When I was very young I worked a tough job that had a mandatory union and it was quite terrible / weak. Working conditions were pretty bad, physical labor, etc. But it was not until I worked a job with no union that I realized every element of that job that didn't suck was due to the union. For example we had supervisors but they didn't follow you around and micromanage you. You were just expected to do your job. If you didn't you would be reprimanded of course, but no one was on your case at all. Supervisors had to show you a base level of respect: there were rules on that stuff. There were a lot of rules, actually, and even though the union didn't have a lot of power I'm pretty sure every single positive one, anything that gave employees even a sliver of autonomy and power, were things that the union fought for and got for us.
I still was kind of anti-union after that. "Anti Union" is the wrong phrasing, it was more... I was very suspicious of their structure, their own profit motive(s) etc. People working for the union had it so much better than the people actually doing the work, and we were the ones paying for and funding it, right? That aspect of it I never got over, but I now think that it may have been the wrong point of view.
I have recently come around full swing and am 100% pro union. And it is stories like this. Starbucks, Google, Amazon, these companies will spend millions to fight unions. This is prima facie evidence to me that unions benefit workers. These companies all talk the same talk: "we believe companies work best when team members can work directly with the company with no union in the way". As though Amazon warehouse workers have some kind of communication path to improve their working conditions when they are being managed and fired by an AI. What a buncha fkn BS.
Things cost. Good things cost money. You are paying for someone to fight for your interests and not the company's interest. Maybe that is worth paying for. And if you don't pay money to a union to fight you pay with your physical health, your safety, your respect, your mental health. If you work for Amazon you pay with your life when they threaten to fire you if you try to leave in order to hide from a hurricane. We should all be in unions.
> Starbucks, Google, Amazon, these companies will spend millions to fight unions. This is prima facie evidence to me that unions benefit workers.
Technically, that does not follow. What can be inferred is that companies believe that unions will cost the company money, but this does not necessarily mean that the employees will get any of that money. One could imagine a theoretical evil union which takes all the extracted profit from the company and gives it to themselves, and not to the employees.
Just a note: I agree that spending millions fighting unions is strong evidence unions are bad for the company. It's not necessarily obvious this means unions are good for the employees.
The quality of a union heavily depends on its leadership, which must be accountable to union members. But yes, a carefully conceived structure would make that possible.
Problem is when said leadership starts to advertise particular interests instead of focusing on compensation and safety (work place safety, not neurosis compensation). A young union cannot really focus on much more because it is unlikely that it will get the support it needs initially.
A lot of people seem confused why a lot of tech people aren't pushing for unions.
For me it's simple: Tech has brought me from near poverty to pretty darn wealthy. Why mess with that?
Could a union help increase wages even more? Maybe. Are we being paid too little compared to our output? Maybe. But at the same time I'm being paid more than I could have possibly imagined before I entered the field.
If I were in a union, I don't need them to negotiate on pay at all -- I'd want them to negotiate for better transparency about the ways that people get managed out / fired, because at the company where I work, that's all very The Pit And The Pendulum, hanging over your head even if you're doing good work. I'd want them to set some boundaries around oncall shifts, because unfairness or imbalance in those practices is handled entirely through watching for attrition. I'd want them to approximate some portion of the protections that the employees in Europe that I work with have, because clearly that's not so unreasonable that the company would fold, and it's led to some really unfair situations being shoved on non EU teams. I find this kind of thing tiresome to have to get political about and my interests are simple enough to have someone else represent them.
I agree. To take it one step further: I have a pretty good relationship with my employer (coincidentally, Google). I don't need or want a third party to get in the middle of it.
I’m a member of a union here in Denmark. It’s cheap, it provides some safety, but they do not interfer when I talk salary with my boss. We’re paid well enough that the union don’t have to interven.
The only time I’ve seen my union take action was when a previous employeer started bullshittimg about our pay been “industry leading” while in reality it was just average. Having a union that remaims friendly with the industry but isn’t afraid to callout single companies and use it’s leverage in that industry to make that company behave is extremely powerful.
I wish that the US almost had mandated unions for anyone earning < 20/hr or something. All the cleaners, janitors, etc etc.
The focus on the unions on public sector, and the horribly distorted and weird policies that result is a negative.
It's hard to imagine a google being started by a union. Did the NY teachers union try to do a charter school in new york to show they could do as well as others? My impression was this was a flop.
In CA union passed rules banning schools from maintaining reserves. This is while the same schools teach students about having some reserves (critical) as a life skill.
It was AB5 which made life miserable for even folks who WANT to try to do right by staff and moved from a principles based a approach to a carve-out / exemptions approach (ie, forcing gig musicians to become employees for a 20 minute opening gig at a bar, forcing writers to clock in and out when thinking of their writing, and a ton more insanity). The list of careveouts they've had to add is mind boggling and illustrates how backwards they got it. Obama had this right by focusing on wage rates and hourly vs exempt. His approach was easy to implement and would have gotten rid of a ton of the "manager" abuse out there.
The fight against someone groups like success academy (delivering amazing results to historically under served groups) - denying primarily minority parents the kind of choices that the union bosses and chancellors take for granted.
I'm aware of a case where a union guy showed up drunk, drove a forklift and injured another worker and kept their job. I mean, more power to the union but I have friends who've quit working in a union workplace because showing up and working was like being a traitor to the rest of the group there (who had figured out how to create weird work rule conflicts for extra benefits with scheduling craziness etc).
The history of corruption also less than ideal. "The unsealed criminal case describes a prolonged embezzlement scheme starting in involving union money from the Warren-based union local that bankrolled high-end shopping sprees at Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga and Apple, and more union funds spent on child support payments and Greektown Casino gambling binges."
Makes sense. They might be initially more popular in areas where companies tend not to treat their technology folks well. Game development, for example.
Though there are some things that are pretty universal and unions would help with. Things like non-compete agreements, ownership of code written in off work hours, collusion across companies to "not poach", and so on.
I imagine some of that might be a lot worse if the state of California didn't happen to take the positions they do. If Texas were instead the hotbed for tech companies, I think unions might be more popular.
But speaking cynically, computer programmers have a lot of the clout that unions enjoy, due to market demand and also creating barriers to entry (programming languages and code bases that are difficult to learn). I refer to it as a guild. Doctors and professors are guilds in a similar fashion.
My dad spent his career at a unionized company. There were both union and salaried workers. He was salaried. He experienced all of the frustrations of working in a union shop, such as practically having to bribe people to do things for him like plugging something into an electrical outlet (required an electrician). At some companies, they literally had to bribe people.
Non-developers experience many of the same frustrations dealing with software. It's no secret why "shadow IT" is such a game changer for people who can engage in it.
My point is that it may be technically true that programmers don't need a union, because they have something that functions like a union.
A union offers other protections. Right now, your employer can (I'm assuming) just fire you for whatever they want. If you have a union and a proper contract, then they need justification and the union will back you up.
Your talents may be used to make the lives of people that did not have the same opportunity as you more unfair, difficult, surveilled, and dangerous. Whatever it takes to maximize the amount of profit.
A union isn't just about wages, it's also about being able to speak collectively against decisions that commoditize human lives.
While I don't think the situations are necessarily completely analogous because the total workforce size is a lot different, I think it's still worth pointing out that this is somewhat analogous in a lot of ways to the situation with pro athletes. They could easily have stayed happy earning many multiples of an American median salary, even though owners were taking an immensely disproportionate share of the profit pie. But, instead, they unionized, and now earn even more multiples of an American median salary.
Yes, but you are not the only person working for that company. I for one fight for the right of every employee of the company I work for to be treated fairly and greatly. Just because YOU have a good relationship with your company (or more so with your manager) doesn't mean everyone is on equal foot. I feel extremely uncomfortable when my coworkers are crying for help and all I show is indifference.
Because the bubble might burst? corps are constantly trying to lowball devs, but for competitive leverage they might succeed. Unions are a way to build the profession while the going is good and bargaining power on our side - good luck getting that foosball table when there are more devs than jobs.
Not only that (how tech brought you out of poverty), the calculus is also very different for immigrant workers on immigrant visas. I wish their perspective was more represented in the conversation.
While my personal opinion is that, in today's age, many unions suck and that some industries need unions more than others, employers who even think they should psy-op their employees into action/inaction for the benefit of the employer should get screwed.
I've heard some great things about how Google does things differently to create a better workplace for engineers and employees in general, but I'd seriously think thrice before taking a job there for many reasons including this one.
It’s a real shame that the middle and upper classes in the US have abandoned having their teens work in favor of various, expensive, college application boosting fluff.
I went to work at McDonalds at age 15 and was part of a union. I have direct experience with what that is like. I don’t need to get my knowledge on the subject from flamewars between people pushing ideological agendas (most of whom themselves have apparently never had direct experience.)
I also worked for McDonalds in my teens and was covered by a union-negotiated agreement.
All it did was prevent me from working as much as I wanted, with ridiculous red tape rules. The union actively depressed my earning potential.
That's after growing up in terrible schools with incompetent and abusive teachers who were never admonished or fired because of union protection (side note: teacher's unions regularly protect sexual predators).
Was this at an imaginary McDonad's? McD's was my first job back in 96 at 16. They didn't have any unions then, and I've not seen or heard of any existing.
For the most part most fast food restaurants do not have any unions.
You want to look at a good example of a union look at the one for Autoworkers. My friend's dad growing up was in a good factory job, no college. He was earning >$22/hour, plus a pension, plus decent time off for vacations and things and the mom could be a stay-at-home mom.
Even on a programmer's salary, my wife and I still barely make our bills today. Rent's skyrocketed, cost of living has skyrocketed, and you need not look any further than the fact that nearly ever CEO (read: Billionaire) almost unamously has the goal to keep you, me, and everybody they know out of a Union.
Unions are not socialism. There is nothing bad about unions, some are better than others taken together all are better than none.
A lot of people have this terrible notion of what a union is, where they force you to do things and set wages and work hours.
But I suspect a union for programmers would look more like the Actors union or screenwriters union in Hollywood. They would negotiate minimum rates and benefits, but top performers would still be able to get significantly more. The union just sets the minimums.
Is it possible to take a page from the "YC Standard Deal" model and create a "Union Standard Deal" for tech workers, that offers an opinionated and non-comprehensive view of the basic necessities that any tech worker union should demand?
Tech is known for shooting the moon, but if we can stand up opinionated examples of "minimum viable bargains", maybe that would help everyone grasp what's being proposed, and contrast the MVB with their local union's offerings.
I slightly fear how much of my own thinking is there just because some corporation or another big entity wanted me to think like that and spent considerable resources to make it happen.
What really needs to happen is the unionization of the second class they employ. These people do literally the same jobs as the people they used to sit next to. Sit through the same "OMG aren't we so great at changing the world!" team meetings, put in the same insane hours (my partner was limited to 40 hours a week, yet they are all working over time to keep up appearances and hope they get actually hired full time). She did not get paid for these hours, everyone just puts in the time so they can keep up with the people they are compared against, the full timers.
Yet once time for the team to celebrate comes, the door gets shut on them, as they are contingent workers. Showing them the same rewards would possibly make them seem like real employees worthy of praise. Hence, they sit alone in their empty open office, sometimes crying, hearing the cheers of their team in the next office as they slice that cake or watching them leave the office building to go to a wonderful day in the golden gate park.
Don't even get me started on having to hear the people doing identical work to them talk about buying homes in SF etc.
If these people banned together, they might gain some power.
> Kara Silverstein, Google’s human resources director said that she “like[d] the idea” of the op-ed, but that it should be executed so that “there would be no fingerprints and not Google specific.”
Should tell you everything you need to know about your company's HR department's true interests.
The whole "we're highly paid, ruggedly individualistic engineer" schtick buys into what the companies want. Sure, you may make 400k total comp as a SWE, but what if it were 500k had your employer was not been actively plotting ways to distort the labor market through collusion with competing companies. If activist shareholders understand that they need large blocks of shares to drive change, why wouldn't workers organize into blocks to drive change in their own favor?
Most of these corps have cafe's, and people commute, and if everybody in SWE field is making $500k and housing/rent shows it... the union should also then fight for people at restaurants, etc to get compensated by the same companies that employ them, because it's gonna be kinda shitty living in a big city where basically the only rec activities are work and going home because service industry is a ghost town.
I agree it can make life better for people in the co, just saying unions need to join forces and create syndicates of unions and really bring teeth against the powers of big companies.
I think I remember this. IIRC google's story were that they were fired because they were sharing internal documents and keeping track of other employees one-on-ones, medical aptmts, family meetings, etc. The NYT article does a decent job of going over a timeline of everything.
Nothing you couldn't glean with a common sense approach to material interests at play in a workplace. Of course a corporation wants to extract as much wealth with as little overhead as possible. Outside of ineffectual executives, there are few that orient companies towards making less money intentionally. Analyzing every choice made in a work place through this lens is both dead simple and continually enlightening.
Some commentator once noted that those elite with the highest levels of wealth (say top 1%) don't disbelieve Marx's analysis of the world and capital distribution. They understand it quite well, they're just on the opposite side of the field from the proles and they leverage that analysis to keep it that way. The commentator continued that when you think about it this way, business papers and similar sources of info are actually quite useful for a Marxian lens. Those with capital know that capital is biggest driving force, so that's of course what they're going to focus on.
The New York Times has had an anti-tech vendetta for a while now. Most likely, in my cynical worldview, because tech has hurt their subscription numbers immensely, not because they want to do the world a service.
An example of this is when they published a whole story about a guy who became radicalized from YouTube... and then became unradicalized a few months later without doing anything radical. But someone could have stayed radicalized so Google needs to censor YouTube and hand back authority to the fact checkers and trusted news, which conveniently happens to be... The New York Times.
Another example would be when The New York Times wrote a whole shock article about the shocking nature of dark patterns in technology and the irresponsibility and corruption of Big Tech for using them. Except that their own unsubscribe system is loaded with dark patterns that are even worse.
Do I think that YouTube isn't partially responsible? Of course they have some responsibility, but The New York Times and other news sources are capitalizing on the situation for their own interests.
Yes, that companies don't like unions and do what they can to discourage unionization isn't newsworthy. Finding a company that encourages unionization would be newsworthy!
Exactly. The NYT had some breathless story about this supposedly once secret fact. Yet their own management was pushing back hard on the Wirecutter union.
If the management wanted to really confuse the line workers, they would celebrate the union with some reverse reverse psychology.
A union is a business association among people who market, sell, and deliver the labor of a single individual. To repress these associations of business results in inefficiencies that obscure the true product of the market.
I would rather work in a co-op rather than in a union. If everyone owns the company and the whole makes decisions rather than a tiny minority, the workers get taken care of, making unions irrelevant.
One of the typical arguments against unions has been that they take a lot of money from employees to pay for dues. I think that is a dated argument from a bygone era. With modern tech stack there is far less administrative overhead, and union meetings can be conducted virtually or async. Additionally, the relative dues for running a union in a tech setting are going to be a lot lower as a percentage of salaries as they tend to me much higher. If there are other arguments that somehow unions harm employees I’d love to hear them.
I don't know that it's surprising or disappointing that Google was exploring PR related to their recent employee activism scandals. It would seem pretty incompetent for them to just ignore the problem and hope it goes away. As you can see from HR's comment threads, it's not an easy discussion to have and arguments for and against unions are painted as biased propaganda in either direction.
Suck is relative. For google, unionization would suck as it depletes their power over employees. For employees in most situations it would help the common and probably hurt the "guru coders" more. There is plenty of evidence that unions can go awry (just like domineering employers) as well and a balanced approach and using historical references can help both sides.
[+] [-] 4ec0755f5522|4 years ago|reply
I still was kind of anti-union after that. "Anti Union" is the wrong phrasing, it was more... I was very suspicious of their structure, their own profit motive(s) etc. People working for the union had it so much better than the people actually doing the work, and we were the ones paying for and funding it, right? That aspect of it I never got over, but I now think that it may have been the wrong point of view.
I have recently come around full swing and am 100% pro union. And it is stories like this. Starbucks, Google, Amazon, these companies will spend millions to fight unions. This is prima facie evidence to me that unions benefit workers. These companies all talk the same talk: "we believe companies work best when team members can work directly with the company with no union in the way". As though Amazon warehouse workers have some kind of communication path to improve their working conditions when they are being managed and fired by an AI. What a buncha fkn BS.
Things cost. Good things cost money. You are paying for someone to fight for your interests and not the company's interest. Maybe that is worth paying for. And if you don't pay money to a union to fight you pay with your physical health, your safety, your respect, your mental health. If you work for Amazon you pay with your life when they threaten to fire you if you try to leave in order to hide from a hurricane. We should all be in unions.
[+] [-] teddyh|4 years ago|reply
Technically, that does not follow. What can be inferred is that companies believe that unions will cost the company money, but this does not necessarily mean that the employees will get any of that money. One could imagine a theoretical evil union which takes all the extracted profit from the company and gives it to themselves, and not to the employees.
[+] [-] joebob42|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raxxorrax|4 years ago|reply
Problem is when said leadership starts to advertise particular interests instead of focusing on compensation and safety (work place safety, not neurosis compensation). A young union cannot really focus on much more because it is unlikely that it will get the support it needs initially.
[+] [-] yupper32|4 years ago|reply
For me it's simple: Tech has brought me from near poverty to pretty darn wealthy. Why mess with that?
Could a union help increase wages even more? Maybe. Are we being paid too little compared to our output? Maybe. But at the same time I'm being paid more than I could have possibly imagined before I entered the field.
[+] [-] kixiQu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timmg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrweasel|4 years ago|reply
The only time I’ve seen my union take action was when a previous employeer started bullshittimg about our pay been “industry leading” while in reality it was just average. Having a union that remaims friendly with the industry but isn’t afraid to callout single companies and use it’s leverage in that industry to make that company behave is extremely powerful.
[+] [-] tempnow987|4 years ago|reply
The focus on the unions on public sector, and the horribly distorted and weird policies that result is a negative.
It's hard to imagine a google being started by a union. Did the NY teachers union try to do a charter school in new york to show they could do as well as others? My impression was this was a flop.
In CA union passed rules banning schools from maintaining reserves. This is while the same schools teach students about having some reserves (critical) as a life skill.
It was AB5 which made life miserable for even folks who WANT to try to do right by staff and moved from a principles based a approach to a carve-out / exemptions approach (ie, forcing gig musicians to become employees for a 20 minute opening gig at a bar, forcing writers to clock in and out when thinking of their writing, and a ton more insanity). The list of careveouts they've had to add is mind boggling and illustrates how backwards they got it. Obama had this right by focusing on wage rates and hourly vs exempt. His approach was easy to implement and would have gotten rid of a ton of the "manager" abuse out there.
The fight against someone groups like success academy (delivering amazing results to historically under served groups) - denying primarily minority parents the kind of choices that the union bosses and chancellors take for granted.
I'm aware of a case where a union guy showed up drunk, drove a forklift and injured another worker and kept their job. I mean, more power to the union but I have friends who've quit working in a union workplace because showing up and working was like being a traitor to the rest of the group there (who had figured out how to create weird work rule conflicts for extra benefits with scheduling craziness etc).
The history of corruption also less than ideal. "The unsealed criminal case describes a prolonged embezzlement scheme starting in involving union money from the Warren-based union local that bankrolled high-end shopping sprees at Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga and Apple, and more union funds spent on child support payments and Greektown Casino gambling binges."
[+] [-] tyingq|4 years ago|reply
Though there are some things that are pretty universal and unions would help with. Things like non-compete agreements, ownership of code written in off work hours, collusion across companies to "not poach", and so on.
I imagine some of that might be a lot worse if the state of California didn't happen to take the positions they do. If Texas were instead the hotbed for tech companies, I think unions might be more popular.
[+] [-] analog31|4 years ago|reply
My dad spent his career at a unionized company. There were both union and salaried workers. He was salaried. He experienced all of the frustrations of working in a union shop, such as practically having to bribe people to do things for him like plugging something into an electrical outlet (required an electrician). At some companies, they literally had to bribe people.
Non-developers experience many of the same frustrations dealing with software. It's no secret why "shadow IT" is such a game changer for people who can engage in it.
My point is that it may be technically true that programmers don't need a union, because they have something that functions like a union.
[+] [-] busterarm|4 years ago|reply
Also everyone seems to forget that the history of unions in the US is inseparable from mafia racketeering.
To the point that the federal government had to break some of the power of unions in order to break up the effectiveness of mafia racketeering.
[+] [-] Kneecaps07|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omegaworks|4 years ago|reply
A union isn't just about wages, it's also about being able to speak collectively against decisions that commoditize human lives.
[+] [-] marricks|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nonameiguess|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] binthere|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] btmiller|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjmlp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Chris2048|4 years ago|reply
Because the bubble might burst? corps are constantly trying to lowball devs, but for competitive leverage they might succeed. Unions are a way to build the profession while the going is good and bargaining power on our side - good luck getting that foosball table when there are more devs than jobs.
[+] [-] amrangaye|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ebdbdbdb|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ravenstine|4 years ago|reply
I've heard some great things about how Google does things differently to create a better workplace for engineers and employees in general, but I'd seriously think thrice before taking a job there for many reasons including this one.
[+] [-] bradleyjg|4 years ago|reply
I went to work at McDonalds at age 15 and was part of a union. I have direct experience with what that is like. I don’t need to get my knowledge on the subject from flamewars between people pushing ideological agendas (most of whom themselves have apparently never had direct experience.)
[+] [-] 0xy|4 years ago|reply
All it did was prevent me from working as much as I wanted, with ridiculous red tape rules. The union actively depressed my earning potential.
That's after growing up in terrible schools with incompetent and abusive teachers who were never admonished or fired because of union protection (side note: teacher's unions regularly protect sexual predators).
[+] [-] gremlinsinc|4 years ago|reply
For the most part most fast food restaurants do not have any unions.
You want to look at a good example of a union look at the one for Autoworkers. My friend's dad growing up was in a good factory job, no college. He was earning >$22/hour, plus a pension, plus decent time off for vacations and things and the mom could be a stay-at-home mom.
Even on a programmer's salary, my wife and I still barely make our bills today. Rent's skyrocketed, cost of living has skyrocketed, and you need not look any further than the fact that nearly ever CEO (read: Billionaire) almost unamously has the goal to keep you, me, and everybody they know out of a Union.
Unions are not socialism. There is nothing bad about unions, some are better than others taken together all are better than none.
[+] [-] busterarm|4 years ago|reply
It's not worth it, m8.
[+] [-] jedberg|4 years ago|reply
But I suspect a union for programmers would look more like the Actors union or screenwriters union in Hollywood. They would negotiate minimum rates and benefits, but top performers would still be able to get significantly more. The union just sets the minimums.
[+] [-] floatingatoll|4 years ago|reply
Tech is known for shooting the moon, but if we can stand up opinionated examples of "minimum viable bargains", maybe that would help everyone grasp what's being proposed, and contrast the MVB with their local union's offerings.
[+] [-] vegai_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robotburrito|4 years ago|reply
Yet once time for the team to celebrate comes, the door gets shut on them, as they are contingent workers. Showing them the same rewards would possibly make them seem like real employees worthy of praise. Hence, they sit alone in their empty open office, sometimes crying, hearing the cheers of their team in the next office as they slice that cake or watching them leave the office building to go to a wonderful day in the golden gate park.
Don't even get me started on having to hear the people doing identical work to them talk about buying homes in SF etc.
If these people banned together, they might gain some power.
[+] [-] laweijfmvo|4 years ago|reply
Should tell you everything you need to know about your company's HR department's true interests.
[+] [-] vgeek|4 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike
The whole "we're highly paid, ruggedly individualistic engineer" schtick buys into what the companies want. Sure, you may make 400k total comp as a SWE, but what if it were 500k had your employer was not been actively plotting ways to distort the labor market through collusion with competing companies. If activist shareholders understand that they need large blocks of shares to drive change, why wouldn't workers organize into blocks to drive change in their own favor?
https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-po...
[+] [-] gremlinsinc|4 years ago|reply
I agree it can make life better for people in the co, just saying unions need to join forces and create syndicates of unions and really bring teeth against the powers of big companies.
[+] [-] supergeek133|4 years ago|reply
I recall my first week as a Best Buy part time tech in 2002, we watched a video on how Unions are bad.
[+] [-] jcranberry|4 years ago|reply
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/18/magazine/goog...
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mhoad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StevePerkins|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greesil|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noah_buddy|4 years ago|reply
Some commentator once noted that those elite with the highest levels of wealth (say top 1%) don't disbelieve Marx's analysis of the world and capital distribution. They understand it quite well, they're just on the opposite side of the field from the proles and they leverage that analysis to keep it that way. The commentator continued that when you think about it this way, business papers and similar sources of info are actually quite useful for a Marxian lens. Those with capital know that capital is biggest driving force, so that's of course what they're going to focus on.
[+] [-] hdjjhhvvhga|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gjsman-1000|4 years ago|reply
An example of this is when they published a whole story about a guy who became radicalized from YouTube... and then became unradicalized a few months later without doing anything radical. But someone could have stayed radicalized so Google needs to censor YouTube and hand back authority to the fact checkers and trusted news, which conveniently happens to be... The New York Times.
Another example would be when The New York Times wrote a whole shock article about the shocking nature of dark patterns in technology and the irresponsibility and corruption of Big Tech for using them. Except that their own unsubscribe system is loaded with dark patterns that are even worse.
Do I think that YouTube isn't partially responsible? Of course they have some responsibility, but The New York Times and other news sources are capitalizing on the situation for their own interests.
[+] [-] rsj_hn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xhkkffbf|4 years ago|reply
If the management wanted to really confuse the line workers, they would celebrate the union with some reverse reverse psychology.
[+] [-] kingkawn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xbadcafebee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reilly3000|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] julienb_sea|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|4 years ago|reply