Musk’s first email to Twitter staff ends remote work

Everyone is all worried about what this means for remote work at other companies when it might not mean anything at all since the other companies don't have the same circumstances as Twitter.

Also we're all defensive cause we're attached to remote work.

During a keynote speech on May 10, Elon Musk commended Tesla factory workers in China for working under conditions that break labor laws in many parts of the world — including those in China, as The Guardian pointed out. The high praise from Elon went out to workers who are being pushed to meet production goals in the middle of pandemic lockdowns, which have been ongoing at the Gigafactory in Shanghai since April. The Tesla CEO went on to compare Chinese workers with their American counterparts, who Musk says lack work ethic he considers impressive and vital for EV companies to succeed.

"There’s just a lot of super talented and hardworking people in China that strongly believe in manufacturing. And they won’t just be burning the midnight oil. They’ll be burning the 3am oil. So they won’t even leave the factory type of thing. Whereas in America, people are trying to avoid going to work at all."

Going by what Musk says, it sure sounds like what they say is true: nobody wants to work anymore. That is, except for workers in China, where conditions enabling Tesla to meet production goals during lockdowns have less to do with burning oil past midnight, and more to do with China’s extreme work culture. Meaning Musk isn’t really praising hardworking people so much as a disregard for labor rules.

During the lockdowns, workers at the Gigafactory reportedly worked 12-hour shifts, six days a week and slept on the floor. Again, that’s not only during recent lockdowns. This is actually common enough to be nicknamed “996.” That’s shorthand for work shifts going from 9am to 9pm, six days a week.

"On Wednesday, three top Twitter executives responsible for security, privacy and compliance also resigned, according to two people familiar with the matter and internal documents seen by The Times.

The departing executives include Lea Kissner, Twitter's chief information security officer; Damien Kieran, its chief privacy officer; and Marianne Fogarty, its chief compliance officer. Their resignations came a day ahead of a deadline for Twitter to submit a compliance report to the Federal Trade Commission, which is overseeing privacy practices at the company as part of a 2011 settlement.

Twitter has typically reviewed its products for privacy problems before rolling them out to users, to avoid additional fines from the F.T.C. and remain in compliance with the settlement. But because of a rapid pace of product development under Mr. Musk, engineers could be forced to "self-certify" so that their projects meet privacy requirements, one employee wrote in an internal message seen by The Times.

"Elon has shown that he cares only about recouping the losses he's incurring as a result of failing to get out of his binding obligation to buy Twitter," the employee wrote. The changes to Twitter's F.T.C. reviews could result in heavy fines and put people working for the company at risk, the person warned."

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/technology/elon-musk-twit...

This may be the beginning of the end for "social media" because the constantly buried truths are coming to the surface. For example, 100% advertising and 0% journalism as a "business model", web user privacy, "tech" malfeasance, and the myth of "free".

Noncommercial web users are not ready to pay fees to use websites. Not all web use is commercial, nor can all web use be commercialised.

Noncommercial web use is real. However the web as imagined by "tech" companies, i.e., massive data harvesting websites that produce no content, where all web usage is surveilled and all data collected is purported to have commercial value, may be more fantasy than reality.