Are there tech companies where employees have any power to effect real change?
It seems that all the successful tech companies have a model where the power is either in the hands of the stock market, where the leadership has been told 'do whatever it takes to make money or you're fired', or its consolidated in the hands of less than 3 people, who are hell-bent on making as much money as possible.
Why can't we invent a system of corporate management in which the employees have the majority stake in how the company operates? How about the employees are all voting members in an organization that holds a stockpile of 100X voting right shares? There's got to make a way to make that happen.
I suspect such an organization would be radically different than most companies today, but that it would attract talent too.
There are a lot of them in Scandinavia and they have problems.
You still have to fire people but now it’s your coworkers firing you and taking away your right to a share of the profits at the same time.
Being disliked or considered to not be pulling your weight will have you fired very quickly because you are reducing your coworkers profits.
There are other problems and in many cases it becomes a nightmare of politics.
We had a situation a few decades ago where unions were allowed on the boards of companies and they quickly realized it was the worst thing to happen to them.
It is hard to advocate for works rights and increased salaries when you are responsible for the profitability of the company.
Mondragon, the Basque truck-making coop. They've been going for as long as I have, because they were founded in the year I was born.
John Lewis, a UK department store. It's not exactly a coop, but it's pretty close. The staff are referred to as "partners". They're in financial difficulties at the moment, I think, but that's not because workers participate in the company. They're one of the few UK department stores still standing. Waitrose (a John Lewis brand) is easily the classiest supermarket/grocery in the UK - people choose where to buy expensive homes based on how close the nearest Waitrose is.
It's easier to set up a private company than a joint-stock corporation, and it's easier to set up a joint-stock corporation than a cooperative. It should be easiest to set up a cooperative, rather than hardest.
Oh - and there's the Coop Bank. Wait - that went broke due to dreadful mismanagement, and was bought by a VC outfit. So how come they're still allowed to call themselves that?
There's still a number of local chains of fairly small grocers, operating as autonomous members of the Cooperative Wholesale Society (the bank was originally part of the CWS). These are decent shops, well-run at a local level, but I'm not impressed by their head-office management. If you take their discount card, then you get to participate in board elections and so on. It's a "customer coop".
I wonder if it’s something about co-ops that limit their success, or is it the lack of VC funds to burn during the growth stage?
Obviously in this context we shouldn’t assume that a co-op would ever get to FB size. Forgoing some profit for the sake of ethics is the reason why the idea was floated here. But I would expect co-ops to make it to say, Redhat levels at least.
Can’t help but think it’s the lack of capital and connections that going for-profit with VC backing would get a company with a more traditional corporate structure.
I have mentioned upthread three BIG cooperative ventures that have lasted foer a long time; they're just the ones that I can think of quickly.
I care about coops, so I notice them, so maybe they're rather rare.
VC backing would make a coop no longer a coop. That horse is not a runner.
All this venture capital business is about getting a return in five years. A coop is about a bunch of people working together for their whole working life; it's a different way of organising work. If the thing works, then the investment is organic (and slow). The coops I mentioned have lasted a long time.
You’re talking about democratic control of corporations, and that sounds like a good idea to me. If corporations were countries they would be dictatorships, making the CEOs dictators. We know dictatorships invariably result in human atrocities, which is why I for one prefer Democratic forms of governance.
The same seems to be true of corporations: on a long enough time scale, darling startups turn into sociopathic, power-hungry money making engines. The Supreme Court says corporations are people, and if that’s true they are dark triad personality types, indifferent to human suffering, human rights abuses, and environmental destruction as long as there is profit to be made. I think democratic control of corporations would temper these sociopathic tendencies and give corporate persons a little more humanity.
Mark Zuckerberg is Facebook. He owns more than 50% of the stock and as such has no accountability.
“In multiple cases the final judgment about whether a prominent post violates a certain written policy are made by senior executives, sometimes Mark Zuckerberg,”
Asking in terms of brands is sort of asking to confuse given how many things are shoved under the label. I'll take the statement as "Without them Facebook would cease to exist entirely as a company."
But no - if every last employee below a CxO status vanished one night without a trace the company and the website would still be around. It would be diminished and start encountering problems without any employees for maintenance, business expansion, and administrative needs but a great deal is automated by software in the first place. The site would still run, ads would still be placed, money would flow in. A zombie minimal company could be left adrift and could stay that way indefinitely if their user base didn't mind.
A law office, a doctor's office, those practices - in those small scale cases the employees are the company - without them you have furniture and maybe some soon to be redundant support staff. Said staff would be very limited in what they may do without breaking the law.
The central problem is that platforms were exmpted from being sued on the basis that they are neutral to content, and then they started using this privilige to manipulate content. Just revoke the privilige you granted them, and let all the useful web go back to protocols.
Quitting doesn't do anything. Everyone is replaceable. That said, I think the time of affecting change from the inside has come and gone, in the case of Facebook. Unfortunately, it seems accountability's time has also come and gone in our society, so I don't know what the answer is.
Depends on the scale. Facebook needs so many engineers that a reduction in hiring or a jump in attrition could begin putting the hurt on internally. Heck, look at the stories coming out of AWS these days to see what hiring problems looks like.
The issue is that Facebook has very effective strategies to deal with this, both in terms of money and social structure. We all know that they pay lucratively, but Facebook is also filled to the brim with people either working on non-core products that can think they’re doing no harm, and people who think they’re making a positive difference. I think the combination of these things is keeping Facebook ahead of their reputation problems with potential sources of labor, although I wouldn’t wager a guess how long it can last.
There’s a giant conversation here about whether Facebook should be the “judge” or whatever. You guys don’t get it, do you? The senior execs and inner circle at that company are actively engaged in swaying political discourse, the way laws are written, US foreign policy, foreign elections, and so on...
This is not like employees of a power company asking to turn the power off to a church or something totally bizarre and nonsensical. This is an intensely politically active organization that styles itself as a global shadow government and utilizes a massive revolving door of political employees, lobbyists, “advisors,” and “guest speakers,” being asked by its employees to use its self-ordained role as kingmaker and discourse-shaper in ways they feel would be less harmful to society. They have every right to argue for change, because they can see what a Death Star that thing looks like from the inside.
As long as the Death Star exists, people are going to fight over where to direct that death-ray. Agree with the employees’ political beliefs or don’t — what should concern you is that such a weapon exists in the first place. This is not like AOL, and that wannabe Emperor and his pals specifically intended for that. This racket is not an inevitable consequence of technology — it’s a mind virus run amok.
But missing the part that other major media organizations (like NYT) are also “Death Stars” with political motivations run by execs—- and have caused and continue to cause things like the Iraq war.
I helped Facebook build the Platform, even going so far as convincing Dave Morin to leave Apple and work on it, because I was worried about evils of Murdoch. So trust me, I know all about exactly what you cited.
Facebook is a very different sort of devil. To the point where all of the other devils are afraid of them. Even I didn’t realize how insane these people were, and continue to be. They’d be toast by now, if they hadn’t been able to successfully hijack the governmental and political machines to keep themselves seen as “essential” and worthy of protection — there’s that Death Star at work.
I know, I need to write about this in more detail. It’s on my to-do list. I have spent a long time waiting to see if society would figure out what a giant scam these people were — I am pleasantly surprised. You’ve got to remember that, 10 years ago, people wanted to nominate those lunatics for the Nobel Peace Prize. Being an enemy of Facebook was equivalent to being an enemy of the state.
You could nuke Facebook from orbit right now and nothing would change. The media would move on to their next target.
> I have spent a long time waiting to see if society would figure out what a giant scam these people were — I am pleasantly surprised.
Society has not figured out shit. It is doing the same thing it always does, lap up the Manufactured Consent being pushed out by these media organizations.
The press is the enemy. Facebook and their execs have no power. They are completely beholden to the media and their lackeys in the government.
Indeed, the role, if not the entire existence, of the war media of which FB is now a part is predicated upon the inherently hazardous (to socialists overseas, but ultimately to domestic patriots as well) military-political system we've allowed to fester in USA.
Easy to forget when Hillary lost, ppl within FB were totally shocked and suprised. What type of weapon is that then, if they have no clue what is about to unfold inspite of all that data?
You’re correct to remember that there were people within FB who were shocked and surprised that Hilary lost.
But you seem to have forgotten that there were also people within FB, including board members within Zuckerberg’s inner circle, who saw the internal data and used it to buy the political equivalent of out-of-the-money options on Trump winning.
True but then Trump went and lost and got kicked off the network. My point is its more a chaos factory than a controllable weapon.
It no one can tell if their own head is going to be blown off, when they wield the weapon, then its not a very good one.
That said, there are lot of people who have become Like and Follower chasing robots thanks to FBs content mechanics and that fuel the chaos. These people think they are great shapers of reality, but the outcomes speak for themselves.
There are no lasting results or outcomes that will go into the political history book from all the activity that happens on FB. Its just wasting everyones time and energy. And for that reason it will suddenly one day collapse and everyone will stand around shocked and suprised just as they did with Hilary.
Chaos is easy to generate and impossible to control. And it will be FBs downfall.
No, try again. This has nothing to do with being on the left or the right or the center or upside-down. This is about a capability, not its particular use. You’re obsessing over the surface-level details, rather than asking the deeper question of, “why do these people believe they have the ability to do these things in the first place? Are they trying to do something unprecedented, or are there other people at that organization who are secretly doing this behind our backs in a completely non-transparent and unaccountable manner?”
You’re being played. While you waste all of your energy arguing over minutiae with the “other side,” nothing changes. And nobody notices they’re funding both sides, and working to make both sides look absolutely ridiculous to each other.
I’m sorry, but perhaps I’m the only person who believes Facebook should just follow the laws and that’s it.
I don’t understand why we are asking (employee or otherwise) to censor people. What happened to Galileo and many others throughout history was a tragedy. Who are we to assume we know better?
Facebook became the town square, probably years ago... but definitely forced to be the town square by the pandemic. In other words, free speech should be protected and at least in the US that means barring direct threats or specific direction of violence all speech should be allowed.
> Facebook should just follow the laws and that’s it
That makes sense as long as Facebook delivers its users a plain chronological timeline without forcing content on them and that's it.
Facebook is not a town square. Your post implies that some entity is trying to force Facebook to "silence" people in what is otherwise some kind of natural development of discourse. This is a false assumption since Facebook already applies their own manipulation 24/7.
In your "town square" analogy there were already goons patrolling the streets and handing out megaphones only to certain people as well as beating up others based on some internal pattern no one gets to take a look at (though in reality it's "give the megaphone to the people that enrage the most and silence the rest").
> Facebook should just follow the laws and that’s it
That makes sense as long as Facebook delivers its users a plain chronological timeline without forcing content on them and that's it.
No that distinction doesn't make any sense because that isn't the goddamned law. What is with the nonsensical misinformation making up some emotionally charged meaningless bullshit standard and declaring it so?
It makes as much sense as demanding that I never reverse my car because I put maple syrup on my pancakes!
>, free speech should be protected and at least in the US that means barring direct threats or specific direction of violence all speech should be allowed.
Companies that are advertiser-supported like Facebook and Youtube cannot be a platform for absolute free speech. There is no law that forces advertisers to fund websites with messages they don't agree with. Examples:
That’s not the issue, the question is whether they are the public square? If the answer is yes, it doesn’t matter how they get revenue. The government is empowered to protect the citizens and to be an arbitrator, such the violence isn’t the only recourse. If the government is not going to take that responsibility, there will be violence.
Trust me, if the government mandated Facebook couldn’t censor, advisors would still advertise there. They have no other option to reach people, that’s actually the reason it should be considered the town square.
Free speech is freedom from the government not allowing citizens to publicly speak dissenting opinions. I'm not guaranteed the right to be on the front page of the NYTimes. We already legally restrict some speech: you can't yell "Fire" in a theater, you can't talk about bombs in the TSA line, we have laws against libel and slander (although it is hard to prosecute all the lies spewed on social media) that people could seek legal relief from. People don't want freedom of speech, they want freedom from repercussions of speech.
> Free speech is freedom from the government not allowing citizens to publicly speak dissenting opinions.
This made sense a few years ago when realistically government was the only historical large consumer and regulator of speech.
Now that we have another large entity, we need to have a think about what to do. This isn't an endorsement or rebuke of current rules, just a statement that we need to have a debate about this that incorporates what we've learned.
Saying FB, Twitter, YouTube etc are arbitrators of free speech ignores all the other channels that are still available. Talk Radio, news letters, personal blogs, TV, newspapers, etc etc.
If we don’t want say Google delisting websites because their the arbitrators of true fine, but saying any and all channels need to have everything is excessive. Misinformation is always going to be more plentiful than the truth simply because their are vastly more ways to be wrong than correct. Traditional media filtered out a lot of crap and perhaps social media should as well. Truly open channels just end up looking like 4chan.
You are confusing the 1st amendment with free speech. Free speech is a broader concept than the 1st amendment. Free speech as a rule of exchanging ideas can exist in any private and public space.
Facebook and other big techs do not have to support free speech. They can openly say: we don't support free speech and people who disagree with our employees should just shut up! Of course they don't want to do that. They choose to support the general idea of free speech and they can define their terms. People can criticize them. They can also declare they ban everyone who criticize them, but of course they don't want to do that too.
Why all those complexity? Because the American public support the general idea of free speech. Some Facebook employees' wishful thinking that they can control the speech on the largest social media platform won't work.
Someone is already controlling that speech. The argument is about whether the way they are doing it is good for society or bad for society. Free speech isn’t even on the table here.
I feel like this argument only ever gets used in this specific situation. Americans are granted freedom of speech, if companies are large enough they are meaningfully infringing on that right we should do something about it.
>People don't want freedom of speech, they want freedom from repercussions of speech.
To use a pointed example, I'm pretty sure Trump just wants to be able to tweet again with all the repercussions that brings.
14th Amendment violations are only in play when a government tries to advantage or disadvantage based on sexual orientation and thus we have fully resolved the issue of if you have to make a cake for a gay wedding. You don't since you're not a government. Nice, simple easy, see my point?
"Following the law" is a totally meaningless recommendation. Every side in this debate is legal.
If FB wants to censor posts about unicorn love from unicorn lovers, they can. If they want to put into place a policy that discussing unicorn love is a-okay, they can do that as well.
That's not exactly the correct legal take on Marsh v Alabama.
The key question in Marsh v Alabama centered on whether or not that the sidewalk being owned by a company town caused it to cease to be a government for First Amendment purposes.
If you look to the subsequent rulings section of the Wikipedia article, you'll notice that courts have--on multiple occasions--explicitly been asked to extend this analysis to "large internet companies are basically public square" arguments and declined to do so every time. The basis of distinguishing between the company town in Marsh v Alabama and Facebook is that Facebook doesn't perform any acts that look like government action--no "powers traditionally exclusive to the state."
> It’s pretty hard to argue Facebook wasn’t an intended public forum. Literally you have your public wall and your newsfeed, etc.
It's very easy to argue: Facebook wasn't created by the government. That is the nexus of the public forum, as far as SCOTUS precedent is concerned.
Read more. If you delve into this topic a bit more you will see that free speech rights are also available in private spaces as well. Most notably in regards to unions
I don't see it like that. If they did become the town square, it's one where people must only say certain things that are part of the official narrative [0] or where people post things to an authoritative figure who reads out the stuff that he's approved using rules that he won't disclose.
They're not censoring people, they're moderating based on predefined rules. Without moderation, the "town square" would be overrun with people with proverbial megaphones and an agenda, drowning out literally everyone else with something to say or share.
> I’m sorry, but perhaps I’m the only person who believes Facebook should just follow the laws and that’s it.
No, you are far from alone. The problem with that viewpoint is that IMHO it's far too naive and assumes good intentions. The metric shittons of mis and disinformation that have been spread on platforms such as Facebook, with real world consequences ( be it genocides, very questionable people getting popular and elected, or outright batshit insane conspiracy theories with real life people dying because of them), show that it just doesn't work.
There's some margin between the wild west being exploited to spread and amplify dangerous false information, and burning anyone who disagrees with anything.
Nope, my argument is that too many people are having a hard time separating emotions and facts, and Facebook amplifies and makes this worse. They aren't a good arbiter of truth, but they are a terrible amplifier of falsehoods as well.
I turn on cnn every day and have seen more disinformation than I can discuss here. Just look at the “horse paste” story with Joe Rogan or the “Russian disinformation” hunter Biden laptop.
You do realize YouTube promotes that content?
“Disinformation” is a Marxist / Soviet / Maoist term used to discredit the truth that hurts them. There may be legitimate “disinformation”, but who determines that?
That’s why we have free speech, the US entrusted people to decide. Generally, people can, what’s currently being censored are often not lies.
Please don't whatabout this. Unless CNN also amplify genocidal speech, those are really not the same. And as the GP said, Facebook is kind of a town square - you don't agree with CNN, you don't watch it. Many people need to use Facebook to interact with family, friends, community.
> Generally, people can, what’s currently being censored are often not lies
Really? Covid being a hoax, Pizzagate, QAnon, Earth being flat, the horse paste / HCQ debacles, etc. There were QAnon related protests in Germany. If people were capable of deciding, how is that possible?
Recently Facebook took down a livestream of Brazil's president where he linked Covid vaccines to HIV, which I believe would've been a great move had it not happened 72 hours after the fact.
What's the point of doing that when you also give them enough time to spread the lie on your other platforms (WhatsApp)?
> What's the point of doing that when you also give them enough time to spread the lie on your other platforms
Here's an article on Reuters that claims that Namibia has suspended the use of the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine "out of (an) abundance of caution that men (who) received Sputnik V may be at higher risk of contracting HIV."[1]
Is this Covid vaccine-HIV link misinformation as well? If so, why is Reuters being allowed to spread it?
We've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments. Not what this site is for.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
There are confirmed DNA analysis that Covid has HIV fragments. You can search that. Vast majority of this info from medical communities have been actively surpress to the point any researchers mentioning it will be "censored". I recalled both India and Thailand researchers made those discoveries early last year. But all mainstream media very strangely suppress it.
The idea of the paper is that they look for parts in one f the proteins of covid-19 that are not in other covirus they already know. Then they searched for these new parts in the proteins of other virus, and one of this parts "is" in HIV.
The first problem is that the fragment is too short. So there is a huge chance to find it somewhere just by luck. It's like if I edit may comment and add the word "revenge", and then someone claims I copied that word from a famous book that uses it.
The second problem, is that they didn't find exact matches, the examples they got are very short but have gasp in the middle. It's much easier to find a coincidence. It's like if I edit may comment and add the word "revenue", and then someone claims I copied that word from a famous book that uses "revenge" instead.
The "employees" claim Facebook just bent rules for conservatives / Republicans. It seems everybody forgot Facebook (and Twitter) bent (created?) rules to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election.
