Meta employees are up in arms over a mandatory program to train AI on their

> happen all the same

No. They happen, but with a significant difference

Obviously it happens but I think you’ll have a hard time arguing that worker rights are as bad in the EU as in the US.

ITUC Global Rights Index (2025)

Europe: 2.78 Nordics: 1.0–1.2 Western Europe: 2.0–2.3

Americas: 3.68 United States: 4

I couldn’t find per state US numbers but the difference is obviously huge.

Layoffs don't happen the same way they do in the US, at least in Germany. It's expensive to lay someone off due to dual-party notice period requirements. "At will" is a foreign concept here.

Correct me if I'm wrong but for Meta/Google, past layoffs in France, Germany, Netherlands were done on a voluntary basis. It also took many months between the announcement and the actual layoff and the severance was competitive.

One may argue that salaries are lower and there are less opportunities in tech in those countries - because of stronger regulation - but I think the layoffs procedures are objectively much more favorable for employees.

Yeah, but usually folks tweak to paraphrase, instead of lopping off.

I'd have gone with "Meta employees up in arms over mandatory program to train AI on their keystrokes".

lol, yes :)

I cannot understand how in normative terms someone ought to be merely a vessel for someone in any capacity, ever. There are things you cannot do to someone and certain things you as an individual cannot sign away. That’s what “human rights” and similar frameworks are supposed to be about anyway.

At this point, Meta's opinion on privacy has been widely known for decades. Working for Meta is a personal choice. There is no excuse.

Eh - if you have Meta on your resume it's not that tough out there right now.

That argument doesn't really fly for some of the most highly paid people in the world with at least one really big name on their CVs.

Everyone working at Meta has more options than almost anyone else.

Anyone working for Meta could have chosen to work elsewhere. You have other options (that might not pay $350 grand, but hey, that's the price of your soul)

Poor Meta employees. They are victims of the oppressive job market and are left no other option than to work for 100s of thousands of dollars per year in well-lit and comfortable offices with free food and premium healthcare.

Anyone who could get a job at meta has other options, I think this is why people are so confident criticizing. Outside of the obvious (and correct!) hypocrisy angle, I think this would be an altogether different issue if it were for grocery store workers, retail employees, etc. (or for a much more real example, Amazon warehouse workers) Those groups really might not have other real options.

But I was only following orders!

Stop using bills as an excuse to be on the wrong side of history. Were the nazi soldiers innocent for gassing jews? Or were they also just "following the law"?

Being ethical is hard, but it's not an excuse. Yes, I judge people that work for FAANG, I judge colleagues for extensively rely on LLMs, and Big Corps for that matter.

> Regulate capital

How? Oh, right, by not using these products or working for the mentioned companies.

It's so easy to shift blame on other's and mark it as "not my problem lol"

Several reports say even a mid-ranked engineer at Meta can earn $200k in salary and another $100k in stock and bonus, every year. And that's not some rare, mega-senior E8 architect either.

Is there any point where a person stops being working class? Can I be chauffeur-driven to the opera in my gold-plated Lamborghini and still call myself working class?

If you keep expecting the morals should be coming (only or mainly) from the top, you get trump and all related shitshow and many other beautiful things. Thats not how healthy societies work, and same can be said about companies.

Somebody making 300-500k+ yearly is hardly working class, in same way bezos or zuckenberg are not working class yet they do spend some time working on their businesses.

We all make our choices in our lives and shape it accordingly, at least have a pair and own your decisions.

With all due respect to the guidelines that requires assuming good faith, this sounds like the beginning of a nirvana fallacy.

You don't have to provide a perfect solution to point out something is wrong. People who don't care about the people they lead don't make good leaders. I'd rather have leaders who hurt others by accident than on purpose.

> So which subsection of humanity you think should be dictating something?

"Here's your shit sandwich."

"I don't want a shit sandwich!"

I don't have to know what I do want to eat to decline the shit sandwich.

The proletariat, of course.

> Is there a reason you didn't go with

No and you are being intentionally obtuse for some reason.

Some people are forced to work in places, which are dehumanizing through work conditions, whether you get paid for it or not doesn't necessarily tell you much. Of course this is not the case for Mete employees, who should have an easy time finding other employment. But these trends are not limited to Meta. They might find application in some shithole of a badly paid job somewhere, where people have only the choice between living poorly in some slums, or serving their local tech overlord.

Because slaves were not getting paid?

Not only were they getting paid, slavery in the Roman Empire involved a bidirectional responsibility. In times of economic hardship and downturn, the owner was required to look after the slave. No kicking to the curb allowed.

Slaves were able to buy themselves out and the list of former slaves who became magnates and even politically influential at the highest level was indeed long and packed with names.

Being a slave was not considered dishonorable or lowly and the power dynamic was not based on notions of inherent ethnic based superiority. Not that the Romans weren’t plenty racist — they were. They also knew what a category error is and were not wont to induce it in themselves. Perhaps they had standards where intellectual rigor is concerned.

The ugly American version of slavery really did a number on people’s understanding of the institution. When we look at the current boardroom and C-suite “elites” and how they were often literally handed their business by the established power structures (Google and the CIA VC fund; DARPA and “lifelog” into Facebook etc), you can’t help but get the feeling that in our wage slavery society social mobility options are worse than Roman era slaves could avail themselves of.

Keen study of history is the only thing that can halt the slide of citizenry into universal and absolute ignorance. Given that Joe Schmoe no longer reads anything longer than a reel caption and even Ignatius Intellectual often maxes out at a blog post, I’d say the slide is well and truly lubed up.