My theory of the "shitty technology adoption curve" holds that you can predict the future impact of abusive technologies on you by observing the way these are deployed against people who have less social power than you:
pluralistic.net/2023/06/11/theβ¦
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2025/03/13/eleβ¦
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"We are in the midst of a shift in work and workplace relationships as significant as the Second Industrial Revolution of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And new policies and protections may be necessary to correct the balance of power."
Read more: technologyreview.com/2025/02/2β¦
Your boss is watching
Monitoring technology is increasing the power imbalance between companies and workers. Protections lag far behind.Rebecca Ackermann (MIT Technology Review)
#ScribesAndMakers 13 March: Shameless self-promotion day!
I have a new book coming out! It's called Blight and it's the sequel to my first book, Cascade. If you hate fascism and like sad gay wizards and eldritch abominations you may very well enjoy it. If you pre-order it, you'll make my day: books2read.com/u/mYVl9P
#CareerNews
Trump plans to visit the Justice Department Friday, a rare move for a president
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/13/nx-s1-5327268/trump-doj-justice-department?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into U.S. News @u-s-news-npr
π§ͺ#pharmacology
How do researchers determine how toxic a chemical is? A toxicologist explains alternatives to animal testing
Thousands of chemicals in industry havenβt been thoroughly tested for their safety and toxicity. Researchers are working to standardize quicker, cheaper and more ethical methods to assess chemicals.The Conversation
Hallway, NYC, 2014.
All the pixels, but nowhere to put them, at flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/13β¦
Hallway in West Village Walk-Up
21 March 2014. West Village, NYC. This improbably tight hallway, in a West Village walk-up, is similar to one seen in the Coen Brothers' "Inside Llewyn Davis". I like that you have to share a doormat with your neighbor.Flickr
Matt Blaze reshared this.
Captured with a small mirrorless camera and 50mm lens.
This hallway reminded me of a sight gag in the Coens' "Inside Llewyn Davis". I like that the two neighbors have to share a doormat.
The starkly bare hallway and contrasting tones between the walls and the doors and floor make this as much a study in abstract shapes as it is about urban living.
Matt Blaze reshared this.
"Who designed this?" you might ask.
Small NYC brownstones such as the one shown here were generally either built from the start as multi-family tenements, or were built as single-family homes and later subdivided into apartments. In the former case, the layout into individual units was part of the original design and generally fairly sane. In the latter case, landlords often tried to squeeze every square inch of rentable space out of the existing layout, at the expense of things like hallways.
Matt Blaze reshared this.
I mean you can't sleep in a hallway now can you ?
At USC there used to be a design contest at the Architecture school for putting the maximum number of living spaces into the smallest number of square feet. Each 'unit' had to support two adults, cooking, bathing, a bathroom, and a place to sleep.
One of the students called it 'smooshed camping' which sort of stuck with me.
Appeals Court: βPlain Viewβ Also Includes Using iPhone Camera Options To See Through Tinted Car Windows
As tech advances, the law mutates. In some cases (Riley, Carpenter) we get more protections. In other cases, we get fewer protections. This case dates back to 2022. Christopher Poller was a suspectβ¦Techdirt
On a lighter #electronics note, this is the bestest solder sucker that I have ever used and I love it dearly. About the only thing I'd change I'd make would be to make the body longer (not necessarily the piston volume) to make it a bit better-fitting for my clumsy hands.
The main upside of this one is that it is all-metal, so the button lock doesn't wear out in like 50 uses, unlike the standard variety of these.
Israeli attacks on Gaza maternity wards and IVF clinic βgenocidal actsβ, says UN
Israeli forces have used sexual violence as weapon of war to βdominate and destroyβ Palestinian people, report also saysEmma Graham-Harrison (The Guardian)
Film Screening β Staff Picks from the Prelinger Archives
Prelinger Archives is in the final year of a three-year grant for mass-digitization of its film collection funded by Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web. Since the start of the [β¦]\nblog.archive.org
ElektrΔnai // Lithuania
#elektrΔnai #lithuania #lietuva #litauen #lake #see #zesa #travel #photography #kraftwerk #powerplant
Scientists Potentially Found a Three-Body Problem in Spaceβbut the Mystery Is Just Beginning
popularmechanics.com/space/solβ¦
#news #science #astronomy #space
Scientists Potentially Found a Three-Body Problem in Spaceβbut the Mystery Is Just Beginning
The real thing is even more confusing than the Netflix show.Elizabeth Rayne (Popular Mechanics)
T-Mobile: Sorry, But We're Raising Prices by $5 Per Line
Price increases start rolling out on April 2. 'We are updating the prices on some of our older phone plans in response to rising costs,' T-Mobile says.Michael Kan (PCMag)
Why worry about ethics when you can just spend a few million electing a stooge who'll change the laws for you
mastodon.social/@arstechnica/1β¦
amazon.com/dp/B008KMZ8FC?ref=tβ¦
When Salvador DalΓ Created a Chilling Anti-Venereal Disease Poster During World War II
openculture.com/2025/03/when-sβ¦
When Salvador DalΓ Created a Chilling Anti-Venereal Disease Poster During World War II
As a New York City subway rider, I am constantly exposed to public health posters. More often than not these feature a photo of a wholesome-looking teen whose sober expression is meant to convey hindsight regret at having taken up drugs, dropped out β¦OC (Openculture.com)
OpenAI says outright that their entire business model depends on throwing copyright out the window.
βFair use for me, but not for thee.β
arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20β¦
OpenAI declares AI race βoverβ if training on copyrighted works isnβt fair use
National security hinges on unfettered access to AI training data, OpenAI says.Ashley Belanger (Ars Technica)
Indeed. I would even argue that if they want to argue that it β’doesnβtβ’ fail the βimpact on potential marketβ test, thatβs an admission that their entire product pitch is BS. Either AI can replace the humans who do this work or it canβt; you canβt have that cake and eat it too.
"Elon Musk is not engaged in an βefficiency driveβ. He is not trying to save money. He is trying to cripple the state and destroy the public sector, since oligarchs of his ilk think these are by nature a waste of money and that their functions should be privatized. Media should report it as such."
ft.com/content/6d938875-d9c8-4β¦
#Musk #DOGE #Trump #government #politics #USA
Elon Muskβs cuts fail to stop US federal spending hitting new record
Government spending rose to $603bn in February despite hyperactive efficiency drive, data showsJoe Miller (Financial Times)
Linux Fu: Use the Source (Command), Luke
hackaday.com/2025/03/13/linux-β¦
Linux Fu: Use The Source (Command), Luke
You can argue if bash is a good programming language or not, but you canβt argue that it is a programming language. However, there are a few oddities about it that make it different from mostβ¦Hackaday
hmm, not really my usage pattern, I also want to save history per project, so I just use this that I wrote decades ago:
git.haiku-os.org/haiku/tree/3rβ¦
(I should probably remove the mentions about CVS someday (and rewrite it to spawn a sub-shell instead of taking over the existing one))
Dipped briefly into news over lunch, decided to go on a mosshog hunt instead. Good call I think.
Segera baca di e-komik.org/komik/405081
#EKomik #Komik #Comic #Manga #Action #Comedy #Drama #MartialArts #Shounen
π₯ Pecinta Komik, Ini yang Kamu Tunggu! π₯
Chapter terbaru dari Isshou Senkin (Chapter 30) sudah hadir dalam Bahasa Indonesia! π
π Gabung bersama ribuan pembaca lainnya dan nikmati kisah serunya.
β¨ Jangan biarkan orang lain tahu kisah ini lebih dulu, baca sekarang dan rasakan sendiri keseruannya!
π Klik di sini untuk mulai membaca sekarang: e-komik.org/komik/405081
β³ Jadilah yang pertama tahu apa yang terjadi selanjutnya!
#EKomik #Komik #Comic #Manga #Action #Comedy #Drama #MartialArts #Shounen
π₯ Pecinta Komik, Ini yang Kamu Tunggu! π₯
Chapter terbaru dari Isshou Senkin (Chapter 31) sudah hadir dalam Bahasa Indonesia! π
π Gabung bersama ribuan pembaca lainnya dan nikmati kisah serunya.
β¨ Jangan biarkan orang lain tahu kisah ini lebih dulu, baca sekarang dan rasakan sendiri keseruannya!
π Klik di sini untuk mulai membaca sekarang: e-komik.org/komik/405081
β³ Jadilah yang pertama tahu apa yang terjadi selanjutnya!
#EKomik #Komik #Comic #Manga #Action #Comedy #Drama #MartialArts #Shounen
Thousands of fired federal workers must be offered reinstatement, a judge rules
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/13/nx-s1-5325959/federal-employees-court-firing?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Politics @politics-npr
Sofia Gubaidulina, the composer who fused sound and spirituality, has died at age 93
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/13/nx-s1-5327261/sofia-gubaidulina-russian-composer-has-died?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Music @music-npr
Segera baca di e-komik.org/komik/338055
#EKomik #Komik #Comic #Manga #Comedy #Josei #Romance #SchoolLife #SliceOfLife
π₯ Pecinta Komik, Ini yang Kamu Tunggu! π₯
Chapter terbaru dari Kusunoki-san wa Koukou Debut ni Shippai shite Iru (Chapter 40.2) sudah hadir dalam Bahasa Indonesia! π
π Gabung bersama ribuan pembaca lainnya dan nikmati kisah serunya.
β¨ Jangan biarkan orang lain tahu kisah ini lebih dulu, baca sekarang dan rasakan sendiri keseruannya!
π Klik di sini untuk mulai membaca sekarang: e-komik.org/komik/338055
β³ Jadilah yang pertama tahu apa yang terjadi selanjutnya!
#EKomik #Komik #Comic #Manga #Comedy #Josei #Romance #SchoolLife #SliceOfLife
π₯ Pecinta Komik, Ini yang Kamu Tunggu! π₯
Chapter terbaru dari Kusunoki-san wa Koukou Debut ni Shippai shite Iru (Chapter 40.1) sudah hadir dalam Bahasa Indonesia! π
π Gabung bersama ribuan pembaca lainnya dan nikmati kisah serunya.
β¨ Jangan biarkan orang lain tahu kisah ini lebih dulu, baca sekarang dan rasakan sendiri keseruannya!
π Klik di sini untuk mulai membaca sekarang: e-komik.org/komik/338055
β³ Jadilah yang pertama tahu apa yang terjadi selanjutnya!
#EKomik #Komik #Comic #Manga #Comedy #Josei #Romance #SchoolLife #SliceOfLife
Right to Repair: A Prime Example of Grassroots Advocacy
Good old-fashioned grassroots advocacy is one of the best tools we have right now for making a positive change for our civil liberties online.Electronic Frontier Foundation
Rent me the device at a reasonable cost and we'll talk.
Looks like Right to Repair has a bill in Nevada.
leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/β¦
AB407 Overview
The Nevada Legislature's site for finding and tracking bills, bill draft requests, and budgets from 2011 forward.www.leg.state.nv.us
π₯ Pecinta Komik, Ini yang Kamu Tunggu! π₯
Chapter terbaru dari Return of the High-Ranking Civil Servant (Chapter 50) sudah hadir dalam Bahasa Indonesia! π
π Gabung bersama ribuan pembaca lainnya dan nikmati kisah serunya.
β¨ Jangan biarkan orang lain tahu kisah ini lebih dulu, baca sekarang dan rasakan sendiri keseruannya!
π Klik di sini untuk mulai membaca sekarang: e-komik.org/komik/420564
β³ Jadilah yang pertama tahu apa yang terjadi selanjutnya!
#EKomik #Komik #Comic #Manhwa #Action #Drama #Fantasy #Shounen
π₯ Pecinta Komik, Ini yang Kamu Tunggu! π₯
Chapter terbaru dari Return of the High-Ranking Civil Servant (Chapter 51) sudah hadir dalam Bahasa Indonesia! π
π Gabung bersama ribuan pembaca lainnya dan nikmati kisah serunya.
β¨ Jangan biarkan orang lain tahu kisah ini lebih dulu, baca sekarang dan rasakan sendiri keseruannya!
π Klik di sini untuk mulai membaca sekarang: e-komik.org/komik/420564
β³ Jadilah yang pertama tahu apa yang terjadi selanjutnya!
#EKomik #Komik #Comic #Manhwa #Action #Drama #Fantasy #Shounen
Catch the latest episode of The Bootloader - hereβs a clip of @todbot with an update about the clock speed of the rp2040.
Find the show wherever you get your podcasts or visit thebootloader.net
John Mulaney is experimenting with late night. It's not quite working β yet
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/13/nx-s1-5324637/john-mulaney-netflix-late-night-everybodys-live-with-john-mulaney?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Television @television-npr
π₯ Pecinta Komik, Ini yang Kamu Tunggu! π₯
Chapter terbaru dari Max Talent Player (Chapter 71) sudah hadir dalam Bahasa Indonesia! π
π Gabung bersama ribuan pembaca lainnya dan nikmati kisah serunya.
β¨ Jangan biarkan orang lain tahu kisah ini lebih dulu, baca sekarang dan rasakan sendiri keseruannya!
π Klik di sini untuk mulai membaca sekarang: e-komik.org/komik/380121
β³ Jadilah yang pertama tahu apa yang terjadi selanjutnya!
#EKomik #Komik #Comic #Manhwa #Action #Adventure #Fantasy
π₯ Pecinta Komik, Ini yang Kamu Tunggu! π₯
Chapter terbaru dari Max Talent Player (Chapter 72) sudah hadir dalam Bahasa Indonesia! π
π Gabung bersama ribuan pembaca lainnya dan nikmati kisah serunya.
β¨ Jangan biarkan orang lain tahu kisah ini lebih dulu, baca sekarang dan rasakan sendiri keseruannya!
π Klik di sini untuk mulai membaca sekarang: e-komik.org/komik/380121
β³ Jadilah yang pertama tahu apa yang terjadi selanjutnya!
#EKomik #Komik #Comic #Manhwa #Action #Adventure #Fantasy
Haven Blaire by Stephanie Brown
Source: bsky.app/profile/offbeatworldsβ¦
#DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #ttrpg #character #characterart #art #digitalart
A digital painting shows a young woman with pale skin, long white hair, and pale blue eyes. She faces to the left, looking up to the right with a slight smile. She wears a blue tunic and dark pants with a brown leather belt and bracers. A white shawl with a fur collar is draped over her shoulders. She holds a wooden axe with blue and orange flames coming from the head. Behind her, a faint face is visible. The background is a dark blue sky with a crescent moon and small stars. The artist's signature is in the lower right corner.
Provided by @altbot, generated using Gemini
Trump's hiring freeze has halted local head counts and could threaten the U.S. census
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/13/nx-s1-5324706/federal-hiring-freeze-special-census-white-house-westfield-aurora?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Politics @politics-npr
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
When you have a new, abusive technology, you can't just aim it at rich, powerful people, because when *they* complain, they get results. To successfully deploy that abusive tech, you need to work your way up the privilege gradient, starting with people with *no* power, like prisoners, refugees, and mental patients. This starts the process of normalization, even as it sands down some of the technology's rough edges against their tender bodies.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Once that's done, you can move on to people with more social power - immigrants, blue collar workers, school children. Step by step, you normalize and smooth out the abusive tech, until you can apply it to everyone - even rich and powerful people. Think of the deployment of CCTV, facial recognition, location tracking, and web surveillance.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
All this means that blue collar workers are the pioneering early adopters of the bossware that will shortly be tormenting their white-collar colleagues elsewhere in the business. It's as William Gibson prophesied: "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed" (it's pooled up thick and noxious around the ankles of blue-collar workers, refugees, mental patients, etc).
Nowhere is this rule more salient than in Big Tech firms.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Companies like Google not only use separate entrance for their different classes of workers - they stagger their shifts so that the elite workers don't even *see* their lower-status counterparts.
Importantly, almost *none* of these workers - whether low-status or high - are unionized. Tech union density is so thin, it's almost nonexistent.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
It's easy to see why elite tech workers wouldn't bother with unionizing: with such fantastic wages and so many perks, why endure the tedium of meetings and memos? But then there's the rest of the workers, who are subjected to endless "electronic whipping" by bossware and who take home wages that look like pocket change when compared to the tech division's compensation. These workers have every reason to unionize, living as they do in the dystopian future of labor.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
At Amazon warehouses, workers are injured at three times the rate of warehouse workers at competing firms. They are penalized for "time off task" (like taking a piss break). They are made to stand in long, humiliating body-search lines when they go on- and off-shift, hours every week, without compensation. Variations on this theme play out in other blue-collar sectors of the Amazon empire, like Amazon delivery drivers and Whole Food shelf-stockers.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Those workers have every reason to unionize, and they have done their damndest, but Amazon has defeated worker union drives, again and again. How does Amazon win these battles? Simple: they cheat. They illegally fire union organizers:
pluralistic.net/2020/03/31/reaβ¦
And then they smear unions to the press and to their own workers with lies (that subsequently leak):
pluralistic.net/2020/04/03/socβ¦
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Pluralistic: 31 Mar 2020 β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
They spend millions on anti-union tech, spying on workers and creating "heatmaps" that let them direct their anti-union efforts to specific stores and facilities:
pluralistic.net/2020/04/21/allβ¦
They make workers use an official chat app, and then block any messages containing forbidden words, like "fairness," "grievance" and "diversity":
pluralistic.net/2022/04/05/douβ¦
That's just the tip of the iceberg.
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Pluralistic: 21 Apr 2020 β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
A new investigation by Northwestern University's Teke Wiggin draws on worker interviews and FOIA requests to the NLRB to assemble a first-of-its-kind catalog of Amazon's labor-disciplining, union-busting tactics:
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.11β¦
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Disciplining labor and busting unions go hand in hand. It's a simple equation: the harder it is for your workers to form a union, the worse you can treat them without facing labor reprisals, because individual workers' options are limited to a) quitting or b) sucking it up, while unionized workers can grieve, sue, and strike.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
At the core of Amazon's labor discipline technology is "algorithmic management," which is exactly what it sounds like: replacing middle managers with software that counts your keystrokes, watches your eyeballs, or applies a virtual caliper to some other metric to decide whether you're a good worker or a rotten apple:
pluralistic.net/2024/11/26/hawβ¦
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Pluralistic: Bossware is unfair (in the legal sense, too) (26 Nov 2024) β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Automation theory describes two poles of workplace automation: centaurs (in which workers are assisted by technology) and "reverse-centaurs" (in which workers provide assistance to technology):
pluralistic.net/2021/03/19/theβ¦
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Pluralistic: 19 Mar 2021 β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Amazon is a reverse-centaurism pioneer. Take the delivery drivers whose every maneuver, eyeball movement, and turn signal is analyzed and inevitably, found wanting, as workers seek to satisfy impossible quotas that can't even be met if you pee in a bottle instead of taking toilet breaks:
pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/relβ¦
Then there's the warehouse workers who are also tormented with impossible, pisscall-annihilating quotas.
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Pluralistic: Amazonβs bestselling βbitter lemonβ energy drink was bottled delivery driver piss (20 Oct 2023) β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Some of these workers are fitted with haptic wristbands that buzz to tell them they're being too slow at picking up an item and dropping it into a box, pushing them to faster, joint-destroying paces that account for Amazon's enduring position as the most worker-maiming warehouse employer in the nation:
pluralistic.net/2021/02/05/la-β¦
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Pluralistic: 05 Feb 2021 β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
In his paper, Wiggin does important work connecting these "electronic whips" to Amazon's arsenal of traditional union-busting weapons, like "captive audience" meetings where workers are forced to sit through hours of anti-union indoctrination. For Wiggin, bossware tools aren't just a stick to beat workers with - they're also a carrot that can be used to diffuse a worker's outrage ahead of a key union vote.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Algorithmic management isn't just software that wrings more work out of workers - it's software that replaces managers. By surveilling workers - both on the job and in social media spaces (like subreddits) where workers gather to talk, Amazon can tune the "electronic whip," reducing quotas and easing the pace of work so that workers view their jobs more favorably and are more receptive to anti-union propaganda.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
This is "twiddling" - exploiting the digital flexibility of a system to "twiddle the knobs" governing its business logic, changing everything from prices to wages, search rankings to recommendations, in realtime, for every customer and worker:
pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiβ¦
Twiddling combines surveillance data with flexible business logic to create an unbeatable house advantage.
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Twiddler β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
If you're an Amazon shopper, you get twiddled all the time, as Amazon replaces the best matches for your searches with paid results. If you buy that first product result, you'll pay an average of 29% more than the best match for your search:
pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attβ¦
Worker-side twiddling is even more dystopian.
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Pluralistic: Amazon is a ripoff (06 Nov 2023) β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
When a nurse is assigned a shift by an "Uber for nurses" app, the app checks whether the worker has overdue credit card bills, which trigger lower wages (on the theory that an indebted worker is a desperate worker):
pluralistic.net/2024/12/18/looβ¦
When it comes to union-busting, Amazon's found a new use for twiddling: lessening the pace of work, which Wiggin calls "algorithmic slack-cutting."
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Pluralistic: Nurses whose shitty boss is a shitty app (17 Dec 2024) β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The important thing about algorithmic slack-cutting is that it's only temporary. The algorithm that reduces your work-load in the runup to a union vote can then dial the pace of work up afterward, by small, random increments that are below the threshold at which they register on the human sensory apparatus. They're not so much boiling the frog as *poaching* it.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Meanwhile, Amazon gets to flood the zone with anti-union messages, including mandatory messages on the app that assigns your shifts - a captive audience meeting in every pocket.
Between social media surveillance and on-the-job surveillance, Amazon has built a powerful training set for algorithms designed to crush workplace democracy. That's how things go for Amazon's warehouse workers and delivery drivers, and the shelf-stockers at Whole Foods.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
But of course, the picture is very different for Amazon's techies, who enjoy the industry standard of high wages and lavish perks.
For now.
The tech industry is in the midst of three years' worth of mass layoffs: 260K in 2023, 150k in 2024, tens of thousands this year. None of this is due to a shortfall in profits, mind: Google laid off 12,000 workers just weeks after staging a stock buyback that would have funded their salaries for *27 years*.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Meta just announced a 5% across-the-board headcount cut *and* that it was doubling its executive bonuses.
In other words, tech is firing workers not because it must, but because it *can*. When workers depend on scarcity - instead of unions - as a source of power, they dig their own graves. For well-paid, scarcity-based coders, every new computer science graduate is the enemy, eroding the scarcity that your wages depend on.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Amazon coders get to come to work with pink mohawks, facial piercings, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don't understand. They get to pee whenever they want to. That's not because Jeff Bezos is sentimentally attached to techies and bears personal animus toward warehouse workers. Jeff Bezos wants to pay his workforce as little as he can.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
He treats his tech workers with respect because he's afraid of them, because if they quit, he can't replace them, and without their work, he can't make money.
Once there's an army of unemployed coders who'll take your job, Jeff Bezos doesn't have to fear you anymore. He can fire you and replace you the next day.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Bezos is obviously *incredibly horny* for this. Like most tech bosses, he dreams of a world in which entitled hackers can't call their bosses dumbshits and decline to frog when they shout "jump!" That's why Amazon PR puts so much energy into trumpeting the business's use of AI to replace coders:
hrgrapevine.com/us/content/artβ¦
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HR Grapevine USA
www.hrgrapevine.comCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
It's not just that they're excited about firing coders and saving money - they're even *more* excited about transforming the job of "Amazon coder," from someone who solves complex technical problems to someone who performs tedious code review on automatically generated code barfed up by a chatbot:
pluralistic.net/2024/04/01/humβ¦
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Pluralistic: Humans are not perfectly vigilant (01 Apr 2024) β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
"Code reviewer" is a much less fulfilling job than "programmer." Code reviewers are also easier to replace than programmers. A code reviewer is a reverse-centaur, a servant to the machine. Every time you hear "AI-assisted programmer," you should substitute "programmer-assisted AI."
Programming is even more bossware-ready than working in a warehouse.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The machines coders use are much easier to fit with surveillance technology that monitors their performance - and spies on their communications, looking for dissenting chatter - than a warehouse floor. The only thing that stopped Jeff Bezos from treating his programmers like his warehouse workers is their scarcity. That scarcity is now going away.
That's bad news for Amazon *customers*, too.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Tech workers often feel a sense of duty to their users, a "vocational awe" that drives them to put in long hours to make things their users will enjoy. The labor power of tech workers has long served as a check on the impulse to enshittify those products:
pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/morβ¦
As tech workers' power wanes, they don't just lose the ability to protect themselves from their bosses' greediest, most sadistic urges - they also lose the power to defend all of *us*.
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Pluralistic: The moral injury of having your work enshittified (25 Nov 2023) β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Smart tech workers know this. That's why Amazon tech workers walked out in support of Amazon warehouse workers:
pluralistic.net/2021/01/19/deaβ¦
Which led to their prompt dismissal:
pluralistic.net/2020/04/14/aboβ¦
Tech worker/gig worker solidarity is the *only* way workers can win against tech bosses and defeat the shitty technology adoption curve:
pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solβ¦
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Pluralistic: 19 Jan 2021 β Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Wiggin's report isn't just a snapshot of Amazon warehouse workers' dystopian present - it's a promise of Amazon tech workers' future. The future is here, in Amazon warehouses, and every day, it's getting closer to Amazon's technical offices.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel *Picks and Shovels*.
Catch me in BURBANK TONIGHT (Mar 13) with WIL WHEATON:
darkdel.com/store/p3257/Thu%2Cβ¦
And in SAN DIEGO on Mar 24:
mystgalaxy.com/32425Doctorow
More tour dates here:
martinhench.com
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Thu, Mar 13th 6 pm: Pick & Shovel: A Martin Hench Novel HB
Dark DelicaciesCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Image:
Cryteria (modified)
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Filβ¦
CC BY 3.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/bβ¦
eof/
File:HAL9000.svg - Wikimedia Commons
commons.wikimedia.orgDavid Abigt π π
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
sleepfreeparent
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •TobyBartels
in reply to sleepfreeparent • • •βFascism is nothing but colonialism applied at homeβ βattributed to AimΓ© CΓ©saire (Martinique anti-colonial politician)