> "This makes me super uncomfortable. How do we opt out?" was the top-rated comment in response to the internal announcement, according to a post on Meta's internal workplace communications site seen by Business Insider."

Have people lost their spine? seriously, quit your job. this is insane. why are americans putting up with this bullshit?

Right on. Meta employees, fuck you for building the surveillance state we live in today. You are the fucking scourge and death of the 2000s internet. Eat shit, I care not for your "privacy concerns."

While I can understand the sentiment, it should be expressed with less vulgarity, and frankly, workers should show more solidarity to one another, not because of “deserving it” or not, but simply because it’s the only way out of the pit they put us in. Otherwise we are forever dragging each other back in.

The vulgarity angle? It got your and my attention.

I agree with you about the solidarity though. Anyone speaking out against this shit-world we've created with the internet is welcome.

> workers should show more solidarity to one another

Agree, but at one point you're also effectively betraying people who typically want to give you solidarity, especially when you're working on systems and tooling used for suppressing said solidarity. So yeah, fuck you Meta employees for completely lacking any sort of spine.

I will not use the LLM's Corporate English.

Where was that worker's solidarity from meta employees when they to built out the surveillance network?

>it should be expressed with less vulgarity,

Clutch those pearls!

>Otherwise we are forever dragging each other back in.

I think turning a blind eye to our colleagues' work as if it's morally neutral is what keeps us in that pit.

A retreat into false propriety because you're offended by vulgarity is not the answer. The vulgarity is meant to provoke a response from people who aren't responding.

You must understand that the hyperscalers all optimize for compliant employees in the hiring process. You cannot have solidarity with bootlickers, they don't deserve our support because they fucked the rest of us to begin with to further their own gains. Yes, the rest of us need to claw our way out of the pit. But each of these engineers now whining about the world they created now applying to them? Kick them back in the pit.

> workers should show more solidarity to one another, not because of “deserving it” or not, but simply because it’s the only way out of the pit they put us in.

In the same way we shouldn't have any solidarity with scabs, we should have no solidarity with the people who happily built the pit-pushing tools.

Just curious, out of your class theory, do we need to have worker solidarity with low-level street drug dealers?

Or the worker must have an official contract?

"Companies should be able to bully their staff, since their staff are free to quit" is not compatible with a decent society.

"Companies should be able to offer massively addictive and manipulative websites, since their users are free to not look at them" is not compatible with a decent society either.

> since their users are free to not look at them

It's even worse when you consider that even if you were to opt out of Meta services entirely (which is not practical due to how many essential things run on e.g. whatsapp), they still build a shadow profile on you based only on data other people upload about you. So yeah, not only "just don't use it" is not a reasonable argument, it doesn't even solve anything!

Their argument: users are free not to think about it.

> which is not practical due to how many essential things run on e.g. whatsapp

Where do you live that WhatsApp is essential?

I deleted my account when Facebook bought it and I don’t feel like anything of value was lost. Between messages/sms, signal, telegram, discord, I have no shortage of places to chat.

WhatsApp only has value because of the network effect. Quit the platform and make your contacts find you elsewhere. Every platform dies eventually. The users just need to leave.

I don’t really care about the shadow profile. Meta is hardly the first to build a database of non customers, and it’s not the only such database I’m in. I avoid all Meta services and will never see an ad from them.

> Where do you live that WhatsApp is essential?

In Brazil, for example, without WhatsApp you are an outcast of modern society there, businesses communicate with customers on WhatsApp, whole families and friend groups only use WhatsApp.

> WhatsApp only has value because of the network effect. Quit the platform and make your contacts find you elsewhere. Every platform dies eventually. The users just need to leave.

The network effect is exactly what makes it really hard for any single user to decide "I'm leaving" and tell every single person they need to be in touch to contact on another platform they don't use. What you are suggesting is simply impossible on an individual level, the only way it happens is if the platform has major issues that bleed users because it isn't working or the platform is made inaccessible by the government. Even a better competitor appearing will have a very hard time to crack the market share of a established network exactly due to network effects.

Same exact case in Mexico. Likely in most other Latin-American countries as well

I live in San Francisco and essentially everything around little kids/school lives on WhatsApp. It is supremely annoying.

Want them to stick through a 10 year lawsuit while they get fired anyways? Do you think there is a lot of hope of winning such a lawsuit? Metas CEO hangs out at the Pentagon and has bomb bunkers. They can do whatever they want to their employees

In the old days, before federally recognized unions and those things, when the company/boss did something terrible....

The workers would arm up with shotguns, rifles, Molotov cocktails. They'd then go to the bosses' house and have a "chat". If they didn't listen, they'd have their house shot up or burned to the ground.

It was the very bosses that hired Pinkerton's to go murder the union leaders as well.

Some of the railroad unionization got so bloody and violent that even the US military got in on the action, in favor of companies.

In the end, we got the NLRB and a whole host of rights. The violence did indeed work, but saying that is somehow breaking unforgivable speech.

And if violence isnt up to these meta engineers, perhaps they should look into CIA's own simple sabotage field manual techniques.

I agree and consider a lot of regulation to be useful but there are some examples of this where I think we just perpetuate bad companies into existing when they'dgo bankrupt or have to pay wild salaries to compensate being shitty. But it just doesn't seem practical to expect people to stop working for bad companies. In the country I'm from the average salary is super close to the minimum wage with low unemployment so technically employees could change easily and find another job with the same minimum wage and still people stay at bad companies. It'd be the best regulator if people quit, even unions wouldn't need to exist, under this light a union just perpetuates a bad boss, but human nature is not changing so protections are needed.

This line immediately brought various Dilbert images to my mind.

moderators should be free to censor users, since the users are free to leave the forum.

This appears to be a common philosophy. We all know it's foul, and then we cover up the smell with this thin justification and move on.

But ya, this seems to be commonly accepted already

Have you seen the salaries Meta pay?

That's the crux. People aren't asking "Am I earning enough?" but "How can I earn more?", and it all spirals into whatever the current system could be called.

So employees should have plenty in the bank to fall back on while they found their own companies to compete … right?

I have no idea why you are being downvoted. This is probably the most rational take.

Some level of sacrifice is required when you feel super uncomfortable at work in the US. I get the arguments of "I can't lose my pay", but at the same time, if you aren't aligned with how they treat you now, what do you think they will be doing with that data? What does 1 year from now look like? 2 years? Do you think it will be less invasive? Or will they be tracking your eye movements as well, facial sentiment?

Exactly.

It’s the same defeatist attitude people who get an extra three months of pay to train their Eastern European or Indian replacements.

They will gladly take the three months pay to train a replacement. I’d quit on the spot. Let them figure it out.

Practically speaking, the person who stays has three months salary, plus severance and then unemployment. The person who quits loses their entire income stream immediately.

Do you think your small act of defiance has a bigger impact on you, or on the company? Now imagine you have a family at home that depends on your income and do the math again.

If people affected banded together and all defied the company, the company would find itself in a difficult situation. If the then became standard procedure for workers affected by offshoring, companies would hesitate to do this. It would have to be much more organic and would have diminished and drawn out impact on workers. Yes companies could open foreign offices, etc., but it’s more work and fewer companies would consider the option. Today then simply say “we’re transitioning network and security to an ATT, Verizon, etc. organization based in (some low COL geography).” If companies had had pushback over the last 25 years, they’d be less likely to consider the option.

How about voting against offshoring? That way I don’t have to have an uncomfortable showdown with my employer, and every working person benefits.

Yes, but that ship sailed. Bernie Sanders used to be for the American worker. He used to block re-settling refugees in his state. Nowadays even he doesn't care to curb immigration or off-shoring. Some people in the Trump admin make motions about curbing some (unnecessary legal) immigration (ala Canada and Australia -vetting for skills needed). Very few want to curb offshoring. Both Democrats and Republicans monetarily benefit from offshoring and increasing competition for American workers. Elon pretends his companies could not run without more imported workers --sure, I get it, you don't want to bother to train a capable local population, much of which is descended from relatively recent immigrants.

Of course that's true, and I'll happily join the United Technology Workers Union when it exists. In the meantime, I don't think you can fault people for taking the safest option for their families instead of sticking it to the man.

The majority of people working at Meta will never ever again in their lives get a job offer that good. Meta knows this and doesn't care about many of them quitting. They can currently scoop up an endless supply of developers that have memorized every single leetcode hard, system design and """behavioral""" interview question.

Ok, so this spyware is another step in the "either they comply with what we force them to do, or they quit, whichever way, for us it's a win-win" strategy, after Return To Office? And, just to make sure the employees get the point, they concurrently announce a further 10% round of layoffs? Yeah, makes sense...

Nothing planned at Meta that can not be achieved with the decently competent engineers who will accept this insane surveillance and don't give a shit about whether they build weapons of mass destruction/surveillance/whatever. Plenty of willing replacements ready at any time.

Long term strategically planned reduction of average salary by replacing uppity rockstars/activists with the groveling creme de la creme of codemonkeys is part of the plan.

> They can currently scoop up an endless supply of developers that have memorized every single leetcode hard, system design and """behavioral""" interview question.

And will those help them get where they think they want to go?

Yes

Yes.

Meta stock is up 33% last year, up 122% in the last 5 years. If that isn't "being where you want to be", I don't know what is.

Health insurance and opportunity cost

Money, of course. Both greed and comfort.

And existing obligations. Most people I know, myself including, stretch our current situation as the paycheque grows.

Some of it is intentional. A lot of it is slow creep (“ah, I can afford a, b, c now..that Maserati/Porche Cayenne GTS/Urus-lol I’ve always wanted!”). While you’re doing this, your spouse and kids are doing it 2x - “oh dad got that fancy new car! I guess I can ask him for the special edition Jordans now..”). Out of guilt, you let your family join in on the buying frenzy.

Now you’ve landed yourself with new loans and obligations (more expensive car = higher maintenance cost, same with house, etc - higher expectation all around, keeping up with Joneses, charity events, …).

Getting out of all that is much more difficult than overcoming your own greed and discomfort - many are legal obligations and you basically need a multi-year plan to go back unscathed (assuming you and your family are pragmatic enough to readjust your comfort level). For some it can be leaving useful social obligations - you lose your social circle if you downgrade (may have to move further away, no more club or association memberships).

The only real remedy is to not let your expenditure go up when you get a raise. But it’s less about you and in equal measure about how your partner operates, kids, family, their expectations etc. All in all, odds are not in an average Meta employees favour no matter what they might personally think/feel.

I think it can be radically more pedestrian than this. Just affording basic life in a high COL area is insane. Getting an apt in NY and paying for childcare for two kids can already be a 16k/mo endeavor, no porche entering the equation.

got two words for you - money

> Have people lost their spine? seriously, quit your job. this is insane. why are americans putting up with this bullshit?

While I agree with you, sadly not everyone is in a position to just quit so easily, and even if the majority of the company quits, there are always people who are desperate enough to do the work and not complain.

There are other methods broadly classified as self-defense that an employee can apply against a company and its officials who attack their privacy.

Let Meta and its officials feel the consequences of their actions.

If it’s company equipment it’s fair game. Literally everytime I sign in it states I have no expectation of privacy while using the equipment.

The American mind can't comprehend privacy. Just because it's company equipment doesn't make it "fair game" to spy and track you.

I wouldn't blame it on Americans. They are not different from the others. Just take a look at what Europeans are putting up with.

The only difference: in the USA it's private companies that spy, while in the EU the governments are leading the spying game.

> Have people lost their spine?

Yes, but this being Meta who are one of the several poster-children for surveillance capitalism, this comes across as more a face-leopard than a missing spine: https://old.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/

> seriously, quit your job. this is insane. why are americans putting up with this bullshit?

Have you seen the job market lately? Not just in the USA, but also in the USA, there's a lot of people holding on to whatever they've got because it's hard to find replacement work.

I wonder though if we're not approaching a time when even those who clung to their jobs will be joining those out of work. My wife, anecdotally, was just laid off from Agilent after having worked there for close to three decades. We were fortunate to see that as an opportunity for her to take her (albeit early) retirement.

I don't doubt there are plenty at Meta who, if not nearing retirement age, might have been harboring some desire to take some time off to hike the Big Three hiking trails in the U.S. Or perhaps write a novel.

Seriously.

> Have people lost their spine? seriously, quit your job. this is insane. why are americans putting up with this bullshit?

Come on, they may be caring for children, sick relatives, or have a million other reasons to want a stable, well-paying job. There are many well-justified reasons they could have to stay, and yet want to opt-out. "Just quit your job" is extremely out-of-touch.

Claiming that developers and technology workers at Meta are working there because that's the only stable, well-paying job they can find, is extremely out of touch. People forget how comfortable us developers really have it, compared to almost any other field out there.

good times create weak men and we had it so good for so long it ruined us

My guess is people put up with this shit because the job market is terrible right now and most other workplaces in big tech will follow suite soon.

>Have people lost their spine? seriously, quit your job. this is insane. why are americans putting up with this bullshit?

I don't know why, but it's endemic. You have ICE, quite literally purchasing your surveillance data so they can sweep people off the streets. But getting people to delete some apps? It's effectively impossible. However you feel about the ICE issue, and future government program could deem you the enemy. And your data is out there just waiting to be weaponized against you. But will people actually do anything about it? Delete their apps? Stop using a smartphone? Write their congressman? Nope, nope, nope, and nope. They will complain online a bit and otherwise change _no_ behavior. The only positive movement I've seen in this regard is people moving away from flock. Otherwise, people are tripping over themselves to allow surveillance into their lives.

    > why are americans putting up with this bullshit?

The answer is simple: Golden handcuffs. If you pay people enough money, they will do anything. Also, labor laws are so weak in the US that this is surely allowed. It would take a federal law (or many powerful states to all pass laws in parallel) to outlaw this behaviour. Hint: It will not happen.

Why would you quit your job before determining if you can opt out? What would be the benefit?

Americans have, in my lifetime, stopped being adults. Everyone is a child, everyone asks permission for everything. Everyone takes the answer they receive as the word of their chosen god.

We are collectively incapacitated by the soft glow of our smartphones. This was intentional. This community made these devices. This community should bear the brunt of the backlash. And likewise, the engineers at Facebook should be actively surveilled for the rest of their days as punishment.

Meta will just backfill these with more H1-Bs.

Stuff like this is coming for everyone.