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Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models
- irishcoffee 4mo agoOh man, a petition. Now stage a walk out, maybe a protest. They’re all equally effective.
- supertroop 4mo agoIf you think walkouts or protests don’t do anything, you might want to brush up on history. Or maybe discover it. Google is your friend. I mean everything from suffrage to organized labor to civil rights in the US was the result of massive coordinated action. You do know that right? Maybe even read up on Gandhi, or more recently French labor protests.
- irishcoffee 4mo agoIf you think they’re effective in this current day and age you should also read the news. Thanks for the sermon though.
- refactor_master 4mo ago> Google is your friend But really, it's more like tolerated business partner, right?
- soundworlds 4mo agoI've been using Kagi for the last year, and it is like an actually helpful business partner. Even if you use another one, we need to break the myth that Google is the only option out there.
- Fnoord 4mo agoIf you're not paying Google, you're the product. Same with Facebook. Both of these companies are data mining/harvesting and advertising. I'm also a Kagi user, but the index they mainly use is Google's. So I am paying for a good UI, a couple of nice features, and a frontend/proxy. The only independent index I am aware of, is Mojeek.
- supertroop 4mo agoI use Kagi. They actually use Google but with a different front end. I don’t plan to stop using Kagi.
- soundworlds 4mo agoGlad to hear you're also enjoying it! Just for anyone else reading, I would say it is inaccurate to say it is a different front-end over Google. They pull from a range of search engines, but also run their own web crawlers and indices. It's the closest thing to a fully new search engine we've had so far.
- supertroop 4mo agoThat’s funny. On the nose. :)
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- dvt 4mo ago> Indexing by search engines is fully suppressed by robots.txt Ah yes, the companies that have ignored robots.txt to scrape your website for 20+ years will now not totally, most definitely not ignore (wink wink) polite requests to not use your data for AI training. Also, haven't Meta employees been complicit in getting teenagers addicted to social media and violations of PII until they got caught? Respect goes out to mathematicians and their Leiden Declaration, which is an actual level-headed approach given the complexities of AI training and usage.
- supertroop 4mo agoIf I was Mark my answer would be “or what?” These people already work at a vile company. Which means they sold out already. If what mark does to other people doesn’t bother them they probably won’t have the backbone to leave if he says pound sand. “Oh it’s ok if you do it to other people just not me.” Get bent.
- tdeck 4mo agoIf this is what you get for selling out, just imagine what those of us who didn't sell out can expect? People sell out in order to get better conditions for themselves. Furthermore, this monitoring only strengthens Meta's ability to effectively surveil the rest of us.
- dieselgate 4mo ago> People sell out in order to get better conditions for themselves. I agree in part about what you're saying but think it's more money for FAANG+ employees. Sure the conditions can be or were good but the primary motivation is financial gain and I think the proverbial employee-frog can tolerate quite a bit of increasingly hot water if paid enough.
- supertroop 4mo agolol people sell out for a paycheck. That doesn’t mean better conditions.
- laweijfmvo 4mo agoHis answer was “or what?”. And then enough people they cared about quit, and now you’re seeing the articles about them apologizing, saying they care, etc. So the petition didn’t work, exactly, but served as a warning: employees said, fix this (or else). Mark said “or else what?”, and enough people said “I quit” to make them look bad.
- supertroop 4mo agoGood on them. Now go make the world a better place somewhere else besides that shithole company.
- foltik 4mo agoIt’s a bit hard to feel sympathetic here. Those signing this petition actively enable and profit from one of the most pervasive surveillance networks ever built. Funny how much easier it is to tolerate something when it only affects other people.
- cyanydeez 4mo ago[flagged]
- thin_carapace 4mo agowhy should i feel bad that people are treated like slaves because they chose to do the bidding of a supervillain? those people made the decision to sell their souls and act as conduits for evil. personally I'd rather focus on the other people affected by supervillains ... because there are billions of us and we didn't choose to be treated this way.
- jeltz 4mo agoBecause if we don't then the rich can divide and conquer. We need to stand united, even with the Meta techbros.
- thin_carapace 4mo agocould you please explain why should I unite with people that are actively working against my interests? getting paid a meta salary means they are richer than any other salaryman on earth. so meta workers are not humble salarymen working humble jobs, they are craven sycophants doing the bidding of a man who is openly happy to rape his fellow men for personal profit. why would it benefit me to unite with somebody who thinks it's okay to profit from the suffering of his fellow man?
- dylan604 4mo agoDid you honestly just compare getting paid large six figure salaries in comfy workspaces with spoiled children like perks to slavery and expect people to accept your premise? You look foolish if you're joking and you're a fool if you're serious. Either way, not a good look
- btbuildem 4mo agoPetition? What do you think this is, a democracy? All* corporations are dictatorships, and you're disposable machinery in one. Irony is off the charts here, given what you helped build. *not Mondragon, but like, pretty much all.
- dylan604 4mo agoWhat does a petition have to do with democracy? They are not suggesting putting it to a vote. They have a grievance with authority and are attempting to show how widespread that grievance is with signatures of those aggrieved.
- tdeck 4mo agoAlso historically something like a petition seems to always be the first step in any kind of pressure campaign. It's a relatively low stakes (but not completely risk free) way to count support.
- DrJokepu 4mo ago> first step in any kind of pressure campaign Not how corporate politics work. > low stakes Not how corporate politics work.
- zeroonetwothree 4mo agoPetitioning a king is very traditional.
- mattoxic 4mo agoSure if you've signed this you've have added your name to a list, while someone in HR has added your name to another.
- disqard 4mo agoYup, Dilbert's "easiest round of layoffs ever".
- phyzome 4mo agoTry unionizing rather than just asking nicely.
- dccoolgai 4mo agoIt's so hard to do that but it's really the only way. I had this idea that tech companies should organize _each others_ unions. Like Google employees should organize Meta's union and visa versa so no one is "sacrificing their career" by doing it.
- wolvoleo 4mo agoOr living in Europe where workers have actual rights.
- thrance 4mo ago...gained through unionizing.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- jdpigeon 4mo agoDon't worry, it's happening
- 4fffs 4mo agoThe only right course of action for Meta Mates is to eventually be hired by other firms who then squeeze everything out of them. Repent your sins and all that. Soz but zero sympathy if you chose to work there.
- tdeck 4mo agoPeople who are focusing on whether we should have sympathy for Meta employees here are missing the point. Meta employees have some of the strongest bargaining power in our industry. This particular imposition is undesirable to almost everyone. There is no upside in it for employees. Therefore, if Meta employees can be forced to accept it, everyone will be. And you'd better believe that there will be a flood of companies happy to set this up for your employer at your workplace. That's why, as someone who wouldn't consider working at Meta for ethical reasons, I'm hoping this pushback succeeds. A win for Meta here throws the floodgates wide open. A loss helps put the brakes on a bit. Furthermore, collective action that starts like this (and keeps pressure up) is much more effective than a bunch of individuals quitting their jobs. That's why employers would much prefer the latter when they're up to no good.
- titanomachy 4mo ago> Therefore, if Meta employees can be forced to accept it, everyone will be. Meta also has a strong bargaining position. The attractiveness of the job is almost entirely money, which is pretty universal, so they can quite easily replace individuals. Other (less wealthy) companies might rely on goodwill and sense of belonging or purpose to retain employees, which weakens their ability to do things like this.
- jdpigeon 4mo ago100%. Canaries in the coal mine.
- cmoski 4mo agoSurely anyone working at Meta sold their soul long ago. Do yourself a favour and quit.
- nbardy 4mo agoSigning this sounds like a good way to get fired. Executive in corporations gets to make the decisions. Employment is at will, if you don’t like it you get to leave otherwise you’re not fulfilling your contract
- zeroonetwothree 4mo agoNAL but it may be protected activity to improve working conditionals. I would guess Meta leadership doesn’t actually care very much if someone signed it. And typically the people making firing decisions are not necessarily the ones that want the AI training data anyway.
- laweijfmvo 4mo agoalso NAL and i think you’re right, the petition even says as much. but at-will employment means they can fire you for basically any other reason, and they probably have at least 10 to choose from at any given time.
- fragmede 4mo agoThe NLRB isn't entirely toothless, and retaliatory firing is actually illegal.
- JSR_FDED 4mo agoQuoting Zuckerberg on Meta’s code of conduct is hilarious.
- yieldcrv 4mo agounionize stoopiiiid a documentable unionization effort also overrides the “at will” part of getting laid off
- postsantum 4mo agoHave they tried to stage a strike and block the road? In Meta Quest of course
- quietthrow 4mo agoThe way I look at it is this: There is an entity that provides product/service and makes money. A lot of money. Like mind boggling sums of money. That entity has made a deal with a set of humans to give some of that money (which for the humans is very large and or at least hard to ignore) in exchange for their time and skills. The deal is mutual. This entity is now changing the deal somewhat and the set of humans don’t like it. But not to the point of walking away from the deal. They are used to the money and walking away from it has severe repercussions that only some can absorb. Most can’t absorb. So these humans are doing what they can to alter the recently altered deal as much as possible. The entity knows for the most part these humans have little to no leverage. There is an extremely rare (almost black swan event) chance that the entity could lose its leverage. The black swan event is that the almost entire set of humans that it made the deal with walks away from the deal. In other words the set of humans transforms from elements of a set in one homogeneous entity or at least behaves like one. Beside this the set of humans individually have very little real leverage. This letter which is from a subset of the original set of humans is an example of an attempt to become a relatively small entity. Here is the kicker - the original entity is actually emergent entity that emerged from within the set of humans in the first place. Each human in the set has a weight and it’s unequal. And ultimately since from a set of humans multiple entities can emerge entities are simply the sum of weights of the humans that make up that subset. The entity with the most weight(not most humans) has the most leverage. Does this situation really matter?? Especially since It’s just (largely) two entities and Given the number of entities that emerge and exist from the larger set of 7 or 8 billion humans? Humans generally relate to other humans that Are like them. If you are a human who is part of a similar low leverage entity you will sympathize with the humans who don’t like the new deal. If you are a human part of a very high leverage entity you probably can’t sympathize with the low leverage entities as much. In the large scheme of things it really dosnt matter for us HN outsiders. And for those humans within meta all I will say is know which entity you are part and if you don’t like the leverage it has, keep working towards changing the situation you are in.
- clapthewind 4mo ago> almost entire set of humans that it made the deal with walks away from the deal You missed mentioning a million new humans will gladly walk into the deal. This is a list of 1600 people who should be alrady looking out because meta won't be after this signature.
- steele 4mo agoI hope the vocal cynicism expressed in the "told ya so" replies weren't developed after reading the list of names.
- newtonianrules 4mo agoPetition by resigning. Tomorrow. Stop supporting this company.
- siliconc0w 4mo agoRandomly I was thinking about how to "prove" you are a distinct engineer who works at a company without revealing your identity. I feel like labor organizers should offer employee verification as a free service to get people to sign who fear retaliation. Essentially upload your W2, get a token, sign petition with token. Or maybe just mail out a QR sticker to place in an employee-only area...
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- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo ago"Journalists and others: we request that you do not directly link to the site on the web, social media, etc."
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo ago"Do I need to worry about potential future employers finding this? No. Indexing by search engines is fully suppressed by robots.txt and <meta> headers (not the company Meta, here it refer to an HTML tag). A potential employer searching your name will never see this page via search engines like Google or Bing."
- probably_wrong 4mo agoFor what it's worth, it does say right before and in colors "NOTE: Your name WILL BE VISIBLE TO THE WORLD." I did a double take when reading that part too, but if you're a Meta employee then you should be able to understand the implications of those technical measures.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo ago"Do I need to worry about potential future employers finding this? No. Indexing by search engines is fully suppressed by robots.txt and <meta> headers (not the company Meta, here it refer to an HTML tag). A potential employer searching your name will never see this page via search engines like Google or Bing." The author assumes some employees are not familiar with <meta> HTML elements and might confuse them with the name of their employer HN commenter: "I did a double take when reading that part too, but if you're a Meta employee then you should be able to understand the implications of those technical measures."
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo agoAre there Meta employees who don't undetstand HTML <meta> elements Would these employees understand "technical measures"
- mikelitoris 4mo ago>Surveillance for thee but not for me... Yeah, no thanks (or "how the turn tables")
- sirsinsalot 4mo agoNobody should be strong armed in to training models whose intention is replacing them. Technology has become a societal torture device and AI is the largest power grab in history. How dare humans be able to leverage their reasoning for a wage. To the machines I say!
- 3997531578 4mo ago[dead]