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VC money is fueling a global boom in worker surveillance tech
- anshubansal2000 1y agoThis has been ongoing for a while now these are getting sophisticated with AI
- hooverd 1y agoA lot of AI discussion suffers from an is/ought problem where people think you're attacking their vision of Iain Bank's the Culture while they refuse to see what's in front of their face, IMO.
- stego-tech 1y agoIf we were building The Culture, we’d be using these tools to help identify and treat folks with undiagnosed disorders (e.g., ADHD, ASD, OCD) through their habits instead of firing workers for not meeting arbitrary KPIs or denying them travel rights for being a dissenter. This is why I can’t get behind current AI bubbles: we’re not remotely using them to help humanity, only to punish the poor, the marginalized, and the undesirables.
- discreteevent 1y agoFrom someone who made an excellent video essay on the Culture: AI + Socialism = Post-scarcity AI + Capitalism = Techno-feudalism. http://youtube.com/post/UgkxESSrScXEiQoJ8WNbUb6LjPVv0f7ZVSFW?si=ZgWs6yI4pT81EoLm http://youtube.com/post/UgkxESSrScXEiQoJ8WNbUb6LjPVv0f7ZVSFW... https://youtu.be/0MOZubzNO6c?si=mt2fRL05WMV5fjn_ https://youtu.be/0MOZubzNO6c?si=mt2fRL05WMV5fjn_
- leereeves 1y agoMakes me think of the short novel Manna, about a dystopian future where working class humans are micro-managed by AI. (And an alternative future where everyone shares in the benefits of technological progress.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna_(novel)
- krasin 1y agoThe story is amazing and officially available online: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
- y-curious 1y agoI enjoyed that first bit, I'll give it a read. Thank you both
- fakedang 1y agoSadly the dystopia in that story is already partway there, and the utopia is too unreal, just some techno-futurist idealism.
- svachalek 1y agoI think all we can do is help every little way we can to ensure AI is distributed, that we can own our own AI deployments and robots, rather than letting it all roll up to a few billionaires owning everything.
- fakedang 1y agoDoesn't matter when your workplace is going to use AI monitoring, self-hosted or cloud-based. Unless you're your own boss.
- guestbest 1y agoThere are already several books about Surveillance capital. It’s not just VC money but public money, too. People pay taxes to get monitored by the government then go to work at a job where further monitoring takes place. Maybe one day houses will come with a build in no tech safe room free from surveillance and it won’t just be the bathroom as Bill Gates joked about in 2007 with his interview alongside Steve Jobs
- TrackerFF 1y agoIf you live in a country with healthy labor rights, then luckily these things aren't much to worry about.
- notarobot123 1y agoThe article is from restofworld.org so does not focus on Western countries but that doesn't mean this isn't a problem here too. Bossware is everywhere.
- danesparza 1y agoCan you give some example countries?
- kubb 1y agohttps://www.edoeb.admin.ch/en/video-surveillance-in-the-workplace https://www.edoeb.admin.ch/en/video-surveillance-in-the-work...
- bboygravity 1y agoNetherlands (and probably all of the EU) as well as Switzerland. This tech is basically not allowed or relevant there.
- glowiefedposter 1y agoYour country isn't relevant either, it isnt the 1600s anymore.
- cynicalsecurity 1y agoI suspect some jobs are still protected from the AI surveillance dystopia: academics, research, healthcare, small businesses. I was unpleasantly surprised to see Accenture on the list of bad employers who spy on their employees with AI.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago> I was unpleasantly surprised to see Accenture on the list of bad employers who spy on their employees with AI. for someone with the username 'cynicalsecurity' this is surprising to hear :) i don't think there are any global for-profit consulting firms who are guided by any kind of strong moral/ethical compass.
- mindslight 1y agoMaybe, but the current US administration is doing its best to destroy #1, #2, and #4. So that leaves healthcare, which is probably only "protected" because it has already developed different flavors of dystopia.
- bongodongobob 1y agoIn my experience, small businesses are actually the ones that love to spy. There's really no tech oversight so when the owner asks for access, they get it. Whereas if a middle manager in an enterprise company asks to see their reports mailboxes, security will tell them to get fucked.
- stego-tech 1y agoThis. Coming from MSP world, the number of SMBs who harbor such an intense hatred of their own workers to the point of demanding total surveillance is basically all of them; customers refusing surveillance packages are the exception, not the norm. Irony is that surveillance cuts both ways, and big companies know it. Any data you collect can and will be subpoenaed at some point, and that’ll multiply your damages paid out in the process.
- bongodongobob 1y ago
- SwervyDervy 1y ago[dead]
- baxtr 1y agoI want to live to see these tools being deployed in VC offices. What are these guys doing anyway besides going to the gym, having coffee dates, and putting out BS posts on X?!
- nostrademons 1y agoMost of their job actually consists of having coffee dates, as well as looking like an impressive, put-together "thought leader". A rank & file VC is essentially a salesman. Their job is to understand everything that's going on in their sector, and have warm intros available so they can sell the founders of the actually-promising startups on having their firm invest. In general, you don't do this in the office. You get out and meet lots of people in the industry. Likewise, if you're a founder going into fundraising mode, your full-time job is to be a salesman. You go out and meet lots of investors and blow shit up their ass so they all believe you're the next hot thing, and then you play them off against each others so they keep escalating their termsheets. I've had founders tell me that everything you do in the fundraising game is performative - you should treat it like a months-long acting gig where everything you do is designed to elicit the desired emotional reaction to get investors to open their portfolios.
- username135 1y agothat sounds exhausting
- skolskoly 1y agoOn some level they deeply desire for everyone to pay attention to them at all times, and they fear being ignored and irrelevant. Someone like that will struggle to understand that others don't get the same enjoyment out of being watched.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> they deeply desire for everyone to pay attention to them at all times, and they fear being ignored and irrelevant You’re describing influencers who also happen to be VCs. Plenty of—perhaps most—successful VCs have no public profile.
- liesandxander 1y ago[flagged]
- stego-tech 1y agoThe reality is that the current AI boom is just supercharging a longstanding trend of massive surveillance. Governments and the monied classes distrust everyone else by default, and continue instituting surveillance to protect their interests at the expense of everyone else. It’s also everywhere: * Academia has seen a glut of sensors and tech to surveil labs, classrooms, students, and faculty * Retail and service workers are tracked via camera or phone and yelled at remotely by the boss if they’re not appropriately productive in any given moment * Small businesses often leave telemetry and default data collection policies in place, letting private companies monitor their staff and business The only tools available to us at this point are sabotage, awareness, and resistance. We need to build a society where people trust each other by default again, instead of assuming harm until proven otherwise. We also need governance and regulations at every level stating that surveillance of any sort must be as narrowly scoped as possible, that data retention is limited to as little as practicable, and that sharing of surveillance data with any party other than those compelled by law and warrant is illegal. We’re in an era of peak productivity and flat wages, with the largest wealth pumps in human history funneling more money into fewer hands. This kind of surveillance isn’t just offensive or unacceptable, it’s grotesque in its treatment of our fellow humans.
- rangestransform 1y agoFor us to build a high trust society again, we must enforce the law uniformly and consistently through unscalable and “legacy” means like police walking the beat and doing actual human investigative police work. Though murder is down, there is an uptick in property crime, and especially an uptick in people believing that property crime should not be prosecuted at all if the perpetrator is any less wealthy than a billionaire.
- stego-tech 1y agoI don’t think most folks - even us ACAB folks - are opposed to the law being evenly enforced and applied. Nor are we opposed to law enforcement building stronger community ties and doing investigative policing instead of militarized response. The latter half of your statement does reflect a sort of ignorance of reality: when we push for lowered persecution of, say, shoplifting under a given amount or of necessities, it’s because we understand those are often crimes of desperation better solved through social programs, food banks, or job guarantees. I’d love to see cops get off their ass and go after the actual shoplifting gangs and train raiders instead of tasering someone to the ground for stealing a couple bucks of food, but they won’t unless prosecutors are given public mandates of what they should be prioritizing (say, home invasions and vehicle break-ins instead of speeding tickets). Start with the big items and work down, as opposed to the disproven “broken windows” policing style of the NYPD.
- wcski 1y agoThis article lost me when it counted identity verification software as "surveillance tech".
- nessbot 1y agoI mean regardless of whether it has value in being used, it's pretty much, by definition, "surveillance tech."
- wcski 1y agoEh. Depends on how it's deployed and used, doesn't it? To me, it's like calling a bouncer at a club a private investigator.
- Aurornis 1y agoIf everything is "surveillance tech" then nothing is. Certain functions like remote employee clock-in with geolocation (literally the first example company in the article) are perfectly reasonable to record the employee's GPS coordinates, in my opinion. If you're clocking in at the job site, having some record that you were actually at the job site isn't an invasion of privacy.
- codingdave 1y agoMy location is irrelevant to my employer, in most cases. What do they care if I am at home, at the home of someone else, in a hotel, or camping out in a yurt, so long as I do the work, attend the meetings, and get my job done?
- chairmansteve 1y agoYeah. Also DOGE and Palantir are beefing up government surveillance. https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/us/palantir-to-create-vast-federal-data-platform-tying-together-millions-of-americans-private-records-stock-jumps/articleshow/121521062.cms https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/us/palantir-t... https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/05/07/doge-government-data-immigration-social-security/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/05/07/doge-gove...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- 5350-uiop-1130 1y agothis kind of bs can only come due to a surplus of labour im afriad thats a harsh truth not going to change any time soon
- pmarreck 1y agoGood. The more hostile you make corporate work environments, the more someone will want to strike out on their own or with a smaller company
- wnc3141 1y agoultimately sure, but there are exogenous factors at play
- vjvjvjvjghv 1y agoUnfortunately that’s not how it works.
- mrangle 1y agoSmaller companies are way worse to work for, almost always. Everyone knows this. Starting a successful company is virtually impossible, just looking at failure rate. Poverty is the outcome for whomever doesn't succeed and can't find a return to the workforce. What a hostile work environment in corporate America is an argument for, actually, is either poor mental health or more Federal Employment. It reads like that's what you want. A healthy corporate America is the only real antidote to massive dysfunction. It isn't a coincidence that a healthy corporate America aligns with both a massively healthy GDP and a normal to advantageous labor pool for the average person.
- hcarvalhoalves 1y agoLast I heard, workers were getting replaced by AI, so this will sort itself out.
- justinzollars 1y agoThe AI could monitor the AI!
- feverzsj 1y agoIt's already a reality in China. [0] https://www.odditycentral.com/news/company-installs-cameras-in-toilet-booths-to-monitor-employees-toilet-breaks.html https://www.odditycentral.com/news/company-installs-cameras-... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/vx6pp0/a_chinese_company_installed_cameras_next_to_each/ https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/vx6pp0/a_chinese_com... [2] https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1003759 https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1003759
- BrenBarn 1y ago> The term “Little Tech” was popularized by the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, which argued that excessive regulation was stifling innovation. When someone says regulation is stifling innovation, the odds are 90%+ that what they mean is "we want to find loopholes to make money by screwing people over". When a VC firm says that, the odds are 100%.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dangus 1y agoYeah, I’m over here wondering “what regulation?” The US basically has none outside of banking and healthcare.
- PicassoCTs 1y agoThey want the rule of law to end, the end of responsibility - and they dont want to understand, that the result is a decaying oligarchy similar to russia. Its the ideological equivalent to having your cake and eating it.
- CPLX 1y agoThey understand just fine. They’re the oligarchs.
- Aloisius 1y agoIf they were actually oligarchs, they'd have already done what they want. Conflating some wealthy people who have, at best, mild influence over the government, with actual oligarchs in an oligarchy is... rhetorical nonsense. I get how it happened. We started referring to wealthy Russians in the 90s who actually wielded substantial control over government similar to oligarchs and we continued to refer to them as such even after they lost any semblance of political power, but still.
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- Karrot_Kream 1y agoUnfortunately this is preying on developing economies with spotty labor regulations and enforcement. I'm curious who's using them: are these domestic firms not trusting their workers or are they mostly foreign firms trying to squeeze out work from overseas shops? Everything I've encountered about South Asian work culture in low cost shops was a widespread low-trust culture which pitted managers and workers against each other, but these were specifically firms oriented around low-trust low-cost hiring.
- postalrat 1y agoIf someone appears to not be working fire them. ASAP. In the long run you will save a lot of time and money. Don't waste your money and everyone's time by spying on them.
- umeshunni 1y agoHow do you know if the guy you hired to drive your taxi is working or whether he just claims that there are no rides available?
- postalrat 1y agoIf there are no rides then what am I paying for?
- rcbdev 1y agoIf he brings in revenue, keep him. If he doesn't, don't. How is free market capitalism such a hard concept for Americans to understand these days?
- AngryData 1y agoIf you don't trust your employee, you can fire them. Don't hire people you don't trust. If a company doesn't even know what kind of traffic, output, or variation in work an employee will have in their job then they are a bad business. Business takes on liability of the people they hire, and they should not be shielded from their own ineptitude in hiring and training them.
- dmbche 1y agoIf your bottom line is actually affected by a change in employee performance that needs automated surveillance to be noticed, are you just not running a profitable buisness?
- dangus 1y agoAnd if you can’t find low performers, isn’t it your fault for being a bad manager and hiring bad middle managers?
- Aurornis 1y agoI think a lot of HN is more familiar with office tech jobs than the types of businesses this article is talking about. The companies they linked do things like allowing workers to clock-in remotely from their phones, and then the app uses GPS to record where you clocked in. > If your bottom line is actually affected by a change in employee performance that needs automated surveillance to be noticed, are you just not running a profitable buisness? This website is called "Rest Of World" because it focuses on countries outside of places like the US and Canada, where small businesses aren't operating with the fat profit margins of a SaaS company. Employee productivity and timeclock fraud can completely change the nature of a small business running on razor-thin profits in a developing country. It's a completely different ballgame than some software developers scrolling Reddit for a couple hours every day at a SaaS company. In the world of hourly workers where turnover is high, timeclock fraud will run rampant in a non-trivial portion of your workforce if people realize it's not being monitored closely. The subset of people abusing it also changes over time. Some employees start out operating by the book and then start pushing the limit to see how much they can get away with. The article doesn't really do the topic justice by blurring the lines between "app that lets workers clock in at remote jobsites" and "AI tool to surveil employees". I think a lot of comments are assuming it's all the latter.
- no_wizard 1y agoTo be completely honest, while the former makes some sense, the latter is where businesses want it to go, and that holds true in the US as much as it does in China or Indonesia. I think what everyone is talking about is supremely relevant, because often it starts with some arguably legitimate use case then over time morphs into the thing everyone didn't want.
- PicassoCTs 1y agoSlamming into the limits of growth, all that remains is to either automate it away - or to underpay and than enforce minimal compliance for essentially slavery with surveillance.
- davidmurphy 1y agoSpeaking personally, I find this utterly deplorable.
- neilv 1y agoSomething to keep in mind when building out any kind of surveillance: you probably don't get to choose who uses it, and how it's used. Fortunately, recent events have made some of the risks much easier to appreciate. For example, let's say that your city council and universities have been opposing very recent rogue moves in upper government. Suddenly, the well-regarded local police are getting body cams, which they never needed before, but it seems like a good thing that some community activists ask for. But... Data fusion means that not only will said rogue elements in upper government soon have access to that general surveillance feed, but (since disregarding the Constitution anyway) will be able to enforce local police complying with rogue directives. An example first application of that might be due to the local police having a policy of not checking reporting parties for immigration status, to encourage mutual cooperation between police and community. The rogue could automate that away, with fairly simple "AI" monitoring for compliance, already feasible. Those earlier community activists change their mind about introducing surveillance, but too late. Then the rogue use cases can get worse from there. First in enforcing general practice compliance like above, and then (if situation and pretense decay further) unconstitutionally more specifically tasking those local police as additional foot resources for the rogue's goals. Thanks to the body cams and other surveillance, a rogue will be able to centrally monitor for compliance all these loose resources in various cities. Maybe using other surveillance to determine who does and doesn't gets tasked for what. (If this sounds unlikely, think back to how quickly masked officers were tasked to grab off the street someone who did nothing wrong, Soviet secret police style. And other officers were openly circumventing legitimate court orders against extraordinary rendition of grabbed people. Maybe complementary surveillance helps the rogue mass-distinguish "loyalists" from the ones who'd question illegal orders. Plot the arc.) Body cams is just taking one example of what we might've assumed was a positive, progressive thing for society, and showing how quickly it can be turned against society, by bad elements. I think the general answer is not to implement surveillance power when you don't have sufficient checks and balances to keep it operating within the interests of the people, both now and in the future. And don't fool yourself about immediate intent of something you're building. Obviously that employee surveillance software you're developing isn't only for regulatory compliance, or detecting a spy stealing IP. But more frequently will be abused by dim and petty managers, to create dystopian work environments that slowly kill everyone with stress and misery. And occasionally will be used by corporate to try to suppress someone who complains of sexual harassment or accounting irregularities. One of the first things you can do, as a thoughtful tech worker with integrity, is to simply not apply for the questionable-looking jobs. Many of them are obvious, and you'll get an unpleasant gut feel, just by reading their one-sentence startup blurb, or maybe when you look at the job description. Then close the tab without applying, and go soothe your nausea with some /r/aww or the gym. Let the icky company be flooded with the robo-appliers, the lower-skilled, and those who have good tech skills but are less-thoughtful or less-principled. Hey, maybe a company that's a mix of the low-skilled and the shitty will sabotage its own efforts, without you having to be involved.
- b0a04gl 1y ago[dead]
- marc_abonce 1y agoTangential comment, about this "background check" tools that the article briefly mentions: > Latin America, where labor laws are less strictly enforced [...] > in Mexico, provides identity verification tools that do various checks including biometrics, and also cross-check against government databases and blacklists. These two issues are closely related. Here in Mexico, a lot of companies share "blacklists" of ex-employees that have gone to labour court, regardless of the reason or the result. Because of this, very few people ever go to labour court against a company here, even if they know that they're legally on the winning side. Fortunately not all companies are like that, but the chilling effect still remains. Source in Spanish: https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/el-preguntario/2023/09/02/que-es-el-buro-laboral-y-como-saber-si-estas-boletinado/ https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/el-preguntario/2023/09/02/qu...
- Buttons840 1y agoOne would hope the courts would award more damages for that. "My company wronged me, in order to make things right I had to appeal to the court which will do further harm to me because I am now blacklisted". The court should recognize that and aware even bigger damages.
- ajsnigrutin 1y agoOne surveillance software startup monitors your mouse usage, and another startup sells you a mouse jiggler, that makes you 'active' 24/7.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> another startup sells you a mouse jiggler, that makes you 'active' 24/7 The problem with this is the power imbalance. The mouse jiggling is technically fraud. So discovery of this tool’s use confers massive leverage to the employer.
- standardUser 1y agoAs opposed to the default situation, where the employer also has massive leverage.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> the default situation, where the employer also has massive leverage Sure. But usually not enough to refer you criminally or, if you’re in a regulated industry, potentially end your career unilaterally.
- xboxnolifes 1y agoI just like my mouse to vibrate randomly. It's completely unrelated to any tracking software. Please don't look too closely.
- focusgroup0 1y agoFlashback: https://x.com/trbdrk/status/1894197711454285983 https://x.com/trbdrk/status/1894197711454285983
- BlazeNova 1y ago[dead]
- Huxley1 1y agoAs an employee, while I understand that companies want to improve productivity, being constantly monitored makes me feel like I’ve lost my autonomy. I believe trust and respect should go both ways, and there should be no need to invade an employee’s personal space with constant surveillance.
- chii 1y agousername checks out ;D I agree, and the metric for productivity should be clear, and measured, rather than recording and monitoring the process of work. The reason employers want to monitor process is because they cannot find a good metric for productivity, for which they feel cannot be gamed - esp. knowledge workers; you don't measure by lines of code written, bugs fixed or features delivered, as they are all surely game-able.
- CommanderData 1y agoGovernment legislation.