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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

#791

Post by OJFord »

semiquaver wrote: post #789
OJFord wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't read it, but if it's written in the first person with the narrator referring to themself as 'YT', then it's at least consistent? If yours truly suddenly referred to my mother, or indeed if I referred to yours truly's mother, that would be more jarring I think?

WTF, why chime in without any additional research if you haven’t read it in the first place? No, it’s an omniscient third person narrator. Yeah, YT is probably the “true” viewpoint, esp if you take diamond age into account. “Chiseled spam” and all that.

There seemed to be enough information to comment from a language perspective.

Third-person narration that refers to the narrator themself as 'yours truly' seems contradictory to me.

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

#792

Post by notnaut »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #685
notnaut wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This dynamic might not even been so bad if there was some honesty and graciousness behind it. Some friggin humanity. It’s not so cold to understand and systematize the natural tension between expectation and reality and effort. Once again at the end of the day the problem is more likely the profit motive above all else

These dynamics exist specifically to wring the humanity out of any and all processes If we leave things up to humans they might be generous instead of ruthless, and generosity doesn't make money

These kinds of claims always throw me off…

“These dynamics exist specifically to wring the humanity out of any and all processes”

Who designed the processes? Reptilians?

Whatever the flaws of the dynamic, I would guess there is something innately human and organic about it, not designed. Just another weird outcome of the efficiency machine of social evolution.

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

#793

Post by hawaiianbrah »

mystifyingpoi wrote: post #505
hawaiianbrah wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My last employer had a monthly Day of Learning where you could study whatever you want (so long as you could sort of tie it back to work). It was great. They’d organize presentations from employees but you could spend the whole day essentially however you wanted.

> you could spend the whole day essentially however you wanted Then, can I just not go to work on that day? Or am I forced to waste time in the office? Honest question.

It was a remote gig

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

#794

Post by switchbak »

gausswho wrote: post #619
switchbak wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"your employer won't provision you a Linux with root" - there's your problem!

Fair. I am curious how many folks are able to get root access on their work machines across the software workforce. If you do, what sort of surveillance tech does your IT expect for you to have on there? Are you given special exemption compared to Mac or Windows company machines?

Perhaps I've somehow avoided that for a long time and don't appreciate how lucky I am. I've maintained my own Linux based workstations for the past ~8 years. IT hates it, but we seem to have been grandfathered in from back when productivity trumped compliance.

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

#795

Post by jamespo »

mystifyingpoi wrote: post #506
prmoustache wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+ everybody working in tech has a large mobile data plan, no reason to even connect to the wifi guest network.

+1, guest network is risky. Even VPN/ts is risky, since you're actively hiding what you are doing. Mobile data only.

Inside many offices mobile data is spotty or not working at all

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

#796

Post by burner000333 »

Mattwmaster58 wrote: post #397
burner000333 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm out in 2 years, late 30's and a decade in IT/Sec, run a security team now. Going into something like nursing - union gig, a relationship with AI and tracking I'm comfortable with, walking around money, a job I can show my kids that is about service vs. the inhumane aspects of tech, a career that scales despite technology of the next 20 years (or at least my best estimate of these risks). End of the day, writing o…

> but I've seen it happen to the last technically-inclined 500k+ job class that was untouchable by all accounts And what job class was this?

trading, from the 1800's to about the year 2003, to 2003 to today

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

#797

Post by apercu »

dredmorbius wrote: post #765
Ruthalas wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not parent) The second half differs dramatically in tone. If you were really into the specific feeling of the first half, it is very jarring. I found the whole thing very interesting and enjoyable, but I can imagine being excited for more content similar to the first half and being disappointed by the drastic shift in scale/tone/focus/etc.

That's definitely true. I saw the book as two parts: I: We have a problem, how do we solve it? II: What are the (very long term) consequences of how we (and possibly others) solved that problem? From that perspective, it fits pretty well, though yes, the tones of the two parts are decidedly different. Wouldn't mind hearing from OP on their specific concerns.

I just found the transition extremely abrupt and a bit jarring.

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

#798

Post by jkl5xx »

gaiagraphia wrote: post #311
jkl5xx wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty uncharitable perspective. Most folks I know working at Meta or Amazon aren’t morally bankrupt. They just have kids, debt, poor parents with health problems, etc. They work at Meta to support their loved ones. And it’s not like you can walk onto the street and just wave down a morally superior job with similar pay and benefits. Blame the tech oligarchs, not the workers.

"Supporting their loved ones" is doing a lot of moral heavy lifting here, though. History's littered with people trotting out this line when they've valued luxury and status over morals. The more you interact with something, the more you are part of it and help it prosper. "Blame the kings!" is a little bit too simple, imo.

Thanks for the level-headed response. Agreed, "blame the kings" is also an overly simplistic take. There's rarely a single entity to blame. Just wanted to bring some nuance to the hate getting thrown around here.

Redirecting frustration towards the systemic issues that drive perfectly normal people to work for a terrible company like Meta seems more productive to me.

I hate what Meta does just as much as the next guy, but shaming friends who feel like they have no better employment option doesn't seem like the best way to make a difference here.

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

#799

Post by spongebobstoes »

doublerabbit wrote: post #494
spongebobstoes wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, it doesn't sell user data. or, where can I buy some?

Brokers. Acxiom and Experian for starters. Heck, you can buy facebook datasets right now from brightdata. https://brightdata.com/products/datasets/facebook Don't you recall the Cambridge Analytica scandal? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica All corporates sell your data. You're a fool to think otherwise, data makes dosh, and you can sell any data for a price. Data is a commodity. There are current ten…

this is just not correct.

the brightdata link is a data set scraped from Facebook, not sold by Facebook

Cambridge Analytica was the same thing, scraped from Facebook by people who voluntarily (perhaps ignorantly) gave their data to quiz apps like "what kind of horse are you?"

Facebook does not sell user data, and it never has

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