Honestly, you could just make a more logical COL system. Don't factor COL pay adjustment based on actual cost of living costs in a region. Factor it based on the additional cost to a business to have someone somewhere (if, for example, an employee in Montana has more frequent/higher travel expenses than a worker in a transit hub) and factor it based on the need/demand to have employees in a specific place. You don't have to just tie it directly to actual cost of living, but rather cost of doing business.
In this particular case, I think the costs in the tech sector to business are equivalent, as remote access costs the same anywhere.
I live in a suburb of Houston, TX (4th largest city in the US) and fiber internet isn't even an option here. And if you're going to tie pay simply to cost of doing business rather than cost of living, then expect to see all of the jobs move to the lowest cost country (as we've seen with manufacturing moving to China and a lot of tech/engineering moving to India and eastern Europe).
I think if either are applied that is likely to happen
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
The lack of fiber optic cable in many regions is because of the telecoms companies not installing them despite taking lots of government money on the promise to do so.
Costs of a internet connection to access a VPN don't differ that greatly.
Oh yes they do - there's some serious urban/rural divide there last I checked, as well as a US/literally the rest of the world one.
One of my coworkers lives on a farm outside town and doesn't really have much in the way of internet at all. It's much faster for him to drive an hour to the office to download a big file and drive it home than download it
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday announced the platform would allow its users to turn off political ads.
"Everyone wants to see politicians held accountable for what they say — and I know many people want us to moderate and remove more of their content," Zuckerberg wrote in a USA Today op-ed article. "For those of you who've already made up your minds and just want the election to be over, we hear you — so we're also introducing the ability to turn off seeing political ads."
"We'll still remind you to vote," he added.
Facebook will begin implementing the feature for some users Wednesday and plans to make it available to all users over the next several weeks, a company representative told CNBC.
First of, if I was Brad Parscale (and I am very thankful that I am not), I would be up in arms at this announcement, because it's going to kill the value of political ad buys. Facebook better be planning on cutting political ad rates.
Second, this continues to miss the fucking point. The problem people have isn't about the ads, but that Facebook refuses to require them to not outright lie.
To be honest, I'm surprised Zuck didn't plan a backdoor to allow Republican ads even if you switch it off, and only block Democratic ads. Like saying "Trump ads aren't ads, they are government annoucements, therefore unblockable. Also, we use your webcam to make sure you watch them. Also also, you are required to make a $10 donation to Trump 2020 before being allowed to scroll to the next newsfeed item."
The New York Times published a good piece about how Silicon Valley engages in "blackwashing" with donations and ads while refusing to fix how their products enable racism and other bigotry:
Several weeks ago, as protests erupted across the nation in response to the police killing of George Floyd, Mark Zuckerberg wrote a long and heartfelt post on his Facebook page, denouncing racial bias and proclaiming that “black lives matter.” Mr. Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, also announced that the company would donate $10 million to racial justice organizations.
A similar show of support unfolded at Twitter, where the company changed its official Twitter bio to a Black Lives Matter tribute, and Jack Dorsey, the chief executive, pledged $3 million to an anti-racism organization started by Colin Kaepernick, the former N.F.L. quarterback.
YouTube joined the protests, too. Susan Wojcicki, its chief executive, wrote in a blog post that “we believe Black lives matter and we all need to do more to dismantle systemic racism.” YouTube also announced it would start a $100 million fund for black creators.
Pretty good for a bunch of supposedly heartless tech executives, right?
Well, sort of. The problem is that, while these shows of support were well intentioned, they didn’t address the way that these companies’ own products — Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — have been successfully weaponized by racists and partisan provocateurs, and are being used to undermine Black Lives Matter and other social justice movements. It’s as if the heads of McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell all got together to fight obesity by donating to a vegan food co-op, rather than by lowering their calorie counts.
It’s hard to remember sometimes, but social media once functioned as a tool for the oppressed and marginalized. In Tahrir Square in Cairo, Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, activists used Twitter and Facebook to organize demonstrations and get their messages out.
But in recent years, a right-wing reactionary movement has turned the tide. Now, some of the loudest and most established voices on these platforms belong to conservative commentators and paid provocateurs whose aim is mocking and subverting social justice movements, rather than supporting them.
The result is a distorted view of the world that is at odds with actual public sentiment. A majority of Americans support Black Lives Matter, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it by scrolling through your social media feeds.
So there's been a few others, but they're more usual suspects (Ben and Jerry's, Patagonia, REI) so I mostly ignored them (as in it's unlikely to move the needle, while still notable).
The Washington Post has a piece on how internal working has led Facebook to where it is today:
Zuckerberg talks frequently about making choices that stand the test of time, preserving the values of Facebook and subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram for all of its nearly 3 billion monthly users for many years into the future — even when those decisions are unpopular or controversial.
At one point, however, he wanted a different approach to Trump.
It's worth reading the whole thing, as it makes clear how people like Joel Kaplan served as moles in Facebook, blunting policies that would negatively impact the right.
The Washington Post has a piece on how internal working has led Facebook to where it is today:
Zuckerberg talks frequently about making choices that stand the test of time, preserving the values of Facebook and subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram for all of its nearly 3 billion monthly users for many years into the future — even when those decisions are unpopular or controversial.
At one point, however, he wanted a different approach to Trump.
It's worth reading the whole thing, as it makes clear how people like Joel Kaplan served as moles in Facebook, blunting policies that would negatively impact the right.
Zuck has a real problem with people whispering things in his ear and appearing to not think them through critically. I wonder if he's finally tired of trying to make everybody happy and chosen a side.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
The Washington Post has a piece on how internal working has led Facebook to where it is today:
Zuckerberg talks frequently about making choices that stand the test of time, preserving the values of Facebook and subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram for all of its nearly 3 billion monthly users for many years into the future — even when those decisions are unpopular or controversial.
At one point, however, he wanted a different approach to Trump.
It's worth reading the whole thing, as it makes clear how people like Joel Kaplan served as moles in Facebook, blunting policies that would negatively impact the right.
Zuck has a real problem with people whispering things in his ear and appearing to not think them through critically. I wonder if he's finally tired of trying to make everybody happy and chosen a side.
I think it's more just raw cost-benefit analysis. Traditionally, the left tends to accept free speech "absolutism", so appeals to such can work to hold of leftward critique (hence why Zuckerberg goes to that well so often.) The right, however, doesn't - hence why Facebook does things like hire someone like Kaplan. One thing that's frustrating Zuckerberg is that the left is also now abandoning free speech "absolutism", resulting in him having to actually make choices.
I can’t read the article, but where does “hate pays more” come in? Does it come in here?
It's more "we can sell allowing hate to the left (playing on free speech concerns), but we can't sell opposing hate to the right."
Which, on thought, is really fucked up.
Remember when the FBI announced a study on the threats of terrorism from right groups (including threats to law enforcement) and the Republicans demanded its retraction based on their constituency being targeted? Yes. Yes it is fucked up.
I guess I'm still free-speech-absolutist-adjacent, since I still only really support limitations on speech that causes direct harm, but I see a huge proportion of what comes out right-wing as moving us towards fascism, encouraging stochastic terrorism, or maliciously deceiving people, all of which I comfortably consider as directly harmful, so.
I guess I'm still free-speech-absolutist-adjacent, since I still only really support limitations on speech that causes direct harm, but I see a huge proportion of what comes out right-wing as moving us towards fascism, encouraging stochastic terrorism, or maliciously deceiving people, all of which I comfortably consider as directly harmful, so.
The definition of "direct harm" is so nebulous as to be meaningless.
Teaching religion to children causes "direct harm" as far as i'm concerned, but i suspect you would disagree.
I guess I'm still free-speech-absolutist-adjacent, since I still only really support limitations on speech that causes direct harm, but I see a huge proportion of what comes out right-wing as moving us towards fascism, encouraging stochastic terrorism, or maliciously deceiving people, all of which I comfortably consider as directly harmful, so.
The definition of "direct harm" is so nebulous as to be meaningless.
Teaching religion to children causes "direct harm" as far as i'm concerned, but i suspect you would disagree.
I do, actually, but I don't think that battle's being won any decade soon.
edit: That said, there's a wide gulf of intent worth considering. The right intends to harm the non-right, while parents teaching their children religion aren't (necessarily) intending to harm anyone.
Free-speech-absolutism doesn't work or make and fucking sense if you're an advocate of equal rights and are fighting racists. The racist isn't just fighting to be able fling racial slurs at specific groups with zero consequence, they aren't going to stop if you just let them say derogatory things about a specific group. Once they have that secure they'll look to chip away something else until they start to get to chip away rights because that is the end goal of racism. it's not to simply be an ass to someone for stupid fucking reasons, it's to strip rights away specific groups.
Free speech absolutism only sort of works if there's parity in messaging power and control as well as appropriate objective measures on truth/sourcing.
What we have now is vast asymmetries in reach based largely on cash available.
Free speech absolutism only sort of works if there's parity in messaging power and control as well as appropriate objective measures on truth/sourcing.
What we have now is vast asymmetries in reach based largely on cash available.
Free-speech absolutism also only works if the audience seeks out the truth and values factual quality information. Real people want to confirm and reinforce their biases and seek out information for that purpose.
I think calling it a "marketplace of ideas" is an apt comparison. A real marketplace doesn't work to the benefit of the consumers in a zero-regulation savage-capitalism context. It only works when you have a large swat of laws (consumer-protection laws, anti-trust laws, truth-in-advertising laws, worker protection laws, environmental protection laws, etc.) and a set of strong agencies (governments, NGOs, courts, etc.) enforcing these laws. Free-speech absolutism is the extreme-libertarian opposing any and all laws and claiming unregulated capitalism is the only way to go.
I think facebook was not so much the beginning but a major step in the reforming of speech into networking - instead of putting an idea into a "marketplace of ideas," it is offered to a clade of subscribers who in turn distribute down the tree. The era of the forum is over, and "public" facing material is often one person speaking to a specialized and isolated audience.
I don't know what absolute free speech is anymore, because people no longer use megaphones to broadcast their views indiscriminately to a large audience but rather intend to curate their listeners, which is made obvious by the public spilloff of scandal after scandal of people's speech becoming more public than they ever intended. Now with coronavirus we have the advent of peer to peer group meetings - some involving hundreds of people - that can be even more selective and isolated due to their return to the verbal and visual roots of communication. And without jobs to take up our time, we don't really need a permanent record of posts of the day to review.
Let's assume facebook gets destroyed. What will take its place? Facebook 2, this time with better regulation? Or would it be a more decentralized and less public version now that the whole population understands the value of a personal networking page and the horror of being too open and trackable?
I don't go to reddit. I don't have a twitter account. My exposure to those services is filtered through what you guys embed here, and this forum may as well be private as its membership has been pretty static. The tweets and posts you retrieve from the outside are probably also filtered through feeds or subscriptions. The elements of our communication here that are truly public and would be relevant to external regulation are pretty extraneous. What I'm describing has already happened to us. How many others in the population have designed worlds of speech like this that can pretty easily go off the grid and skirt attempts at regulation?
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I mean, I feel like the end result needs to be "new media" is "media", regardless of it being a platform, and they are responsible for the content that is hosted on their service. Period.
If their business model does not allow for the degree of curation which is necessary for that, then they need to get a new business model. Bar none.
It won't fix everything by itself (lies masquerading as truth is still a problem), but it'll get us more than halfway there.
I mean, I feel like the end result needs to be "new media" is "media", regardless of it being a platform, and they are responsible for the content that is hosted on their service. Period.
If their business model does not allow for the degree of curation which is necessary for that, then they need to get a new business model. Bar none.
It won't fix everything by itself (lies masquerading as truth is still a problem), but it'll get us more than halfway there.
What about the end-to-end encrypted media that is becoming more and more commonplace?
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
End to end encrypted media isn’t media. Its a personal communication.
That's it, that's what it feels like. Internet through only personal communication.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
There is also the whole thing where these shitty hate groups want access to the big platforms and not have to face consequences for their actions. They want the exposure because it gives them greater reach on finding new recruits. There are a fair number of people on the big platforms that get dragged into the racism hole because it's there, that wouldn't have otherwise if many companies did a far better job fight this shit because aa fair number of people aren't going to surf the web looking for white supremacist sites.
Encrypted setups run counter to this idea because you have to give the keys out so people can access the site, which means you need some way to vet people. If the vetting is worth a damn, you're no longer accessible. If you make yourself accessible, then why bother with the encryption.
End to end encrypted media isn’t media. Its a personal communication.
That's it, that's what it feels like. Internet through only personal communication.
Which is... kind of OK. You cannot broadcast on encrypted comms. If you can broadcast then its no longer encrypted.
I don't use facebook. How much of its social power relies on broadcast information and how much is really just private networking?
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
End to end encrypted media isn’t media. Its a personal communication.
That's it, that's what it feels like. Internet through only personal communication.
Which is... kind of OK. You cannot broadcast on encrypted comms. If you can broadcast then its no longer encrypted.
I don't use facebook. How much of its social power relies on broadcast information and how much is really just private networking?
All of it more or less requires broadcast information. Sure the content in specific members only groups could be considered protected...
But not facebooks algorithms, advertisements, and recommendations that drive people to those places. Not any posts on public boards. Not posts on third party boards etc. If you can advertise your group without having facebooks algorithms see your member list and any non-public activity from those members then that might work. But that isn't how facebook works and that kind of restriction is pretty onerous in terms of doing what facebook does so long as the groups and members public statements are those that facebook is responsible for.
Facebook published an open letter Wednesday saying it does not benefit from hateful content as a campaign for advertisers to boycott the platform for its failure to moderate racist, sexist and otherwise objectionable content builds steam.
"I want to be unambiguous: Facebook does not profit from hate," Nick Clegg, the company's vice president of global affairs and communications, wrote in the letter. "Billions of people use Facebook and Instagram because they have good experiences — they don’t want to see hateful content, our advertisers don’t want to see it, and we don’t want to see it. There is no incentive for us to do anything but remove it."
Clegg said that more than 100 billion messages are sent on the company's platforms every day, making it difficult to catch all the content that violates its policies.
"Unfortunately, zero tolerance doesn’t mean zero incidences," he wrote. "With so much content posted every day, rooting out the hate is like looking for a needle in a haystack."
The letter says that enforcement has gotten better while acknowledging that further changes are needed.
"We may never be able to prevent hate from appearing on Facebook entirely, but we are getting better at stopping it all the time," Clegg concluded.
Stop me if you've heard this one before: Facebook gave user data to third-party developers, even after specifically telling users it wouldn't.
In a Wednesday blog post, Facebook announced that (oops!) thousands of developers continued to receive updates to users' non-public information well past the point when they should have. Specifically, Facebook said that, for an unspecified number of users, it failed to cut off the data spigot — like it promised it would back in 2018 — 90 days after a person had last used an app.
We reached out to Facebook in an attempt to determine just how many users had their data improperly sent to third-party apps, but received no immediate response.
Facebook's blog post does provide some — albeit limited — insight into the privacy mishap, however. The company writes that the user info in question possibly involved email addresses, birthdays, language, and gender, and was sent to around 5,000 apps past the 90-day threshold.
Posts
I think if either are applied that is likely to happen
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
One of my coworkers lives on a farm outside town and doesn't really have much in the way of internet at all. It's much faster for him to drive an hour to the office to download a big file and drive it home than download it
First of, if I was Brad Parscale (and I am very thankful that I am not), I would be up in arms at this announcement, because it's going to kill the value of political ad buys. Facebook better be planning on cutting political ad rates.
Second, this continues to miss the fucking point. The problem people have isn't about the ads, but that Facebook refuses to require them to not outright lie.
Looks like an advertiser boycott of facebook is starting to get some traction. The North Face isn't nobody.
But uh....big guns are dropping.
Verizon is pulling its advertising from Instagram and Facebook, the biggest name so far in a growing movement to boycott the social network for not doing enough to stop hate speech on its platforms.
It's worth reading the whole thing, as it makes clear how people like Joel Kaplan served as moles in Facebook, blunting policies that would negatively impact the right.
Zuck has a real problem with people whispering things in his ear and appearing to not think them through critically. I wonder if he's finally tired of trying to make everybody happy and chosen a side.
I think it's more just raw cost-benefit analysis. Traditionally, the left tends to accept free speech "absolutism", so appeals to such can work to hold of leftward critique (hence why Zuckerberg goes to that well so often.) The right, however, doesn't - hence why Facebook does things like hire someone like Kaplan. One thing that's frustrating Zuckerberg is that the left is also now abandoning free speech "absolutism", resulting in him having to actually make choices.
It's more "we can sell allowing hate to the left (playing on free speech concerns), but we can't sell opposing hate to the right."
Which, on thought, is really fucked up.
Remember when the FBI announced a study on the threats of terrorism from right groups (including threats to law enforcement) and the Republicans demanded its retraction based on their constituency being targeted? Yes. Yes it is fucked up.
Like the study that Zuck said for people to never bring to him again so there wouldn’t be evidence of their role in the downfall of society
Starbucks, Pepsi, Coke, and others are getting in on the advertising boycott.
Teaching religion to children causes "direct harm" as far as i'm concerned, but i suspect you would disagree.
I do, actually, but I don't think that battle's being won any decade soon.
edit: That said, there's a wide gulf of intent worth considering. The right intends to harm the non-right, while parents teaching their children religion aren't (necessarily) intending to harm anyone.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
What we have now is vast asymmetries in reach based largely on cash available.
Free-speech absolutism also only works if the audience seeks out the truth and values factual quality information. Real people want to confirm and reinforce their biases and seek out information for that purpose.
I think calling it a "marketplace of ideas" is an apt comparison. A real marketplace doesn't work to the benefit of the consumers in a zero-regulation savage-capitalism context. It only works when you have a large swat of laws (consumer-protection laws, anti-trust laws, truth-in-advertising laws, worker protection laws, environmental protection laws, etc.) and a set of strong agencies (governments, NGOs, courts, etc.) enforcing these laws. Free-speech absolutism is the extreme-libertarian opposing any and all laws and claiming unregulated capitalism is the only way to go.
I don't know what absolute free speech is anymore, because people no longer use megaphones to broadcast their views indiscriminately to a large audience but rather intend to curate their listeners, which is made obvious by the public spilloff of scandal after scandal of people's speech becoming more public than they ever intended. Now with coronavirus we have the advent of peer to peer group meetings - some involving hundreds of people - that can be even more selective and isolated due to their return to the verbal and visual roots of communication. And without jobs to take up our time, we don't really need a permanent record of posts of the day to review.
Let's assume facebook gets destroyed. What will take its place? Facebook 2, this time with better regulation? Or would it be a more decentralized and less public version now that the whole population understands the value of a personal networking page and the horror of being too open and trackable?
I don't go to reddit. I don't have a twitter account. My exposure to those services is filtered through what you guys embed here, and this forum may as well be private as its membership has been pretty static. The tweets and posts you retrieve from the outside are probably also filtered through feeds or subscriptions. The elements of our communication here that are truly public and would be relevant to external regulation are pretty extraneous. What I'm describing has already happened to us. How many others in the population have designed worlds of speech like this that can pretty easily go off the grid and skirt attempts at regulation?
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
If their business model does not allow for the degree of curation which is necessary for that, then they need to get a new business model. Bar none.
It won't fix everything by itself (lies masquerading as truth is still a problem), but it'll get us more than halfway there.
What about the end-to-end encrypted media that is becoming more and more commonplace?
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
That's it, that's what it feels like. Internet through only personal communication.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Encrypted setups run counter to this idea because you have to give the keys out so people can access the site, which means you need some way to vet people. If the vetting is worth a damn, you're no longer accessible. If you make yourself accessible, then why bother with the encryption.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Which is... kind of OK. You cannot broadcast on encrypted comms. If you can broadcast then its no longer encrypted.
I don't use facebook. How much of its social power relies on broadcast information and how much is really just private networking?
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
All of it more or less requires broadcast information. Sure the content in specific members only groups could be considered protected...
But not facebooks algorithms, advertisements, and recommendations that drive people to those places. Not any posts on public boards. Not posts on third party boards etc. If you can advertise your group without having facebooks algorithms see your member list and any non-public activity from those members then that might work. But that isn't how facebook works and that kind of restriction is pretty onerous in terms of doing what facebook does so long as the groups and members public statements are those that facebook is responsible for.
"We do not profit from hate" says company which has been profiting from ads from hate groups for months
"We do not profit from hate" says company whose CEO has private dinners at the White House with Donald Trump.
"We do not profit from hate" says company who literally helped facilitate a genocide.
Again.