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> Tech companies like Facebook have mastered the art of distorting choice and consent. I have seen this spill over into all sorts of everyday things. HR policy

> Tech companies like Facebook have mastered the art of distorting choice and consent. I have seen this spill over into all sorts of everyday things. HR policy changes at work are communicated more like this now. You suddenly get an interstitial when logging in one day, demanding that you accept or acknowledge some change or new policy. There is often no other option, no avenues given to protest or question or even discuss it. These things used to be communicated by email, before that by memo, making it apparent who the author was and thus who to follow up to if you felt the need to do so. Now it's an annonymous "we" who have decided that this is the new order of things, and if I want to get on with doing my work I need to acquiesce.

deregulateMed 5y ago
At least it's easy to switch jobs. Social media has the network effect so it's less easy. Although tell that to mid level managers and they don't quite think it's easy to change jobs.
- koolba 5y ago
  It’s much easier to quit all social media than it is for most people to quit their job and find a new one.
  - bingidingi 5y ago
    Right but if you quit a job you're not quitting all jobs. That's not true with social media outside of fringe options like Mastodon (Which is like quitting a FAANG job to work at Wendy's... and this is coming from someone that likes Mastodon)
    - Ma8ee 5y ago
      But your life won't be worse if you quit all social media.
      - grishka 5y ago
        My life would be endlessly boring if I quit all social media.
        Chazprime 5y ago
        It doesn’t have to be.
        deregulateMed 5y ago
        Read books. Literally a 10x improvement in entertainment and quality.
    - grishka 5y ago
      To be honest, Mastodon does have some UX issues that prevent it from being as popular as it could potentially become. The lack of the ability to import your existing contact list is the big one. Mastodon tries very hard to focus on finding new people with common interests, but that's a very much secondary activity on any social media platform. It's important, yes, but it's secondary. And emphasizing that "instance is a community" doesn't help this much either because people often have more than one area of interest. I'm trying to fix these issues with my own fediverse project.
      - sillysaurusx 5y ago
        The problem is deeper than that. I tried to persuade someone here that mastodon had the potential to grow as quickly as Twitter. Their response was “we don’t want it to,” more or less. And probably with good reason. Not everything needs to be the largest thing it can be. It’s why bean sprouts are different from oak trees, as someone once put it.
        grishka 5y ago
        I have one friend who set up his own Mastodon server. Had some fun with it and seemingly forgot about it. The server is still running tho. Some people just don't have the need for social media, they have enough life without it. That's fine. For most, though, having some form of social media presence is beneficial. And the platform on which they have that presence better not be based on the scourge that is the attention economy.
onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
In fairness, the person sending the email or the memo isn't usually the person that came up with the policy, right? Isn't that usually done by a large group? What's the difference in just emailing HR to complain than replying to the email? In either case, can you really expect anything to happen in a large company?
- naniwaduni 5y ago
  What's the difference between starting a topic and hitting reply?
deevolution 5y ago
I'm sure I'll get lots of eye rolls and skepticism for saying this but: i feel like crypto projects and DAOs are in the very early stages of solving some of these problems by giving communities abilities to vote on upgrades or fork off if they don't agree with an implemented change. It's still very early and governance systems are still being experimented with, but I'm optimistic.
- tehjoker 5y ago
  How the heck will anarchism help you when you don't have any power to implement the changes? You have to have the leverage to deny decision makers things they need or want or else you are simply subject to their whims, vote or no vote. This is the purpose of labor organizing. A strike, work stoppage, slow down, or other action will exert pressure on decision makers directly.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    Try not to shut down conversation like this. Your response all but guaranteed they won’t follow up, at least not without being on the super-defensive. Wouldn’t it be interesting if anarchism could help you? Admitting it’s possible is the first step to intellectual curiosity.
    - wruza 5y ago
      Admitting means understanding how exactly it would help. For issues described in TFA and this subthread the platform trust issue (which “crypto” part is supposed to solve) doesn’t exist. You may discuss both on twitter with the same effect.
  - indigochill 5y ago
    > This is the purpose of labor organizing. A strike, work stoppage, slow down, or other action will exert pressure on decision makers directly. Lately I've been been wondering regarding labor organization: why not cut out the negotiation part and start companies directly run by unions? Or, as they're more commonly called, co-ops. Intuitively, it seems to better align the decision-makers with the laborers because they become the same people. Maybe it's the same Facebook-vs-Mastodon problem in that people want to work at the popular place with the large market share but they also want to have their human rights respected, and a co-op doesn't offer the former.
Spooky23 5y ago
The other related item is video training. A lot of places replaced a policy and procedure manual for stuff like HR and Procurement with video content. I had to do something for an employee on workers compensation a few years ago and the training consisted of a 45 minute video consisting of recitation of a PowerPoint and some screenshots from PeopleSoft. Literally a monotone HR drone reading form the slide, except he also added critical, unwritten commentary.

deregulateMed 5y ago

At least it's easy to switch jobs. Social media has the network effect so it's less easy. Although tell that to mid level managers and they don't quite think it's easy to change jobs.

koolba 5y ago
It’s much easier to quit all social media than it is for most people to quit their job and find a new one.
- bingidingi 5y ago
  Right but if you quit a job you're not quitting all jobs. That's not true with social media outside of fringe options like Mastodon (Which is like quitting a FAANG job to work at Wendy's... and this is coming from someone that likes Mastodon)
  - Ma8ee 5y ago
    But your life won't be worse if you quit all social media.
    - grishka 5y ago
      My life would be endlessly boring if I quit all social media.
      - Chazprime 5y ago
        It doesn’t have to be.
      - deregulateMed 5y ago
        Read books. Literally a 10x improvement in entertainment and quality.
  - grishka 5y ago
    To be honest, Mastodon does have some UX issues that prevent it from being as popular as it could potentially become. The lack of the ability to import your existing contact list is the big one. Mastodon tries very hard to focus on finding new people with common interests, but that's a very much secondary activity on any social media platform. It's important, yes, but it's secondary. And emphasizing that "instance is a community" doesn't help this much either because people often have more than one area of interest. I'm trying to fix these issues with my own fediverse project.
    - sillysaurusx 5y ago
      The problem is deeper than that. I tried to persuade someone here that mastodon had the potential to grow as quickly as Twitter. Their response was “we don’t want it to,” more or less. And probably with good reason. Not everything needs to be the largest thing it can be. It’s why bean sprouts are different from oak trees, as someone once put it.
      - grishka 5y ago
        I have one friend who set up his own Mastodon server. Had some fun with it and seemingly forgot about it. The server is still running tho. Some people just don't have the need for social media, they have enough life without it. That's fine. For most, though, having some form of social media presence is beneficial. And the platform on which they have that presence better not be based on the scourge that is the attention economy.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago

In fairness, the person sending the email or the memo isn't usually the person that came up with the policy, right? Isn't that usually done by a large group? What's the difference in just emailing HR to complain than replying to the email? In either case, can you really expect anything to happen in a large company?

naniwaduni 5y ago
What's the difference between starting a topic and hitting reply?

deevolution 5y ago

I'm sure I'll get lots of eye rolls and skepticism for saying this but: i feel like crypto projects and DAOs are in the very early stages of solving some of these problems by giving communities abilities to vote on upgrades or fork off if they don't agree with an implemented change. It's still very early and governance systems are still being experimented with, but I'm optimistic.

tehjoker 5y ago
How the heck will anarchism help you when you don't have any power to implement the changes? You have to have the leverage to deny decision makers things they need or want or else you are simply subject to their whims, vote or no vote. This is the purpose of labor organizing. A strike, work stoppage, slow down, or other action will exert pressure on decision makers directly.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  Try not to shut down conversation like this. Your response all but guaranteed they won’t follow up, at least not without being on the super-defensive. Wouldn’t it be interesting if anarchism could help you? Admitting it’s possible is the first step to intellectual curiosity.
  - wruza 5y ago
    Admitting means understanding how exactly it would help. For issues described in TFA and this subthread the platform trust issue (which “crypto” part is supposed to solve) doesn’t exist. You may discuss both on twitter with the same effect.
- indigochill 5y ago
  > This is the purpose of labor organizing. A strike, work stoppage, slow down, or other action will exert pressure on decision makers directly. Lately I've been been wondering regarding labor organization: why not cut out the negotiation part and start companies directly run by unions? Or, as they're more commonly called, co-ops. Intuitively, it seems to better align the decision-makers with the laborers because they become the same people. Maybe it's the same Facebook-vs-Mastodon problem in that people want to work at the popular place with the large market share but they also want to have their human rights respected, and a co-op doesn't offer the former.

Spooky23 5y ago

The other related item is video training. A lot of places replaced a policy and procedure manual for stuff like HR and Procurement with video content. I had to do something for an employee on workers compensation a few years ago and the training consisted of a 45 minute video consisting of recitation of a PowerPoint and some screenshots from PeopleSoft. Literally a monotone HR drone reading form the slide, except he also added critical, unwritten commentary.