western world.

But a greedy company acting purely in self interest wouldn't want this because you are getting less productivity by making sure your employees are constantly tired and never getting anything done.

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

#79

Post by mintplant »

wenbin wrote: post #77

Some Silicon Valley VCs seem to love 996. - An article from VC https://www.google.com/search?q=mike+moritz+ft+996&ie=UTF-8&... (first result; paywalled, but okay to read via google search results) - A 996 podcast from VC https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/996-podcast-by-ggv-capi... Edited: update the FT article url

The FT article is paywalled, but accessible if you search the title and click through via Google.

It's as sickening as one might expect. One more thing to think about the next time the VC crowd decides to remind us of the supposed evils of unionization and labor movements.

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

#80

Post by cyphar »

jim-jim-jim wrote: post #60
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…

Bingo. Liberalism is ill-equipped to promote free expression in any meaningful sense, because the principles it presumably holds sacred play second fiddle to the central tenant of the philosophy: private property. Most "live free or die" types wouldn't tell someone struggling against government repression, "If you don't like it, why don't you just leave your country?" Yet they do this all the time on corporate commun…

I assume you mean libertarianism, not liberalism? While some liberals might have libertarian views (and vice-versa) they are very different concepts.

> Yet they do this all the time on corporate communications channels, some of which have populations bigger than most real-world states.

Yup -- and a quick reminder (for the people in the back) that Google unilaterally controls what more than 3 billion people find when they search for information. This is a larger impact than any government in the history of humanity -- and unlike any other government in the history of humanity, Google has no constitution or laws which require it to be accountable to its citizens (or users, in this case).

You might argue that some regimes like China or the USSR only had theoretical protections for their citizens (with abuses by the government being commonplace and unpunished), but Google has no such protections to even pretend to follow. And like most independent nation-states, Google feels no pressure to obey other nations' laws if it's inconvenient for them.

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