unionize stoopiiiid
a documentable unionization effort also overrides the “at will” part of getting laid off
Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models
51–60 of 90 posts
Re: Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models
#52Have they tried to stage a strike and block the road?
In Meta Quest of course
Re: Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models
#53Signing this sounds like a good way to get fired. Executive in corporations gets to make the decisions. Employment is at will, if you don’t like it you get to leave otherwise you’re not fulfilling your contract
NAL but it may be protected activity to improve working conditionals. I would guess Meta leadership doesn’t actually care very much if someone signed it. And typically the people making firing decisions are not necessarily the ones that want the AI training data anyway.
also NAL and i think you’re right, the petition even says as much. but at-will employment means they can fire you for basically any other reason, and they probably have at least 10 to choose from at any given time.
Re: Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models
#54It’s a bit hard to feel sympathetic here. Those signing this petition actively enable and profit from one of the most pervasive surveillance networks ever built. Funny how much easier it is to tolerate something when it only affects other people.
it's not about symathy. Tactically, would you like your enemy to have this kind of control over its employees ? if the answer is no, you should support them
Re: Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does a petition have to do with democracy? They are not suggesting putting it to a vote. They have a grievance with authority and are attempting to show how widespread that grievance is with signatures of those aggrieved.
Also historically something like a petition seems to always be the first step in any kind of pressure campaign. It's a relatively low stakes (but not completely risk free) way to count support.
> first step in any kind of pressure campaign
Not how corporate politics work.
> low stakes
Not how corporate politics work.
Re: Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models
#56The way I look at it is this:
There is an entity that provides product/service and makes money. A lot of money. Like mind boggling sums of money. That entity has made a deal with a set of humans to give some of that money (which for the humans is very large and or at least hard to ignore) in exchange for their time and skills. The deal is mutual.
This entity is now changing the deal somewhat and the set of humans don’t like it. But not to the point of walking away from the deal. They are used to the money and walking away from it has severe repercussions that only some can absorb. Most can’t absorb. So these humans are doing what they can to alter the recently altered deal as much as possible.
The entity knows for the most part these humans have little to no leverage. There is an extremely rare (almost black swan event) chance that the entity could lose its leverage. The black swan event is that the almost entire set of humans that it made the deal with walks away from the deal. In other words the set of humans transforms from elements of a set in one homogeneous entity or at least behaves like one. Beside this the set of humans individually have very little real leverage. This letter which is from a subset of the original set of humans is an example of an attempt to become a relatively small entity.
Here is the kicker - the original entity is actually emergent entity that emerged from within the set of humans in the first place. Each human in the set has a weight and it’s unequal. And ultimately since from a set of humans multiple entities can emerge entities are simply the sum of weights of the humans that make up that subset. The entity with the most weight(not most humans) has the most leverage.
Does this situation really matter?? Especially since It’s just (largely) two entities and Given the number of entities that emerge and exist from the larger set of 7 or 8 billion humans?
Humans generally relate to other humans that Are like them. If you are a human who is part of a similar low leverage entity you will sympathize with the humans who don’t like the new deal. If you are a human part of a very high leverage entity you probably can’t sympathize with the low leverage entities as much. In the large scheme of things it really dosnt matter for us HN outsiders. And for those humans within meta all I will say is know which entity you are part and if you don’t like the leverage it has, keep working towards changing the situation you are in.
Re: Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models
#57The way I look at it is this: There is an entity that provides product/service and makes money. A lot of money. Like mind boggling sums of money. That entity has made a deal with a set of humans to give some of that money (which for the humans is very large and or at least hard to ignore) in exchange for their time and skills. The deal is mutual. This entity is now changing the deal somewhat and the set of humans don…
> almost entire set of humans that it made the deal with walks away from the deal
You missed mentioning a million new humans will gladly walk into the deal.
This is a list of 1600 people who should be alrady looking out because meta won't be after this signature.
Re: Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models
#58I hope the vocal cynicism expressed in the "told ya so" replies weren't developed after reading the list of names.
Re: Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models
#59If I was Mark my answer would be “or what?” These people already work at a vile company. Which means they sold out already. If what mark does to other people doesn’t bother them they probably won’t have the backbone to leave if he says pound sand. “Oh it’s ok if you do it to other people just not me.” Get bent.
His answer was “or what?”. And then enough people they cared about quit, and now you’re seeing the articles about them apologizing, saying they care, etc.
So the petition didn’t work, exactly, but served as a warning: employees said, fix this (or else). Mark said “or else what?”, and enough people said “I quit” to make them look bad.
Re: Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models
#60The way I look at it is this: There is an entity that provides product/service and makes money. A lot of money. Like mind boggling sums of money. That entity has made a deal with a set of humans to give some of that money (which for the humans is very large and or at least hard to ignore) in exchange for their time and skills. The deal is mutual. This entity is now changing the deal somewhat and the set of humans don…
I wouldn’t put it past meta leadership to just fire the lot of them for daring to make a “demand” of their betters. The only thing that might restrain them is employment law, but they have good lawyers and might find a way around it.
And meta engineers will never bargain collectively. If you’ve spent time there you understand that it is some of the least fertile ground in the world for such ideas. Anyone who entertained thoughts of collectivism, or in fact anything beyond naked self-interest, has probably left some time ago.