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

chanind.github.io

81–90 of 146 posts

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

#81
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Inappropriate incentives for individuals cause behavior that hurts everyone. Not exactly a new thing.

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

#82
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is not a communist country, it's a “communist with Chinese values” country. I don't know what it means, but every time the topic is brought on the table, this is the official stance from the Chinese Communist Party. I guess it means you owe loyalty to whatever authority you get: father, teacher, employer, emperor. Respect them, or they will crush you.

China was a pure communist country before the reform. To keep the name, they had to attach it to a different interpretation. when it comes to respecting the authority, 「王侯將相,寧有種乎!」is a pretty common value to Chinese people. can be partially translated as "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?--John Ball".

Do you realized that the quote was from this incident? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazexiang_uprising

If that is the common value to Chinese people, It's been too long since the last revolution.

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

#83
post #53

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.

> There were never practical limits on 1:1 communication even in the worst dictatorship because you can't have a policeman in every house

You underestimate the ability of cultures to self-censor and convince free-thinkers to leave.

Plenty of people in North Korea are afraid to speak out, for fear their neighbors will rat them out. Same goes for speaking against royalty in public in Thailand.

That said, I do think the First Amendment was born out of practicality. Censoring speech, even in the internet age, is not a good growth strategy when your competitors censor less. People will do their best to get to the most free place.

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

#84
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No country does that, they just set examples of people who break draconian laws, which is effective as long as you don't count all the people trying to leave the country.

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

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To block the 996 Github presence on Github would mean to block Github, as Github is served via HTTPS. That's not viable as Github is far too useful to block (IIRC it and StackOverflow were blocked a couple of years ago but then unblocked due to uproar from the tech industry). To block Github 966 pages specifically means the domestic browsers are pre-filtering URL requests before they're made. And that means these dom…

doesnt china MITM https connections?

They don't. They "blacklist" block by ip-address. At least that was what seemed to be going on the last time I was there.

It was fairly easy to bypass; I did it with a SSH-tunnel other people do it with VPN. It seem like a completely normal thing (amongst Chinese and certainly expats) to have a VPN.

I am pretty sure since this 996-protest movement concerns tech workers that it will spread with no problem.

Also it will probably get resolved in some manner since working 996 obviously is beyond peak productivity.

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

#86
There is a reason why companies cannot just lower employee's salary and hire more people instead of pushing people to work more time: that is, once you give people these option, people will go to choose to work for companies with higher pay and more overtime. That's a choice. There is a reason your salary is a lot higher than any other people, and there is a reason it is a developing country.

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

#87
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I assume you mean libertarianism, not liberalism?

They probably meant liberalism. 'Liberalism' has multiple meanings. To my knowledge, the US is unique in equating 'liberal' with 'the left'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_by_country

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_the_United_State...

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

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This is very unlikely because it seems to be something that happens in the official client rather than server-side. Spammers are unlikely to use official clients and blocking them there doesn't make any sense.

Having said that, if they were intentionally trying to block this then using their anti-spam mechanisms would be an obvious way of doing so, so I think it's definitely a possibility that this is some accidental side-effect of something else rather than a simple intentional block.

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

#89
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To get the full picture you need to shift perspective and see humans more as resources. When a resource doesn’t produce enough anymore it gets replaced.

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

#90
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is not a communist country, it's a “communist with Chinese values” country. I don't know what it means, but every time the topic is brought on the table, this is the official stance from the Chinese Communist Party. I guess it means you owe loyalty to whatever authority you get: father, teacher, employer, emperor. Respect them, or they will crush you.

China was a pure communist country before the reform. To keep the name, they had to attach it to a different interpretation. when it comes to respecting the authority, 「王侯將相,寧有種乎!」is a pretty common value to Chinese people. can be partially translated as "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?--John Ball".

> "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?--John Ball"

Could you take another stab at translating or explaining that?

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