Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models

78 77 1 month ago

Oh man, a petition. Now stage a walk out, maybe a protest. They’re all equally effective.

supertroop6• 1 month ago

If 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.

irishcoffee2• 1 month ago

If you think they’re effective in this current day and age you should also read the news.

Thanks for the sermon though.

refactor_master• 1 month ago

Google is your friend

But really, it's more like tolerated business partner, right?

dvt• 1 month 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.

supertroop6• 1 month ago

If 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.

tdeck3• 1 month ago

If 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• 1 month 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.

supertroop6• 1 month ago

lol people sell out for a paycheck. That doesn’t mean better conditions.

laweijfmvo2• 1 month ago

His 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.

supertroop6• 1 month ago

Good on them. Now go make the world a better place somewhere else besides that shithole company.

foltik2• 1 month ago

It’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.

avaer• 1 month ago

Presumably the employees didn't ask for this, now they have to choose between accepting this and not having a job.

You could argue they knew the company was horrible when they signed the deal with the devil, but this kind of bait and switch isn't the typical employment relationship; there is room for some sympathy.

codemog• 1 month ago

We’re supposed to have sympathy for techbros making half a million or more a year because.. they have to have their computer use monitored? Not even getting into the numerous list of unethical behavior of meta..

What a bizarre timeline..

ianm218• 1 month ago

I find Metas work very unethical but me but I think they should have basic workers rights still. Like yes what Meta is doing is legal and it’s at will work, but this level of surveillance feels like something the law didn’t really anticipate.

foltik2• 1 month ago

I don’t disagree. It’s dehumanizing, and they have a legitimate complaint. In almost any other context I’d be on the side of the workers here. I just have a hard time seeing Meta employees as innocent or helpless bystanders.

siren2026• 1 month ago

I think they should have basic workers rights still

You make it look like they are underpaid poor manual workers.

Those are people that chose to make >500k$/year by joining a company that is known to be one of the most toxic tech companies. Mos tof those people had probably multiple offers ad decided to optimize for money besides anything else. I have a hard time to feel sympathy or petition for their "worker's rights"

BrenBarn2• 1 month ago

I think the level of surveillance Meta inflicts on the population at large is also something the law didn't anticipate. The solution is new laws that illegalize broad swaths of what Meta currently does.

wahnfrieden• 1 month ago

The workers deserve better conditions without full accountability for leadership's decisions.

If Meta's workers were organized enough to improve their conditions, they could organize to shift company mission and tactics. They are nowhere near organized enough.

tdb78932• 1 month ago

People uphold a million cruel systems every day, their sort of hypocrisy is so common I've found it just to accept that it's how humans work (especially in a situation like this where their paycheck requires them to not see all the privacy problems they all support). I know I'm hypocritical about a bunch of stuff in my life.

Your perspective might be the more reasonable one but the way I see it, the hypocrisy is frustrating but it's sort of like getting mad at a dog for barking through a fence (dogs gonna dog) so I personally don't find it hard to be sympathetic still.

compass_copium2• 1 month ago

...it's the intrinsic nature of the programmer to have no scruples and work for the shittiest company that can employ them because it offers a big paycheck?

ElProlactin• 1 month ago

If this is "how humans work", do you feel sympathy for the Nazis who were "just following orders"?

slim• 1 month ago

it's not about symathy. Tactically, would you like your enemy to have this kind of control over its employees ? if the answer is no, you should support them

btbuildem• 1 month ago

Petition? 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• 1 month ago

What 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.

tdeck3• 1 month ago

Also 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.

zeroonetwothree2• 1 month ago

Petitioning a king is very traditional.

mattoxic• 1 month ago

Sure 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• 1 month ago

Yup, Dilbert's "easiest round of layoffs ever".

phyzome• 1 month ago

Try unionizing rather than just asking nicely.

dccoolgai• 1 month ago

It'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• 1 month ago

Or living in Europe where workers have actual rights.

thrance• 1 month ago

...gained through unionizing.

jdpigeon2• 29 days ago

Don't worry, it's happening

4fffs• 1 month ago

The 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.

tdeck3• 1 month ago

People 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.

titanomachy2• 1 month 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.

jdpigeon2• 29 days ago

100%. Canaries in the coal mine.

cmoski• 1 month ago

Surely anyone working at Meta sold their soul long ago. Do yourself a favour and quit.

nbardy• 1 month ago

Signing 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

zeroonetwothree2• 1 month ago

NAL 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.

laweijfmvo2• 1 month ago

also 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.

JSR_FDED• 1 month ago

Quoting Zuckerberg on Meta’s code of conduct is hilarious.

yieldcrv• 1 month ago

unionize stoopiiiid

a documentable unionization effort also overrides the “at will” part of getting laid off

postsantum• 1 month ago

Have they tried to stage a strike and block the road?

In Meta Quest of course

quietthrow3• 1 month ago

The 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• 1 month 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.

quietthrow3• 1 month ago

It’s implied in someways I would say. that’s why these folks creating any meaningful leverage is a black swan event. Say all of them walk away and meta can get a million new people it’s still a massive risk for the meta (entity) as they may never be able to recover fully. The million new people when band to gather will not form the same larger entity that was existing earlier that made a lot of money. They are not going to be productive day one or year one. What will emerge is a new entity and it could make even more money or even less money as things may never be the same. And that’s a large risk that Meta may or may not take. But without leverage created by banding together / complete solidarity Meta will never be forever to face the risk of it being transformed into a completely different entity that may or may not be as successful as it’s today. And that’s the power of leverage.

titanomachy2• 1 month ago

I wouldn’t put it past meta leadership to just fire the lot of them for daring to make a “demand” of their betters. The only thing that might restrain them is employment law, but they have good lawyers and might find a way around it.

And meta engineers will never bargain collectively. If you’ve spent time there you understand that it is some of the least fertile ground in the world for such ideas. Anyone who entertained thoughts of collectivism, or in fact anything beyond naked self-interest, has probably left some time ago.

quietthrow3• 1 month ago

It’s that self interest is what got them to meta in the first place. These people are highly skilled and smart at what they do. They worked probably extremely hard for a large swath of their life to get where they are with meta. It’s one of those classic what got you here won’t get you there scenarios. Self interest has its limits (and so does collectivism). The real intelligence is in knowing when one has stoped working for you and when it’s working against you. Self interest / collectivism etc These are all just tools. We as humans are best when our indentity is that of a tools user (and not that of a single tool user - it’s possible and you may be rewarded for it well but it has its limits and it certainly confines what you can do has a human. It’s a limiting way to live at best )

steele• 1 month ago

I hope the vocal cynicism expressed in the "told ya so" replies weren't developed after reading the list of names.

newtonianrules• 1 month ago

Petition by resigning. Tomorrow. Stop supporting this company.

siliconc0w• 1 month ago

Randomly 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...

1vuio0pswjnm74• 1 month ago

"Journalists and others: we request that you do not directly link to the site on the web, social media, etc."

1vuio0pswjnm74• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

For 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.

1vuio0pswjnm74• 1 month ago

"Do I need to worry about potential future employers finding this?

No.

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."

1vuio0pswjnm74• 1 month ago

Are there Meta employees who don't undetstand HTML <meta> elements

Would these employees understand "technical measures"

mikelitoris• 1 month ago

Surveillance for thee but not for me...

Yeah, no thanks (or "how the turn tables")

sirsinsalot• 1 month ago

Nobody 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!

Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models

Related Stories