32 ms·

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

519 points by aaronbrethorst 6y ago

ghj 6y ago
I guess we're past the point where codewords like "winnie the pooh" work but is NLP so advanced it can parse all the other ways human hint and indirectly communicate with each other? 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.
- Mirioron 6y ago
  I find it incredibly unlikely that this tech has been perfected to such a degree. People have tried for a very long time to fix spam. It still gets through. I think that this is unfixable on a technical level, because people can simply change the meaning of words.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  Or just... don't use your company's chat product to talk about unionization efforts? I'm mostly agnostic toward unions for software workers. I think we need something closer to what professional engineers have than to what police/teachers have. And then my employer started punishing people for talking about unionizing. That's when I became pro-union. Often times, it's the clamp-down that turns people against you. "The tighter you tighten your grip..."
capableweb 6y ago
> He added that the “oversight” was likely “lack of context versus bad intent from anyone on the team.” What?! You're presenting a Workplace Chat tool and you're writing the slides for the feature of blocking certain topics and you use "unionize" as an example. How the fuck can you lack context here? Is the people writing the talks not aware what the talks are about or what? Then there is not just the options of "lack of context" vs "bad intent", there is also "simply stupid", "some people at Facebook don't like unions", "wrong target audience" and "unexpected push back on something we care about". Instead they argue in bad faith that there is just two reasons here.
objclxt 6y ago
I used to work at Facebook, and it was always interesting to me to see just how many engineers were actively against - aghast, even - at the idea of unions. 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.
- mindslight 6y ago
  For an example of how unions can get involved in unexpected ways, take a look at the SAG releases for participating in hobby projects (eg 48 Hour Film Festival). It's just an additional piece of paperwork, but it does demonstrate a dynamic that the union has a legitimate interest in overseeing and could just as well prohibit. A software union would surely become involved in bootstrapped startups, hackathons, and work on Free software. It's possible for these areas to be treated intelligently by a union, but it's also possible they wouldn't be.
- regularfry 6y ago
  I'm endlessly surprised that unions are collectively as bad at PR as their image suggests.
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
Clearly, they don't play online games with a chat lobby. They would have quickly learned that such features is useless, as it's easily bypassed: - 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 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.
- mattbillenstein 6y ago
  I've fought this feature in products for years - the product ppl always wanna ban bad words and I'm like - you can't, it literally never works, it just becomes a stupid arms race and it's not worth our time. I always lose this argument for some reason.
  - BiteCode_dev 6y ago
    It's like the button at traffic lights that does nothing: it's not about actually working, it's about giving the user a feeling of control.
    - neuronic 6y ago
      So it does something. When you push it, the electrical signal goes from finger to brain, inducing a change, instead from button to traffic light.
    - nfoz 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo_button https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo_button
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      And gradually you learn to stop pushing the button. Then when you are in a new neighbourhood you wonder why the green never comes. That's learned helplessness. You have been taught that any control was illusory and that nothing you do helps, so you don't even try.
thosewhoteach 6y ago
In all fairness, it is not as if anyone is going to put up a big protest in the current economic circumstances. Not even Facebook employees can find another job easily in the current environment. With 40+ million or so unemployed, and no end in sight for COVID at the moment, Zuckerberg can get away with whatever he wants over the next few months. "Never let a good crisis go to waste", as the saying goes. So FB employees will follow what I call MZM - Mark Zuckerberg Method. Pretend like you care for a while, wait for people's short attention spans to automatically move on to the next big scandal, and then make the scandal of the day as the "new normal".
- caymanjim 6y ago
  While unemployment is high right now, I'm not sure it's affected most tech workers. I don't have numbers, so this is purely anecdotal, but almost all of my friends are in tech, no one has been laid off, and I just started job searching myself after being voluntarily out of the market since pre-plague, and I can barely keep up with interview requests.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  This tool is something that Facebook is trying to sell. To other companies. So you're missing the point with your superficial speculation as to the balance of power between Facebook and its employees. For that reason, I'll keep the rebuttal short: laws are still valid, as far as I know. And this tool is blatantly illegal. Facebook employees also don't typically face starvation if they can't find a new job right away. And considering how rare unions are in the tech sector, and how common they are in, for example, automotive, my hunch is unionisation is more likely to happen at companies facing economic pressure.
  - TakawaraJu 6y ago
    Whilst it may be distasteful, it is entirely legal. An employer cannot inhibit the formation or function of a union but are under no obligation to provide the facilities or platform to form one. What FB have done is akin to not allowing an organizer to use the company photocopier to print union leaflets
YetAnotherMatt 6y ago
>>Section 1: The policy of the United States is to be carried out "by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment..." Section 7: "Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or bargain collectively through representation of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining..." Section 8(a): "It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer . . . to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in Section 7..." From https://www.ueunion.org/org_rights.html https://www.ueunion.org/org_rights.html Looks like that would be illegal to my non-lawyer interpretation. Worse happens every day, this would be extremely evident though.
- praptak 6y ago
  The tool itself is generic, somebody at FB just thought it is a bright idea to use "unionize" as an example in a marketing pitch.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- kevsim 6y ago
  IANAL but I would assume FB is in the clear legally though as they're not actively blocking anything in particular, merely providing the tool with which admins can do the blocking themselves.
  - imgabe 6y ago
    Kind of odd that they would choose to promote their product by touting a feature that is illegal to use.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    "it should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter."
pojntfx 6y ago
Unionize!
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  It's the only way to bring inorganics down to parts-per-billion. (what do we want? 18,2 MΩ cm! when do we want it? on demand!)
ars 6y ago
Clickbait title. The tool allows banning any word. There's nothing special about unionize in the tool.
- jsnell 6y ago
  There's one special aspect to "unionize": according to the article it was the word Facebook chose to use as an example in a presentation. If that's true, this title seems rather fair.
- docdeek 6y ago
  You're right on the capacity to ban/control discussion around any word. However it is probably notable that Facebook chose to highlight 'unionize' and not 'football' or 'American Idol' in their sales pitch.
  - golemiprague 6y ago
    True but I think it was a bit tongue in cheek which I like in companies, would you rather them writing there Trump? From some reason I don't thing there would be such reaction if that what they wrote
hliyan 6y ago
Not on the topic of Facebook, but on employers who fear these trends so much that they want this level of control: Fundamental social shifts cannot be nipped in the bud. The best anyone can do is understand them and ensure the changes are gradual, rather than letting them build-up to a big bang. This is an oversimplification, but: early 20th century rise of communism was a violent backlash against the presiding monarchies and oligarchies who suppressed all attempts at gradual reform. Dissatisfaction with growing wealth disparity at the time was a fundamental trend that could not have been "nipped in the bud". The current trend seems to be very reminiscent of this. When those in power suppress all avenues of gradual reform, fundamental trends tend to boil over in abrupt and often destructive forms. Only question is: is what we're seeing today just a passing trend or a fundamental shift?
- pjc50 6y ago
  > Dissatisfaction with growing wealth disparity at the time was a fundamental trend that could not have been "nipped in the bud". 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.
  - Veen 6y ago
    > It seems to me that the BLM movement is just such a "big bang" against a slow increase in racism Over the last few decades, there has been rapid _decrease_ in racism throughout the West.
- YetAnotherMatt 6y ago
  >>is what we're seeing today just a passing trend or a fundamental shift? Facebook advertised to Walmart with union busting capabilities. Walmart has a union busting history going back 50 years minimum. Looking at public opinion on unions, it seems to be rising the past few years, while membership keeps going down (in the US).
anilakar 6y ago
Using mass moderation tools for keeping the workplace chat clean is the wrong solution in any case.
codegladiator 6y ago
"to make the world more open and connected"
varispeed 6y ago
Here in the UK government is pushing no rights employment under guise of fairer taxation. People providing services will be taxed as employees but will not have any workers' rights, including no right to unionise, no equal pay, no maternity leave and so on. Currently this won't affect existing employees, but from April nothing will stop employers from terminating their staff and issuing new NRE contracts on a take it or leave it basis. What's most bizarre is that even the unions are not too fussed about it, it's like they either don't believe this is actually happening or they just don't care. The legislation is in current Finance Bill and so far has met no resistance and likely is going to pass.
- toyg 6y ago
  > even the unions are not too fussed about it That's because it primarily hits contractors, who are typically not unionized and in fact tend to erode union presence. Abuse of contractor agreements and temp-agencies has already been used for decades to effectively bust unions, that's really nothing new. Mass-rehiring could have been done already a long time ago, and likely was, by and large, where they could avoid the resulting bad press. > The legislation is in current Finance Bill and so far has met no resistance and likely is going to pass. Tories have a solid majority, and they are anti-unions as an article of faith. Even if Labour made a stink about it, tabloids would likely ignore it. The most pro-union Labour leader since the '80s spent 5 years being vilified precisely so he couldn't raise this sort of issue.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    Workers re-hired on a contract could defend themselves against lack of employment protections by working outside IR35 and providing these protections themselves. The change takes this away as only the client will be able to decide how worker is taxed. This favour agencies over independent workers as agencies have more freedoms what business costs they can deduct from tax and what salaries to pay to their workers. This is a seemingly subtle change, that changes from benign to lethal.
perfunctory 6y ago
US looks more and more like China or Soviet Union. One difference is that the oppressor is not the communist party but corporations [0] [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-walmart-union-surveillance/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-walmart-union-survei...
- sct202 6y ago
  We're going to have to start communicating in emojis to get around the censors just like in China.
purplezooey 6y ago
[used by] Walmart ... used by the Singapore government, Discovery Communications... It's like a star studded cast of open-minded, benevolent enablers of the free flow of information...
drtillberg 6y ago
>> [M]any Facebook team members are now questioning the moral compass of [its] chief executive .... Nothing about FB or its chief executive indicates they're using a 'moral compass.'
tempodox 6y ago
FB is known as a developer of censoring tech, so it makes sense that they try to monetize their expertise and sell tools to others who want to censor but can't or don't know how. I still find it pretty disgusting, though.
shp0ngle 6y ago
Workplace is very very very annoying to actually use, btw. Workplace is basically "facebook, but in a corp"; but all the nags and annoying notifications that kind-of work in Facebook, because you can chose what pages and groups to follow, just flat out don't work there, because you have to follow certain group. And you keep getting these annoying notifications that you cannot easily filter. So you still have one stream of notification, as on Facebook, which is both "funny pictures haha" and "important company-wide announcement". So bad! Workplace Chat is just Messenger. And again, it sucks in corporate settings. Workplace is really, really bad UX.
- chillee 6y ago
  As a contrary opinion, I quite like workplace. I definitely feel that, for me, it provides a much more effective way of staying up to date on what's happening compared to mailing lists and such. I don't understand how one stream of notifications is different from email - at least with workplace there's some ranking going on.
  - shp0ngle 6y ago
    With e-mail, you don't get an avalanche of "funny memes" pictures that some people tend to post to Workplace. (At least from my experience.)
    - kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
      Some people enjoy the memes. Not everything has to be stiff-upper-lippy.`
- rock_hard 6y ago
  Interesting I love workplace and hate that I have to use Slack at my current gig
renewiltord 6y ago
In going to say it: you are probably a complete moron if you thought it was a good idea to put "unionize" on the slide for words you can block using your software.
- speedgoose 6y ago
  Deciding to implement such a feature is a bit weird too. Sometimes you must say no.
  - nujabe 6y ago
    I don't think the idea of 'content control' is a bad one at all, as in you may want to filter out offensive content etc. It's just that it's very dumb to spell out the exact type of controversial words/content you can use to filter out, when just explaining the feature to the customer would be enough, they will get the idea.
- lioeters 6y ago
  I agree, having that specific word on a slide shows, whoever prepared it must have been out of touch - or, very in touch with what employers like Facebook want, but blind to the serious legal implications.
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  Probably some 24 year old intern with zero political nous
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
neximo64 6y ago
Aren't people at facebook paid really well anyway, way above the norm. What is the motive in unionising, is it the politics of it or the pay that you want to change?
- ErikBjare 6y ago
  It's not about unionizing at Facebook, but about unionizing at companies which use Facebook's product Workplace.
- bluntfang 6y ago
  >What is the motive in unionising, is it the politics of it or the pay that you want to change? IMO a software engineers union would accomplish things like productive social change. Most of the employees at facebook don't like Zucc's relationship with Trump? Well, strike. See how long it takes them to replace and onboard a bunch of scabs if 90% of your engineers aren't working.
- lexs 6y ago
  Unions are not only about compensation but also terms of employment. I see enough discussions on HN about non-competes, forced arbitration etc. where unionising would help.
Lio 6y ago
> Facebook is quietly helping to set up a new pro-tech advocacy group to battle Washington > The employee noted that many Facebook team members are now questioning the moral compass of chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. At some point you need to look at the skull emblems on your uniform and ask yourself, "Hans, are we the baddies?". IMHO I've never heard one of these stories where I thought Facebook was doing the right thing. Not once.
- annadane 6y ago
  It's my general impression that the ones who say "Don't worry, we care about you" ARE the baddies, they're not aligned with their own public image (why? I don't know, they should be, maybe they can't overcome their own egos). The ones you should be trusting are the ones who go "Don't trust me, but these are my principles"
  - Lio 6y ago
    Isn’t that the equivalent of the New Yorker cartoon with the wolf saying “I will eat you” and the sheep saying “I like him because he tells it like it is”?
- umeshunni 6y ago
  > IMHO I've never heard one of these stories where I thought Facebook was doing the right thing. Not once. It's almost like the media is pushing some kind of narrative here against an entity they compete with.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Doesn't make a lot of sense. Unlike traditional blogs, Facebook isn't exactly a place that's creating rival news content. If anything, FB helps spread the news by being a platform for people to post articles and stories.
    - bryan_w 6y ago
      > If anything, FB helps spread the news by being a platform for people to post articles You could see how that would lead to problems when that become the main driver of traffic. If tomorrow Mark decides to remove the share button, it would be the end of a lot of traditional media sources.
throwaway4715 6y ago
Multiple things can be true. 1) It was incredibly stupid for anyone to use suppressing unions as an example. 2) Employers should have control over the content on their internal systems (people get fired for things they say over email/Slack/etc. all the time). 3) This headline is some serious click bait.
hbarka 6y ago
Maybe there needs to be a new concept of union. A police union is different from a writer’s guild.
MrZongle2 6y ago
Did you reach Friday without having a good reason to dislike Facebook this week? Well, here you are. I'm not crazy about unions. I'm not convinced that software developers need one, despite regular revivals of the notion. But I do recognize that other people want them, and other industries even need them. But this shit is Orwellian. As many things that have come out of Facebook -- and other big tech companies. I'm amazed that so many of these types of ideas make it as far as they do, and are generally met with tepid disapproval at best. We're living in a Stasi wet dream, but many are trying to convince us that it's ok because these are private companies, rather than a government.
turdnagel 6y ago
It's one thing to offer a censorship tool, it's another to specifically suggest "unionize" as a word to censor.
atlgator 6y ago
Let's yewnionize.
kgin 6y ago
This feature isn't going anywhere, but they'll be much more careful in the examples that they use. It will be like Q-tip ads that never show them being used to clean ears.
ARandomerDude 6y ago
I'm surprised anyone is surprised by this. Facebook's goal is to make money. All the politics on the side are just virtue signaling for the purposes of recruiting, lobbying, and winning in the court of public opinion. When there's real money on the table, politics, privacy, etc. take a back seat for them. Not saying that's the way it ought to be. But that's how it is for FB, and many of the so-called "progressive" companies.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  As politicized as unions can get, to engage in union busting isn't just picking a political side, it's unethical. But yeah, your point still holds.
xtat 6y ago
Facebook is the harbinger of the techno-dystopia of the next decade

ghj 6y ago

I guess we're past the point where codewords like "winnie the pooh" work but is NLP so advanced it can parse all the other ways human hint and indirectly communicate with each other? 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.

Mirioron 6y ago
I find it incredibly unlikely that this tech has been perfected to such a degree. People have tried for a very long time to fix spam. It still gets through. I think that this is unfixable on a technical level, because people can simply change the meaning of words.
throwawaygh 6y ago
Or just... don't use your company's chat product to talk about unionization efforts? I'm mostly agnostic toward unions for software workers. I think we need something closer to what professional engineers have than to what police/teachers have. And then my employer started punishing people for talking about unionizing. That's when I became pro-union. Often times, it's the clamp-down that turns people against you. "The tighter you tighten your grip..."

capableweb 6y ago

> He added that the “oversight” was likely “lack of context versus bad intent from anyone on the team.” What?! You're presenting a Workplace Chat tool and you're writing the slides for the feature of blocking certain topics and you use "unionize" as an example. How the fuck can you lack context here? Is the people writing the talks not aware what the talks are about or what? Then there is not just the options of "lack of context" vs "bad intent", there is also "simply stupid", "some people at Facebook don't like unions", "wrong target audience" and "unexpected push back on something we care about". Instead they argue in bad faith that there is just two reasons here.

objclxt 6y ago

I used to work at Facebook, and it was always interesting to me to see just how many engineers were actively against - aghast, even - at the idea of unions. 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.

mindslight 6y ago
For an example of how unions can get involved in unexpected ways, take a look at the SAG releases for participating in hobby projects (eg 48 Hour Film Festival). It's just an additional piece of paperwork, but it does demonstrate a dynamic that the union has a legitimate interest in overseeing and could just as well prohibit. A software union would surely become involved in bootstrapped startups, hackathons, and work on Free software. It's possible for these areas to be treated intelligently by a union, but it's also possible they wouldn't be.
regularfry 6y ago
I'm endlessly surprised that unions are collectively as bad at PR as their image suggests.

BiteCode_dev 6y ago

Clearly, they don't play online games with a chat lobby. They would have quickly learned that such features is useless, as it's easily bypassed: - 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 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.

mattbillenstein 6y ago
I've fought this feature in products for years - the product ppl always wanna ban bad words and I'm like - you can't, it literally never works, it just becomes a stupid arms race and it's not worth our time. I always lose this argument for some reason.
- BiteCode_dev 6y ago
  It's like the button at traffic lights that does nothing: it's not about actually working, it's about giving the user a feeling of control.
  - neuronic 6y ago
    So it does something. When you push it, the electrical signal goes from finger to brain, inducing a change, instead from button to traffic light.
  - nfoz 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo_button https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo_button
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    And gradually you learn to stop pushing the button. Then when you are in a new neighbourhood you wonder why the green never comes. That's learned helplessness. You have been taught that any control was illusory and that nothing you do helps, so you don't even try.

thosewhoteach 6y ago

In all fairness, it is not as if anyone is going to put up a big protest in the current economic circumstances. Not even Facebook employees can find another job easily in the current environment. With 40+ million or so unemployed, and no end in sight for COVID at the moment, Zuckerberg can get away with whatever he wants over the next few months. "Never let a good crisis go to waste", as the saying goes. So FB employees will follow what I call MZM - Mark Zuckerberg Method. Pretend like you care for a while, wait for people's short attention spans to automatically move on to the next big scandal, and then make the scandal of the day as the "new normal".

caymanjim 6y ago
While unemployment is high right now, I'm not sure it's affected most tech workers. I don't have numbers, so this is purely anecdotal, but almost all of my friends are in tech, no one has been laid off, and I just started job searching myself after being voluntarily out of the market since pre-plague, and I can barely keep up with interview requests.
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
This tool is something that Facebook is trying to sell. To other companies. So you're missing the point with your superficial speculation as to the balance of power between Facebook and its employees. For that reason, I'll keep the rebuttal short: laws are still valid, as far as I know. And this tool is blatantly illegal. Facebook employees also don't typically face starvation if they can't find a new job right away. And considering how rare unions are in the tech sector, and how common they are in, for example, automotive, my hunch is unionisation is more likely to happen at companies facing economic pressure.
- TakawaraJu 6y ago
  Whilst it may be distasteful, it is entirely legal. An employer cannot inhibit the formation or function of a union but are under no obligation to provide the facilities or platform to form one. What FB have done is akin to not allowing an organizer to use the company photocopier to print union leaflets

YetAnotherMatt 6y ago

>>Section 1: The policy of the United States is to be carried out "by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment..." Section 7: "Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or bargain collectively through representation of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining..." Section 8(a): "It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer . . . to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in Section 7..." From https://www.ueunion.org/org_rights.html https://www.ueunion.org/org_rights.html Looks like that would be illegal to my non-lawyer interpretation. Worse happens every day, this would be extremely evident though.

praptak 6y ago
The tool itself is generic, somebody at FB just thought it is a bright idea to use "unionize" as an example in a marketing pitch.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kevsim 6y ago
IANAL but I would assume FB is in the clear legally though as they're not actively blocking anything in particular, merely providing the tool with which admins can do the blocking themselves.
- imgabe 6y ago
  Kind of odd that they would choose to promote their product by touting a feature that is illegal to use.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  "it should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter."

pojntfx 6y ago

Unionize!

082349872349872 6y ago
It's the only way to bring inorganics down to parts-per-billion. (what do we want? 18,2 MΩ cm! when do we want it? on demand!)

ars 6y ago

Clickbait title. The tool allows banning any word. There's nothing special about unionize in the tool.

jsnell 6y ago
There's one special aspect to "unionize": according to the article it was the word Facebook chose to use as an example in a presentation. If that's true, this title seems rather fair.
docdeek 6y ago
You're right on the capacity to ban/control discussion around any word. However it is probably notable that Facebook chose to highlight 'unionize' and not 'football' or 'American Idol' in their sales pitch.
- golemiprague 6y ago
  True but I think it was a bit tongue in cheek which I like in companies, would you rather them writing there Trump? From some reason I don't thing there would be such reaction if that what they wrote

hliyan 6y ago

Not on the topic of Facebook, but on employers who fear these trends so much that they want this level of control: Fundamental social shifts cannot be nipped in the bud. The best anyone can do is understand them and ensure the changes are gradual, rather than letting them build-up to a big bang. This is an oversimplification, but: early 20th century rise of communism was a violent backlash against the presiding monarchies and oligarchies who suppressed all attempts at gradual reform. Dissatisfaction with growing wealth disparity at the time was a fundamental trend that could not have been "nipped in the bud". The current trend seems to be very reminiscent of this. When those in power suppress all avenues of gradual reform, fundamental trends tend to boil over in abrupt and often destructive forms. Only question is: is what we're seeing today just a passing trend or a fundamental shift?

pjc50 6y ago
> Dissatisfaction with growing wealth disparity at the time was a fundamental trend that could not have been "nipped in the bud". 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.
- Veen 6y ago
  > It seems to me that the BLM movement is just such a "big bang" against a slow increase in racism Over the last few decades, there has been rapid _decrease_ in racism throughout the West.
YetAnotherMatt 6y ago
>>is what we're seeing today just a passing trend or a fundamental shift? Facebook advertised to Walmart with union busting capabilities. Walmart has a union busting history going back 50 years minimum. Looking at public opinion on unions, it seems to be rising the past few years, while membership keeps going down (in the US).

anilakar 6y ago

Using mass moderation tools for keeping the workplace chat clean is the wrong solution in any case.

codegladiator 6y ago

"to make the world more open and connected"

varispeed 6y ago

Here in the UK government is pushing no rights employment under guise of fairer taxation. People providing services will be taxed as employees but will not have any workers' rights, including no right to unionise, no equal pay, no maternity leave and so on. Currently this won't affect existing employees, but from April nothing will stop employers from terminating their staff and issuing new NRE contracts on a take it or leave it basis. What's most bizarre is that even the unions are not too fussed about it, it's like they either don't believe this is actually happening or they just don't care. The legislation is in current Finance Bill and so far has met no resistance and likely is going to pass.

toyg 6y ago
> even the unions are not too fussed about it That's because it primarily hits contractors, who are typically not unionized and in fact tend to erode union presence. Abuse of contractor agreements and temp-agencies has already been used for decades to effectively bust unions, that's really nothing new. Mass-rehiring could have been done already a long time ago, and likely was, by and large, where they could avoid the resulting bad press. > The legislation is in current Finance Bill and so far has met no resistance and likely is going to pass. Tories have a solid majority, and they are anti-unions as an article of faith. Even if Labour made a stink about it, tabloids would likely ignore it. The most pro-union Labour leader since the '80s spent 5 years being vilified precisely so he couldn't raise this sort of issue.
- varispeed 6y ago
  Workers re-hired on a contract could defend themselves against lack of employment protections by working outside IR35 and providing these protections themselves. The change takes this away as only the client will be able to decide how worker is taxed. This favour agencies over independent workers as agencies have more freedoms what business costs they can deduct from tax and what salaries to pay to their workers. This is a seemingly subtle change, that changes from benign to lethal.

perfunctory 6y ago

US looks more and more like China or Soviet Union. One difference is that the oppressor is not the communist party but corporations [0] [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-walmart-union-surveillance/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-walmart-union-survei...

sct202 6y ago
We're going to have to start communicating in emojis to get around the censors just like in China.

purplezooey 6y ago

[used by] Walmart ... used by the Singapore government, Discovery Communications... It's like a star studded cast of open-minded, benevolent enablers of the free flow of information...

drtillberg 6y ago

>> [M]any Facebook team members are now questioning the moral compass of [its] chief executive .... Nothing about FB or its chief executive indicates they're using a 'moral compass.'

tempodox 6y ago

FB is known as a developer of censoring tech, so it makes sense that they try to monetize their expertise and sell tools to others who want to censor but can't or don't know how. I still find it pretty disgusting, though.

shp0ngle 6y ago

Workplace is very very very annoying to actually use, btw. Workplace is basically "facebook, but in a corp"; but all the nags and annoying notifications that kind-of work in Facebook, because you can chose what pages and groups to follow, just flat out don't work there, because you have to follow certain group. And you keep getting these annoying notifications that you cannot easily filter. So you still have one stream of notification, as on Facebook, which is both "funny pictures haha" and "important company-wide announcement". So bad! Workplace Chat is just Messenger. And again, it sucks in corporate settings. Workplace is really, really bad UX.

chillee 6y ago
As a contrary opinion, I quite like workplace. I definitely feel that, for me, it provides a much more effective way of staying up to date on what's happening compared to mailing lists and such. I don't understand how one stream of notifications is different from email - at least with workplace there's some ranking going on.
- shp0ngle 6y ago
  With e-mail, you don't get an avalanche of "funny memes" pictures that some people tend to post to Workplace. (At least from my experience.)
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
    Some people enjoy the memes. Not everything has to be stiff-upper-lippy.`
rock_hard 6y ago
Interesting I love workplace and hate that I have to use Slack at my current gig

renewiltord 6y ago

In going to say it: you are probably a complete moron if you thought it was a good idea to put "unionize" on the slide for words you can block using your software.

speedgoose 6y ago
Deciding to implement such a feature is a bit weird too. Sometimes you must say no.
- nujabe 6y ago
  I don't think the idea of 'content control' is a bad one at all, as in you may want to filter out offensive content etc. It's just that it's very dumb to spell out the exact type of controversial words/content you can use to filter out, when just explaining the feature to the customer would be enough, they will get the idea.
lioeters 6y ago
I agree, having that specific word on a slide shows, whoever prepared it must have been out of touch - or, very in touch with what employers like Facebook want, but blind to the serious legal implications.
C1sc0cat 6y ago
Probably some 24 year old intern with zero political nous
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

neximo64 6y ago

Aren't people at facebook paid really well anyway, way above the norm. What is the motive in unionising, is it the politics of it or the pay that you want to change?

ErikBjare 6y ago
It's not about unionizing at Facebook, but about unionizing at companies which use Facebook's product Workplace.
bluntfang 6y ago
>What is the motive in unionising, is it the politics of it or the pay that you want to change? IMO a software engineers union would accomplish things like productive social change. Most of the employees at facebook don't like Zucc's relationship with Trump? Well, strike. See how long it takes them to replace and onboard a bunch of scabs if 90% of your engineers aren't working.
lexs 6y ago
Unions are not only about compensation but also terms of employment. I see enough discussions on HN about non-competes, forced arbitration etc. where unionising would help.

Lio 6y ago

> Facebook is quietly helping to set up a new pro-tech advocacy group to battle Washington > The employee noted that many Facebook team members are now questioning the moral compass of chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. At some point you need to look at the skull emblems on your uniform and ask yourself, "Hans, are we the baddies?". IMHO I've never heard one of these stories where I thought Facebook was doing the right thing. Not once.

annadane 6y ago
It's my general impression that the ones who say "Don't worry, we care about you" ARE the baddies, they're not aligned with their own public image (why? I don't know, they should be, maybe they can't overcome their own egos). The ones you should be trusting are the ones who go "Don't trust me, but these are my principles"
- Lio 6y ago
  Isn’t that the equivalent of the New Yorker cartoon with the wolf saying “I will eat you” and the sheep saying “I like him because he tells it like it is”?
umeshunni 6y ago
> IMHO I've never heard one of these stories where I thought Facebook was doing the right thing. Not once. It's almost like the media is pushing some kind of narrative here against an entity they compete with.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Doesn't make a lot of sense. Unlike traditional blogs, Facebook isn't exactly a place that's creating rival news content. If anything, FB helps spread the news by being a platform for people to post articles and stories.
  - bryan_w 6y ago
    > If anything, FB helps spread the news by being a platform for people to post articles You could see how that would lead to problems when that become the main driver of traffic. If tomorrow Mark decides to remove the share button, it would be the end of a lot of traditional media sources.

throwaway4715 6y ago

Multiple things can be true. 1) It was incredibly stupid for anyone to use suppressing unions as an example. 2) Employers should have control over the content on their internal systems (people get fired for things they say over email/Slack/etc. all the time). 3) This headline is some serious click bait.

hbarka 6y ago

Maybe there needs to be a new concept of union. A police union is different from a writer’s guild.

MrZongle2 6y ago

Did you reach Friday without having a good reason to dislike Facebook this week? Well, here you are. I'm not crazy about unions. I'm not convinced that software developers need one, despite regular revivals of the notion. But I do recognize that other people want them, and other industries even need them. But this shit is Orwellian. As many things that have come out of Facebook -- and other big tech companies. I'm amazed that so many of these types of ideas make it as far as they do, and are generally met with tepid disapproval at best. We're living in a Stasi wet dream, but many are trying to convince us that it's ok because these are private companies, rather than a government.

turdnagel 6y ago

It's one thing to offer a censorship tool, it's another to specifically suggest "unionize" as a word to censor.

atlgator 6y ago

Let's yewnionize.

kgin 6y ago

This feature isn't going anywhere, but they'll be much more careful in the examples that they use. It will be like Q-tip ads that never show them being used to clean ears.

ARandomerDude 6y ago

I'm surprised anyone is surprised by this. Facebook's goal is to make money. All the politics on the side are just virtue signaling for the purposes of recruiting, lobbying, and winning in the court of public opinion. When there's real money on the table, politics, privacy, etc. take a back seat for them. Not saying that's the way it ought to be. But that's how it is for FB, and many of the so-called "progressive" companies.

Apocryphon 6y ago
As politicized as unions can get, to engage in union busting isn't just picking a political side, it's unethical. But yeah, your point still holds.

xtat 6y ago

Facebook is the harbinger of the techno-dystopia of the next decade