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Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

bbc.com

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Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#301

Post by qweiopqweiop »

yubblegum wrote: post #275
jjulius wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many, many ways to provide for one's family, Meta is but one. And I say this as a father providing for mine. Additionally, putting the blame for using Meta products on the users in spite of all of what we know about how the company has strived to make the productive terribly addictive is a very wild take.

Well, this fellow is a programmer, that's his trade and at his level he would be working for one of the fangs or whatever they are called these days and they're all creepy as far I am concerned. Which one of them is 'responsible'? Google and its pervasive tracking and selling of our data to all and sundry? Microsoft and "let's make our AI addictive"? Working for Amazon and contributing to the gutting of small busines…

I agree other comapnies are just as culpable as Meta, but you think it's childrens fault they get addicted?

We barely know the damage social media does yet, it's not comparable to taking the first hit of drugs at all.

Agreed that tech workers need to take a look at themselves too, but also it's the execs and governments more too blame.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#302

Post by rafterydj »

yubblegum wrote: post #256
jjulius wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of people in these comments who would be happy to be "paid well" to contribute to what's inarguably a huge net negative worldwide is exactly how the company got to this point. It's astonishing how many people value a ton of money over doing something good. Everyone who talks about setting values aside for cash is the problem. Gross.

I have a dear friend who works at Meta. The conclusion that all meta workers are valuing money over "something good" is not reasonable. This fellow, who I know to be a good man of excellent character btw, for example has to support his family (which all together number 6), and be prepared to pay tuition for 4 kids starting in a decade and then one after another for the other 3! Is providing for your family and their…

Facebook is forcing people to use Facebook. If there were realistic alternative social network systems that allowed account migration with contacts and messages, Facebook would be dead in the water.

You can't seriously argue that everyone can just drop a mainstream communication tool without acknowledging the lack of replacements.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#303

Post by lukan »

No one mentioned Orwell so far?

Well, in 1984 the protagonist learns after a while, that inner party members had the amazing perk of being able to turn off the mandatory surveillance screen for up to 30 minutes. But I guess in this case the workers still will be tracked by the usual Meta tracking that applies to everyone surfing the internet.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#304

Post by [deleted] »

yubblegum wrote: post #275
jjulius wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many, many ways to provide for one's family, Meta is but one. And I say this as a father providing for mine. Additionally, putting the blame for using Meta products on the users in spite of all of what we know about how the company has strived to make the productive terribly addictive is a very wild take.

Well, this fellow is a programmer, that's his trade and at his level he would be working for one of the fangs or whatever they are called these days and they're all creepy as far I am concerned. Which one of them is 'responsible'? Google and its pervasive tracking and selling of our data to all and sundry? Microsoft and "let's make our AI addictive"? Working for Amazon and contributing to the gutting of small busines…

[deleted]

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#305

Post by ryandrake »

anticorporate wrote: post #149
everdrive wrote: post #17

I don't work for Meta, but how many more years do I need to work in tech? I'm in my 40s and my kids are young. I've already set up 529s for them, and am paying for some expensive home upgrades. Maybe when that is finished and I've built up a buffer I can switch industries for the last 5-10 years of my working life. Curious if anyone here has any similar plans.

I quit tech at 40. I still do cool things with technology, but now at a community-owned grocery co-op. I can't recommend leaving tech highly enough. My cortisol levels are so much lower than they used to be. I don't have to schedule my life around EMEA and APAC meetings outside of my normal hours. I only work more than 40 hours a week if I feel like it, which I sometimes do, because I actually enjoy my work now. I ma…

> I don't have to schedule my life around EMEA and APAC meetings outside of my normal hours.

Oof, this one is a knife to the heart. One of the biggest drawbacks of BigTech (and many other industries) is the goddamn time zones and early / late meetings. It's subtle and creeps up on you. It starts out having to take an occasional late meeting to sync up with someone in India who isn't answering your E-mails... then it moves to "you have a team in India to sync with weekly"... then "we need to work with team XYZ on this bigger project who's in China"... then "we're opening a satellite office in London and will need you on calls to them, too." And one day, you look up and your calendar has daily meetings from 5AM to 11PM. I won't miss this when I retire.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#306

Post by kennywinker »

throwawa1 wrote: post #98

If you are being tracked all day long, just create a lot of discovery for lawyers in the future: "Mark asked me to x", "Mark asked me to do y".

Requires a functional legal system, so it seems unlikely to come into play.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#307

Post by rafterydj »

yubblegum wrote: post #275
jjulius wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many, many ways to provide for one's family, Meta is but one. And I say this as a father providing for mine. Additionally, putting the blame for using Meta products on the users in spite of all of what we know about how the company has strived to make the productive terribly addictive is a very wild take.

Well, this fellow is a programmer, that's his trade and at his level he would be working for one of the fangs or whatever they are called these days and they're all creepy as far I am concerned. Which one of them is 'responsible'? Google and its pervasive tracking and selling of our data to all and sundry? Microsoft and "let's make our AI addictive"? Working for Amazon and contributing to the gutting of small busines…

If you are trying to say that it's not just Meta but all tech giants, you have an oddly defensive way to make that point.

Just because the entire industry was doing bad things does not absolve the largest members of the industry from doing bad things. They were leading the charge!

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#308

Post by gausswho »

ryandrake wrote: post #292
crispyambulance wrote: post #20

It's always been hard to know the extent of how draconian tracking actually is (IT pros tend to not talk about it much). In the US, there's the expectation that when you use an employer-provided device that any and all activity on it can be fully monitored/recorded and used against the employee for any reason. In practice, however, few people worry about reasonable amounts web-surfing, being on hacker-news or doing l…

I've always, throughout a 25+ year career, kept personal business on personal devices and work business on work devices, and never cross the streams. Oddly, this is really controversial on HN, though! I've gotten so many weirdly angry responses when suggesting people try it, like it's a huge inconvenience to just bring a personal phone to work in order to do your banking and fuck around posting on HN. It's so much ea…

I did find this odd at first too, but then I realized something: it's a pain to maintain a device. Customizing it to the way you like it is not only a waste of time, it's tedious and never ends in an age where defaults are often adversarial to your interests. It's enough work taking care of one pet/kid, you might not want another.

Now I'm a nerd and I went through a realization that I should treat my devices as 'livestock not pets' and went to the trouble of building a NixOS config so that I can have two or three machines that all behave the same. But that's its own labor and still doesn't solve the phone problem. Or the fact your employer won't provision you a Linux with root.

Living by this personal/business separation is probably something most folks would aspire to, but technology as we practice it conspires against them.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#309

Post by ryandrake »

KaiserPro wrote: post #216
MattDamonSpace wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A heavily unionized tech industry over the last 30yrs would be an interesting counterfactual. IMO the ability for individual employees to negotiate for themselves is a positive? As is being able to get rid of bad performers Unionization would hurt the startup ecosystem, at least at the margins, no?

> IMO the ability for individual employees to negotiate for themselves is a positive? I keep hearing this, but FAANGs don't allow individual negotiations. You are banded, like you would be at a union. Also you're assuming that unions would be able to, or want to block the firing of bad performers. Since the bad performers would also hurt the bottom line, and therefore your pay. Unionisation might hurt the startup as…

Even Non-FAANGs have banded, bounded comp. I remember discussing a compensation increase at a smallish, medium sized company, and was given the usual "The book says the comp for your role is between $X and $Y, and you're at $Y." They even showed me The Book! Like, ok so you're just willing to lose me over this stupid book then? (Narrator: There were willing to) I dipped over to FAANG for a pretty nice increase. I guess FAANG uses a different book...
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