New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat

I am pretty certain this particular feature went the other way around: Facebook has to work very hard to retain customers on Workplace, because they're competing against Microsoft (who have extremely deep pockets, and arguably a better product in many regards).

I'm willing to bet Walmart went to Facebook and told them to implement this feature, or they'd jump ship. Certainly that's what's happened with other Workplace features in the past, such as the ability to control access for hourly employees.

Like can't I just send something like "hey coworker, lets do the thing that's opposite of ionized!". Or will the AI block my message (or more scarily, subtly rewrite it) and inform my manager?

This seems like tech with huge unintended consequences if perfected (even for their intended benign uses in workplaces) since it has the potential to be scaled up to censor society.

Whenever it would come up on the internal boards the arguments were usually along the lines of:

* "People who don't deserve to be paid more will get more money under a union"

* "I'll be paid less under a union"

* "Unions will slow us down, and we'll become more bureaucratic"

* "Unions are corrupt, and only care about themselves"

It was always clear that there was a huge misconception about what unions are, and how they work, based on the depiction of unions in popular culture or the past. When you talked about unions, people would think about the Teamsters, the police unions, etc.

Myself and others would end up pointing out that yes, that's true of some blur collar unions, but that's not what we're talking about. Think about the Writers Guild, or SAG. Dwayne Johnson earned $90 million last year - he still pays his union dues. You'd struggle to find any writer who didn't think the Writers Guild had actively improved their working conditions.

Are the various Hollywood unions perfect? No, they're not. But I think you would really struggle to argue that working conditions would be better for those in the creative arts without them.

Tech companies have spent a long time cultivating an image of benevolence towards their employees, but ultimately they are not your friends. You need somebody to fight your corner. Hollywood found this out years ago with the studios - hopefully Silicon Valley will discover it too, however unlikely it seems.

- in novembre, we should cost them the electrons. Ionize!

- It's time we u_nionize

- un10n1z3 people !

- let's fetch the U:\N\I\O\N\I\Z\E file

- all go to http://unio.ni/ze

- so we should do the u-thingy

- what about talking to Mr Ulysse Nionize

- never too late to ｕｎᎥｏｎｉｚｅ

In fact, it actually creates a sense of community by fostering a culture, make the movement stronger, and give it more visibility.

I'm assuming on this one that FB employees know this, and are just giving idiots what they ask for.

Well, this was the whole idea of "Fabian" socialism, named after Fabius the Delayer: bring in reforms now, otherwise revolution will happen outside your control. A big part of the foundation of the UK Labour party.

It seems to me that the BLM movement is just such a "big bang" against a slow increase in racism and very long term failure to resolve problems in Americna policing.