Yogthos
This should be a viral national story in #US. After this team unanimously unionized, Google refused to come to the bargaining table. A resolution supporting the workers was brought to the city council. The day the workers showed up to testify on the resolution, Google laid off the entire team. This was the precise instant when YouTube Music employees became aware that we had lost our jobs, as we were addressing the City Council. 158 comments
Charles U. Farley
Shufei 👩🏽🌾
@freakazoid @yogthos @guigsy Googlebet hates it when anyone mentions and uses #invidious. But there’s not a thing they can really do about it, haha.
Charles U. Farley
Dave Mc
@freakazoid @Shufei @yogthos Google have no issues with breaking stuff that's working perfectly if they aren't making advertising money from it.
Charles U. Farley
Shufei 👩🏽🌾
Strongthany🇺🇦
@guigsy @yogthos purchasing the music outright from the artists via bandcamp or other similar sites, or hell on CD if it's available, is always the best option to directly support the artist. You can also use a self hosted streaming service like #funkwhale keep the ease of streaming.
Dave Mc
@strongthany @yogthos didn't Bandcamp recently fire half the staff, purely for corporate reasons?
Strongthany🇺🇦
JimmyChezPants
The game right now among all capitalists is to keep us exhausted and make it look like the goalposts are ever-receding memories of a false consciousness that we're not sure ever actually existed. Just keep yourself prepared for the day that they cannot maintain the delusion any longer. They are each individually too narcissistic and lacking Theory Of Mind to understand the tension they are building and how it will come back at them. Drop money in buskers' hats.
JimmyChezPants
If you attend shows, attend shows at bars that hire bands and have a reputation for paying their bands and staff. Solidarity is the only thing that every one of us can choose to exercise, if we want it. I got notification this week that the extra storage I'm paying for on Google renews in a month, and I'm cancelling that. I stood up a Nextcloud not too long ago. I'll be sharing it with friends who want it. I can do that.
Strongthany🇺🇦
@jpaskaruk @guigsy @yogthos on that note, cool local news to me; #minneapolis First Ave is now union!
JimmyChezPants
Send bands you like twenty dollars in a letter. Use postal service money orders for that matter. Order swag maybe. Send more if you plan to torrent their albums, which they almost certainly don't see as the biggest problem they have right now. 
Hat. Cat in an N95😷
@jpaskaruk ableism is the OPPOSITE of helpful. so called Theory of mind is straight up hate for ND people.
JimmyChezPants
I had not heard that the term is considered problematic, but I'd be happy to read a document that explains what makes it so. What I'm referring to is the ability to understand that other people's minds contain different thoughts and ideas than one's own. I was very confused about that myself, when I was younger.
JimmyChezPants
Shoot me some links if you want to. I don't see what you're describing, and as I said, I have found the concept useful in explaining some of my early social experiences. Whatever the case, I was referring to a different class of mind entirely - that of a child who is never held to account, and who holds incredible power over all of us. Part of my understanding of how psychology thinks of it is that [all] children need to develop it, and some people struggle, and some never do. 
2xfo
@guigsy @strongthany @yogthos I think. (Full honesty, I'm not going to look it up right now) 
AccordionBruce
The @bandcampunited Union never suggested people should stop using Bandcamp to support artists Today is #BandcampFriday when around 90% of the proceeds from purchases go directly to artists — which is way better than any other platform And that means, regardless of the corporate policies, you’re not giving that much to the corporation It sucks that #Bandcamp has gone through shitty buyouts But it’s probably one of the better ways to support artists right now 
thedarkpleco
Julien Barnoin
@guigsy @yogthos
Jérôme Petazzoni
MetaBrainz
@guigsy @yogthos It’s all a bit of a nightmare… All I* can do is encourage everyone to divorce their listening data (which is a item of corp. value) from the platform they are currently using, by connecting to www.listenbrainz.org. At least then you can be flexible when issues arise. Keep in mind that this lets you control and migrate data but makes it *more* public, so weigh that up against your privacy goals first. -a *do I need to disclaim that I have bias? You can see the account name 😜 
weilawei
@yogthos The clearest proof that the NLRB and the NLRA are fundamentally broken. That should land the YouTube Music execs in prison. If you, an executive, lay off a bargain unit to avoid bargaining with them, you should do a 2 year felony bid for each person you laid off. It's in step with the way the NLRA criminalizes railway workers protesting, with jailtime and fines that can leave you imprisoned for life. If we don't hold executives personally accountable, things will only get worse. 
sidereal
@weilawei @yogthos Minor correction, Rail workers are controlled by separate, older agreements from the NLRA & NLRB. In fact they’re just called the RLA and RLB. Kinda like how railroad workers have separate retirement from SSI. A lot of the stuff in the NLRA is based on the RLA but it’s different and the RLA is generally (but not always) more restrictive. For instance, it’s much more difficult for rail workers to go on strikes, but they are allowed to go on sympathy strikes (which NLRA forbids) 
Danny Boling 🌈 ☮️
My new year's resolution was to become ungoogled, for reasons just like this shit. I am sooo done with these Big Tech fuckers!     
Charles U. Farley
@yogthos Are these the contract workers who joined the AWU and the NLRB said Google had to bargain with back in January?
Terfs have no friends - Arthur Morgan, 1899
@yogthos Could you possibly put a transcript in the alt text or replies? Thanks for sharing the video
astroPug
Yes, this outsourcing/staffing firms model is a big problem. They are not at all how we imagine traditional employers, and to the detriment not only of their workers but also the projects they work on and the health of the industry they participate in overall. For example: staffing firms are not really experts in the domain, and they do not have the knowledge to mentor workers, the way a normal team anywhere else would. 1/2
astroPug
Furthermore, the people who do have the knowledge to mentor those workers are the people from the big corporation. And those guys are very strongly discouraged from doing so, by their own corporate training, to maintain the legal distinction between employee and “contractor”. Now, there are better and worse contract gigs. My grapevine has had a low opinion of google for a while based on their experiences.
jonathankoren
@yogthos the thing is, this is text book illegal retaliation, and literally no one will do anything about it. 
Tyler Stone :ca1:
@yogthos Um, “I’m sorry: you’re time’s expired” hits a little differently in this clip. 
Brian
@ErickaSimone @prachisrivas @yogthos @_L1vY_ The full video is worth watching for those who are interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZBtjNGes6s
Ericka Simone
@yogthos Hi. I’m Ericka. I’m reaching because frankly, this shit is horrible. Also, I want to know if you know about UMAW, a growing union of workers in all music spaces. Please let me know what I can do to help.
Yogthos
@ErickaSimone hi this is definitely terrible, I'm just resharing the incident, so I'm probably not the right person to reach out to since I don't have any direct involvement
Ericka Simone
@yogthos okay. I’ll start digging into it, see if I can find them. I’ve been working with the creative congressional committee to start to take action against this type of behavior. Thanks for posting.
Alan Campbell, Слава Україні!
@yogthos "Don't be evil" seems to have died a while ago too by the way   
Caio C. G. Oliveira
@yogthos OMG this is so so sad. This company's actions shows that they are definitely not what they advertise to be. Feeling a bit frustrated to be a paying user of YT Premium (to avoid ads). 
lupus_blackfur
Google has traveled all the way from "don't be evil" to residing in and acting from the 9th level of hell's heart. Stunning to have witnessed this transition in it's entirety. 
Cheradenine Zakalwe
@lupus_blackfur@mastodon.world @yogthos@mas.to @downey@floss.social "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA you suckers really believed we meant that 'Don't be evil' shit?" 
Googly Eyed Peas
@yogthos hot take: if you continue to insist on working for FAANG companies against all the evidence that they are the devil incarnate, then expect this to keep happening. I know it's not cool, but there are other companies out there who need tech people and can't get them because everyone wants that FAANG sweet sweet $$$$$$$$ for the 6 months they get to keep their job 
yes, it's me, liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦
🗣 AND THIS IS THE PRECISE MOMENT THE FASCIST #TECHBRO MAFIA DECIDED TO HYPE AI AND LAYOFF WORKERS FOR QUARTERLY PROFITS more than a half-million IT workers were laid-off the past 2 years alone; but this process started with Google in 2019 after your attempts to unionize. i noticed and have been calling out the trend as an expert on the intersections of tech & politics. #techbros are now burning the internet to the ground with AI just because y'all dared to unionize. 
XRatedPoetry
@yogthos The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA) forbids employers from interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees in the exercise of their rights to form unions and engage in collective bargaining. Google. Just broke this law, on television. Please put this literally everywhere you can. 
RealJournalism
@yogthos And now they won't let me use adblockers, which means anytime I want to use YouTube, I have to listen to ads blaring at me. Or babysit the computer and be ready to hit the mute button when they come. Or use FreeTube, but Norton & Windows Defender threw a fit when I tried to update it. And who knows how long that will last before Google cracks down on it. 
Arjen P. de Vries Timmers 🕊️
@yogthos the "feature" of subcontracting. Thanks for sharing. More background: (The direct link won't open in Europe but #internetarchive to the rescue.)  
:mastodon: Ricardo Martín
@yogthos I was surprised that nobody mentioned jamendo.com in the thread. Maybe it could be of interest to someone 🤔
Leon Bambrick
@yogthos you’d think this would be covered by major journalists — they too are employees in huge multinational companies oh wait      |
Gregory's Server
But still dumb&^%( s will argue how progressive of a workplace it is and why they refuse to place google gstatic tube blogsport in their firewall
Slap in your face people!
@yogthos