Facebook Contractors Must Work in Offices During Coronavirus Pandemic
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
There you go, anti-misinformation rules being used to delete inconvenient discussion. At least now we have a specific example to illustrate the free speech issues associated with trying to curtail the spread of misinformation, one involving Facebook no less.
... or possibly misinformation. We haven't seen the thread, so we don't know, do we?
> anti-misinformation rules being used to delete inconvenient discussion
But we don't actually know if that's why it was deleted. It's a presumption on whatshisface's part.
I've only responded once so I don't know how you figure I missed the point twice.
> It’s the lack of trust that is the issue here that leads to that assumption.
The top poster made a claim of fact, that anti-misinformation rules were used as a front to silence criticism. Whether that fact is true or not is the point I'm interested in. I get that you're interested in something else, but I'm not. You get to be interested in what you want, but you don't get to claim that the top poster said something other than what they did.
> The lack of trust is the fault of the moderator not of the GP.
Big assumption. If the moderator has acted in good faith and whatshisface still doesn't trust them, that may say more about whatshisface than the moderator.
In reality the office has 0 infections.
How would you know this? Many infected people are asymptomatic for over a week, and the US generally isn't testing asymptomatic people unless they were in close contact with a known infected person.
(I'm saying this just as reminder that people would do well to practice social distancing even if there is no evidence that specific persons are infected. I'm not trying to justify whoever it was who allegedly posted baseless claims to the forum.)
If we're going to also start a better discussion about working from home, can we do the same for the proliferation of second-class contractors? The lack of health care and sick leave is going to drastically increase the spread of coronavirus.
To say nothing of employees in retail, food service, and maintenance.
Locally (Chicago), I'm seeing a lot of closures (our suburban schools/libraries/park district all closed effective today, about half the museums are currently closed), and anecdotally, there have been far fewer people than usual on the "L" during my commutes. I imagine that it's a matter of when and not if when the whole company moves to mandatory WFH. Not sure what will happen with the contractors for whom this is not a possibility.
> contract workers stating that, contrary to statements to them from Facebook, they are barred by their actual employers from working from home, despite the technical feasibility and clear public health benefits of doing so.
Sounds like Facebook should immediately evaluate their relationships with these contracting companies.
Yeah look easy to hate on Facebook, but Accenture is a big company and can easily send their own staff home to sit on the bench and do business development or just work on another client.
I agree it's possible. If there are small consultancies doing the same work that would happen. Accenture would be more likely to wear it though to avoid rehire and PR expenses.
My point was that it's on Accenture what they choose to do, a company with plenty of billions and locus of control - not the client.
There will be provisions for backfills if/when people quit and the like, but otherwise they would have to have agreement from FB to alter the contract to have nobody billing for some period of time.
Whomever is managing the engagement from Accenture is shitting the bed and communicating poorly, for sure, though.
Yes. Multiple years in big 4 consulting much spent writing statements of work - Accenture is not powerless and can definitely make the call here for a few weeks. Takes an engagement director with backbone and managing partner + maybe executive buy in but it's definitely very doable for a many billon dollar company.
> Whomever is managing the engagement from Accenture is shitting the bed and communicating poorly, for sure, though.
Agreed.
While you’re at it, file a complaint about them making you drive to work in a car.
Never, but taking these actions in this situation is definitely negligence at best. It's like running a hospital forcing people to work without providing soap or hand sanitizer.
It's not so much about certifying it as disease free and more about certifying it as unsafe.
If your employer forced you to drive through floodwaters, you'd probably have a valid OHSA complaint.
In case anyone doesn't fully grasp how irresponsible this is, these folks can transmit to each other, and in turn transmit to elderly and vulnerable populations.
Yet another reason not to use their toxic product.
Though that's one of the benefits of outsourcing: you get all the benefits of squeezing your workers to the maximum (which helps the bottom line), while still having deniability for PR purposes.
Facebook is responsible unless they loudly and publicly order their vendors to treat their employees better.
Yes, they are.
> A Facebook spokesperson told The Intercept that “for both our full-time employees and contingent workforce there is some work that cannot be done from home…for content reviewers, some of this work must be done from the office for safety, privacy and legal reasons,”
I think at this point it's fair to dox the individual middle-managers and C-level schmucks, expose them to the consequences of their choices.
Lawful managemement decisins are fine, the US is not under emergency officially and there is no direction from the government or CDC asking employers to make people work from home.
CA has been in a state of emergency since March 4
What's likely happening here is that FB is insisting that the work be done in the office (from doing similar contract work myself, this sounds like it is because due to security reasons FB doesn't allow some of its contractors to take home their computers and can only connect via in-office networks), and Accenture either has to go along with it or break the contract. FB is trying to blame the contracting companies to avoid PR, and since one of the reasons you hire a contracting company is because it's a convenient way to place blame when things go wrong, Accenture probably won't rebut.
Since these contractors work as content moderators, I think there is also a certain level of thinking that the work they are doing is critical at a time like this (both because of upcoming election and because of misinformation spread about coronavirus), so while they might just send home other contractors, these ones need to stay).
But she's not in moderation or anything; she's a research scientist. So there may be a class system involved.
I'm sure they could, it would probably end up with their contracts being terminated though. Or maybe not, depending on how strong the PR backlash is.
What are people smoking. Crowd think sure is scary. I don't like FB and I think there should be an executive order from the whitehouse requiring anyone older than 55,immunocompromised (medically verified) or showing cold/flu like symptoms to be allowed to work from home or receive subsidized paid time off. But I don't think irrational panic and getting high on fear like this is healthy. At a macro level,the panic is doing more harm than the disease. At the individual level there are explicit steps you can take to keep safe, it is important to not panic yet take every recommended precaution.
It's polarizing, which pushes emotions to 11.
Estimates of infection rates are getting up to 50% of the US population. With the current 1-2% mortality rate thats 1.6 million dead.
Seems like a no-brainer to require work from home to limit the spread of infection.
Threaten the ablebodied, they feign understanding accessibility. Do you have any legitimate questions, or was your point entirely bearing towards short-term effects like purchasable goods and not healthcare for the (probably) doomed?
Your flippancy isn't improving your point. The panic for staying away is commendable, the impending panic to get to healthcare probably unnecessarily will be what makes the mortality rate resemble a very unwelcome sharp upward curve for the duration of time that we have bodies to expire or reinfection can be stemmed. Whatever comes first.