by
The Baffler
archive/abolish-silicon-valley
Karen Ho,
Logic Magazine,
Yanis Varoufakis,
Mary L. Gray,
Siddharth Suri,
Kai Brach,
Mel Krantzler,
Patricia Biondi Krantzler,
Cary McClelland
[...] As digital monopolies steadily enclose whatever still remains of a public sphere, an impressive array of PR professionals have worked overtime to make it all sound liberating and democratic. Press releases gush out of all available servers, print articles and op-eds consistently reminding us not of the use value of their products (useful products, it should be noted, are not a Silicon Valley specialty) but, just as Bernays taught us, of the value of the corporations themselves: the great services they provide, the glorious number of jobs they create, their moral and ethical right-mindedness, and their proper place as the cultural and social pillars of all things American and exceptional—which is to say all things Hayekian and free. Far from simply building brand stories and shaping images, modern public relations is a perverse spin on what Bernays originally imagined the profession to be: it seeks to enshrine a privatized technocracy, swathed in the shallow veneer of a rhetorical, and endlessly fungible, commitment to social justice. And if present trends continue, our digitally administered information state may indeed be poised to finally extinguish the irksome throwback legacy that Bernays and his milieu found so threatening: democracy itself.
this is terrific
p,,,[ Audaciously taking its name from the shops it set out to displace and superfluous if not sinister in the actual service it purported to offer - a sort of glorified vending machine with facial recognition software - Bodega crystalllized the venality of the tech economy. All that technical expertise, and for what?
daaamn
[...] In 2012, a CrowdFlower worker, Christopher Otey, filed suit against the company [...] 19,992 CrowdFlower workers had signed on to the lawsuit [...] CrowdFlower set expectations accordant with a full-time employee, but the pay and benefits were commensurate with those of an independent contractor. [...] "I didn't have control over the work I did. It was all done on their platform. I couldn't choose my own hours. I had to work when they provided the work. They pretty much controlled all the aspects of the work that was being offered." Given the degree to which CrowdFlower set the terms of employment, argued Otey, CrowdFlower owed him and other workers minimum wage, per the Fair Labor Standards Act. The company's legal team countered that, because CrowdFlower's workers were "free contractors," the FLSA didn't apply. Ultimately, in 2015, CrowdFlower paid $585,507 to settle the lawsuit, which left the question of the employment status of its workers unanswered.
put this in my book as something i leanred after the fact whereas when i was looking into crowdflower i kinda just took their claims at face value (didnt think about labour law or even just the ethics)
related thought: tech companies pride themselves on being innovative - why cant they innovate a way to pay workers based on their system without running afoul of min wage laws and other minimal/barebones restrictions on exploitation
FIX 9: UNIONS AND PLATFORM COOPERATIVES AS THE NEW BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU
We need a third-party registry that allows on-demand workers to build their work resumes and accrue reputations, independent of the platform. Workers should be able to take their record of accomplishments with them, no matter where they pick up their next gig. Unlike a typical resume, a registry, managed by workers' representatives, would allow workers to display validated feedback from previous employers and requesters, no matter the platform of origin. Platforms could be required to post this portable stack of letters of recommendation as part of the worker's platform-specific profile. These registries could operate as the on-demand economy's Better Business Bureau, authenticating workers' identities and reputations and saving companies the engineering costs curretnly poured into blocking the relatively few bad actors bombarding platforms with shoddy or fradulent work. In exchange for bringing greater scrutiny for workers' reputations, registries could be used to hold companies accountable to workers' demands. For example, companies could be required to register suspensions and removals of workers.
agreed
ability to contest suspensions would be part of this. US DoL involved too
San Francisco - and the Bay Area in general - has become something of an arcade for the young and plugged in. Uber, Lyft, TaskRabbit, Carbon, Rinse, Instacart, Alfred - a kingdom of cute one-wrod fiefdoms offering chauffer and butler services for the new tech titans. They are shuttled to their corporate campuses - like csummer camp, a world fo priamry colors and playtgrounds and cafes and endless amusement to keep them happy at work. For them, all of life's conveniences can be had at the push of a button; for others, they've got to get running every time the bell rings. The sharing economy meets modern sweatshop. The gamification of life in the city doesn't mean everyone can afford to play.
The companies they worked for created wombs in which all their creature-comfort needs could be satisfied. It seemed great at the time they started their employment, but three or four years later [...] began to understand that a career was just a career, and a company was only a company, not a lifetime culture. For it is the very nature of a company to be solely concerned about its own profits and stock-market price. A company's loyalty is to its own bottom line, not the welfare of its workers. If the welfare of its workforce enhances the bottom line, fine. If not, increased productivity demands and downsizing will substitute for workforce creature comforts. [...]
not the most elegant phrasing but an important thing to remember
With few exceptions, these twenty-somethings had boxed their lives into a tiny corner of experience: they were only high-tech workers who thought that their title was the key to the universe. Most of them had chosen a high-tech career because they felt it was a safe place to exist. In school they had been called geeks and nerds by students in the social sciences and humanities, who were adept at connecting their lives with other human beings. But the "geeks or nerds," labeled as such by their fellow classmates, felt demeaned as outcasts. They were "weird," which was the operative word the more socially oriented students used to describe them. [...]
There were many reasons why this kind of self-isolation felt safe and comfortable in contrast to associating with the world where people connected with each other [...] Best to isolate oneself and get away from threatening interpersonal relationships. Machines were the solution: they didn't talk back, neglect you, abuse you, or demean you. Since you were in control of the machines instead of them controlling you, they were safe. Isolation was safe; nobody could harm you.
too real
To build such a crash-resistant system, the designer must be able to imagine - and disallow - the dumbest action. He or she cannot simply rely on the user's intelligence: who knows who will be on the other side of the program? Besides, teh user's intellligence is not quantifiable; it's not programmable; it cannot protect hte system. The real task is to forget about the intelligent person on the other side and think of every single stupid thing anyone might possibly do.
In the designer's mind, gradually, over months and years, there is created a vision of the user as imbecile. The imbecile vision is mandatory. No good, crash-resistant system can be built except if it's done for an idiot. The prettier the user interface, and the fewer odd replies the system allows you to make, the dumber you once appeared in the mind of the designer.
The designer's contempt for your intelligence is mostly hidden deep in the code. But, now and then, the disdain surfaces. Here's a small example: You're trying to do something simple, like back up files on your Mac. The program proceeds for a while, then encounters an error. Your disk is defective, says a message, and below the message is a single button. You absolutely must click this button. If you don't click it, the program hangs there indefinitely. [...] You must say, "OK."
relevant to PEBKAC