from deconstruct@lemm.ee to technology@lemmy.world on 29 Aug 2023 15:07
https://lemm.ee/post/5912154
X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, is facing 2,200 arbitration cases that ex-employees filed after Elon Musk took over the company, slashed headcount, and made other sweeping changes there. The filing fees alone for that volume of cases could amount to $3.5 million.
The arbitration numbers were revealed in a new filing out Monday as part of a lawsuit in a Delaware district court. The case is Chris Woodfield v. Twitter, X Corp. and Elon Musk (No. 1:23-cv-780-CFC).
As CNBC has previously reported, many large corporations require workers to sign an arbitration agreement upon employment wherever it is legal to do so. This means to speak freely in court, where their speech can become part of a public record, workers would first need to get an exemption from a judge.
threaded - newest
This is the best summary I could come up with:
X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, is facing 2,200 arbitration cases that ex-employees filed after Elon Musk took over the company, slashed headcount, and made other sweeping changes there.
Woodfield, a former senior staff network engineer who had worked at Twitter’s Seattle office, alleges in his suit that Musk’s Twitter (now known as X) had promised then failed to pay his severance, and later delayed alternative dispute resolution by failing to pay the necessary fees required for him to move ahead in the JAMS arbitration system.
The company’s lawyers have argued that it did not mandate employees to resolve any issues in arbitration, so it should not be on the hook for the larger portion of the filing fees.
As CNBC has previously reported, many large corporations require workers to sign an arbitration agreement upon employment wherever it is legal to do so.
Critics view arbitration as a secretive system that makes it harder for employees and prospective hires to find out how companies treat their workers, and what happened to people in previous related cases.
The Woodfield case against Musk’s X Corp. resembles another proposed class action filed in a San Francisco federal court.
The original article contains 431 words, the summary contains 191 words. Saved 56%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Musk is killing it!
(“it” being whatever shred of reputation he had left before the last year or so)
X marks the spot where he killed twitter.
X marks the spot for closing the tab
Oh he’s been burning that reputation for a good while. I feel like when he tried to send a useless sub and called some guy a pedo was probably the largest turning point for many. Since that point he’s been less and less heralded as he was before hand.
I think that’s when I predicted he’d either be a Lex Luthor or a Tony Stark.
Turns out I was wrong on both accounts though. He’s just a shit for brains, emerald spooned jerk.
Little bit more legality/politics than technology no?
Yes, but it’s about a major tech company, so maybe it fits? NBC filed it in their ‘Tech News’ section.
I think that’s just more of a rollover from anything on the internet being labeled as ‘tech’, but like nowadays if the president sends a tweet its really not that notable of news, technologically. We could also start reporting every time a text is sent if we really wanted
You’re technically right, which is the best kind of right. It’s a destructive CEO story who just happens to run a tech company (into the ground)
This is like the Spanish guy kissing the winning footballer woman on the lips against her will. It’s going to be reported under sports, but really it’s a sexism story that just happens to be in sports.
But at least it is being reported and commented on, no?
Shit you got me there ngl
Gonna sink back to my linux n self hosting communities in defeat
It’s a social media company, not a tech company.
Unless you have a magic list of technology the company is releasing.
I don’t see what else one would call their own algorithms and media delivery systems.
Technology is a means to an end so I like to make the distinction of what the company actually does or make. Apple's primary business is selling computer hardware (an actual technology product) so it's a technology company. Microsoft sells software and cloud services (tech tools) so it's a technology company. Netflix sells access to video, so it's a media company. Are algorithms involved? Sure, but they're child's play compared to the algorithms used by high frequency traders, yet those people still unambiguously work for finance/banking companies. Every large retailer employs data scientists and teams of data analysts, but they're still retailers rather than tech companies. Amazon is the trickiest to categorize. Amazon.com is a straight up retailer but AWS is clearly a tech "company." Best to think of that one like a conglomerate.
There is no separating one from the other when it comes to social media. What we see, when and where is dictated by the technology behind it.
Say, by the same logic one might say that Google’s main service is organizing and offering information, but it is still one of the main companies one thinks of when it comes to Technology. Rightfully so, because even putting aside cloud storage and the like, its search engine technology is central to what it offers.
I think because people are tired of seeing articles related to social media, they want to argue that it’s only technology if it is some sort of device, but that is a simplistic way to see the matter. There’s a merit to say that technology is connected to all sort of fields and purposes today, but that doesn’t make it less of technology, or the companies behind them less technology-focused.
Social media is technology, and social media companies are a valid topic of discussion in technology communities.
My contention is that the use of technology is so universal that it's not meaningful to call a company a technology company just because they use a lot of technology, even if they have to create a lot of it themselves. Pretty much every big company has on-staff software engineers making and implementing custom technology. It takes a lot of technology to make a law firm work but that doesn't make a law firm a technology company. If we use too-expansive of a definition for what's a technology company, then it applies to almost every company, making it a useless term.
I do not think social media companies are technology focused. They just use technology to achieve their social media (/advertising) business goals, the same as every bank, every hospital, every trucking company, etc.
Absolutely 💯
Then you don’t think Google is a Tech company?
If you took technology away from banking, hospitals or a law firm, you might still have a business. If you took technology away from social media, you don’t have anything left. It is the focus and the medium.
Technologies also do not exist in a vacuum either, they exist for a purpose. The purpose of social media is socialization, as well as advertising and information dissemination.
Sure, today anyone can host a Mastodon, but I wouldn’t call that any less technologically-focused.
Not particularly, no.
I don’t think the mere fact that you access something solely on a website or app makes it a tech company. That’s merely a means to an end. But there’s no more technology involved in running a social media company than there is a modern bank. The technology is actually a lot simpler.
I’d say that Mastodon as a software project is technology; the various instances, however, are not.
And all of these social media companies really are providing a means for the communication of information within societies. You can do this without “modern day” technology, such as through TV, radio, newspapers, or even word of mouth. Technology in the form of smartphones, the internet, and programs/platforms like Twitter and Mastodon allow us to communicate in ways previously not known to humanity.
So yeah, I agree with you.
Banking has some tech that is more advanced than many consumer electronics so I don’t think that’s a fair measure, not to mention that the tech behind large scale social media is still pretty advanced.
This definition would make it so basically only hardware, OS and some cloud infrastructure service companies could count as tech companies because technology is generally not made for its own sake. It seems needlessly restrictive. Like, is Nintendo not a tech company? It makes entertainment products sure, but it designs and produces its own devices and systems for that. I don’t believe having an end purpose or being also a part of another market disqualifies it from that. You’d have an easier time convincing me there are way more tech companies.
I think at this point we just fundamentally disagree over what a tech company must be. Even if we took search in isolation I’d still count Google as one, as well as advertising, not exclusively. It also tends to be covered as such too.
Yes, that's pretty much my point (but you also need to add companies selling software itself). The alternative is that every company is a technology company, making the term completely meaningless.
Google is a big company and some of what it does is tech company stuff: Gmail, Chrome, Google Cloud, Pixel. But all of that is tangential their main business, which is just selling ads. I don't object to the tech parts being covered by tech news. I just don't think a company's tech-focused side projects (as a percentage of its business) make it a tech company.
I don’t think search engine or social media tech are side projects for Google and Twitter respectively. As much as Google may offer ads separately, Google wouldn’t be what it is without their search engine, and without their social media, Twitter or Facebook would have nothing to deliver ads with.
If you are counting software, that’s all the more reason to consider social media as tech. By your reasoning, Microsoft Office is not tech, it just uses tech for, well, office tools, Adobe Suite uses tech for art tools. But if software companies are tech, which I also believe, then companies whose core business is developing and maintaining an online platform are tech too.
Ultimately I see that there is a lot of grey area, but if we cut it solely to companies who make and sell tech for it alone, which is itself a very debatable rule, then we’d cut off a lot of companies which I believe to be tech.
My microwave uses an insane amount of technology.
Twitter uses a website an app and advertising.
There’s a huge difference between those two.
You can absolutely separate social media companies from general technology. It’s easy. Mostly because all they do is have a website, app, and advertising.
Why don’t we cover every second of news from microwave companies? One reason would be because they’re so common place, and have been for decades.
Why do we cover every second of news from social media sites? They’re common place and have been around for decades.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc are just websites. That’s all they are.
“Just websites?”
You seriously want to pretend that your microwave has more technology than Facebook does? You think they are just some HTML pages? C’mon…
I see you are trying to downplay their complexity with hyperbole, but that just makes you sound silly.
I really want to believe you’re being sarcastic
No, it’s just you. And disingenuous.
I hope you understand how incredibly dumb your previous comment is. It’s close to being the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen anyone say. I’m not attacking you, I’m seriously hoping that you understand how dumb it is.
Ah yes, 5th grade debating tactics: call people dumb and offer no argument whatsoever. Weird how popular this is becoming. You’d think people have a bit more self-respect than this.
They released Twitter Bootstrap a while ago for “HTML, CSS, and Javascript for popular user interface components and interactions”, to this day, it is hard going to a website that doesn’t integrate in some way it at least once a day. The source code for lemmy.world’s CSS says it is using Bootstrap for example:
lemmy.world/css/themes/litely.css
“wow”
Does Twitter make the content or do they serve content via webservers and applications? Sounds like technology to me.
Do buses pick you up at the corner or do you get on the bus? Sounds like technology to me.
A bus is an automobile.
Twitter is a website.
Twitter is a website, and a website is technology lmao
Every tool humanity has ever created is technology
Starting with hammers, axes, arrows, the wheel etc
That you are correct:
Technology is the application of scientific knowledge to the practical aims of human life or, as it is sometimes phrased, to the change and manipulation of the human environment.
According to Britannica.
Musk isn’t going to give you the time of day. You don’t need to defend his website/app.
You could’ve just downvoted and moved on 🙄
Same to you lol
I hereby declare that I’m downvoting all of you.
Signed,
Me
I officially recognize your declaration.
Signed,
You
Wait no oops
Just more of the same Luddite shit, unfortunately. Seems nobody loves technology more than people who really fucking hate technology.
The Luddites were actually based as fuck.
And yes, a lot of exceptionally skilled engineers really fucking hate technology - a side effect of one’s day to day being deeply entangled in technology.
I used to think automation was the coolest thing ever and that everything should be automated.
After looking at controls for an industrial plant? There are some things I will pay extra to not have automated.
I get a kick out of every time a journalist feels they need to specify “formerly known as Twitter” because X is such a generic, indistinguishable brand.
I think it would be better to say “Twitter, currently branded as X” it is both useful and makes it look like it is just a cringy phase a teenager might go through temporarily. So you should just ignore the change and it will eventually resolve itself.
The x.com URL just points at Twitter.com
IMO the whole renaming/redirecting/retheming situation with twitter looks like an unprofessional half hearted aquisition lol
Both engineers are working on it.
"The site formerly known as Twitter"
The site still located at Twitter.com
I continue to use “twitter” because Musk is a transphobe. If he feels obligated to deadname or misgender people, or defend those who do, I don’t see the need to follow what he wants to identify as, either.
So if Musk were to immediately stop deadnaming trans people, would you immediately stop “deadnaming” Twitter?
If Elmo owned up to and apologized for his transphobia, resolving not to do that kind of thing again in the future, I would be more than happy to call his microblogging service whatever he ends up deciding to name it. I’m not sure this is going to be enough to convince him, but go ahead and forward that along if you think it will help.
Might as well just call it Twitter. The only people that go along with calling it “X” are chuds and Musk sycophants.
You already said chuds
All these venn diagrams make a circle.
What a fantastic insult (I didn’t mean that as sarcasm, I think it’s hilarious).
Currently x.com still redirects to Twitter.com, so I don’t see any issues with calling it Twitter.
99% sure there’s to much code with logic checking for the Twitter domain (including in external dependencies!) that they don’t know how to mirror the site correctly on x.com
Also wouldn’t be surprised to find out X is a problematic name to use when programming a social media website.
Elon could make things even worse by hastening that transition. If the x-twitter app is down for a few weeks and all external connections break for a few month, it’s going to be just fine. I’m pretty sure that it would only improve the quality of life of all twitter users.
It is Twitter, and I’ll be Twitter until it’s shutdown. Only morons who are into crypto ponzi schemes call it X unironically, expecting Elon to be their friend somehow
Xitter is a good compromise, and almost onomatopoeic.
Like or hate Elon, I hope everyone can agree the name change is incredibly stupid. X… X what? X me later. Did you see that X?.. Uh huh.
X gonna give it to ya.
There are a lot of jokes to be made about Twitter referencing the disasterpiece movie “Foodfight!” and its villains fighting for “Brand X”.
I have no sympathy. Companies that require class action waivers and mandatory arbitration clauses don’t get to complain when thousands of people file arbitration claims simultaneously.
It would probably be more expensive for 2200 lawsuits, no?
I’ve actually used arbitration to get my way in the past when I pointed out to the company that their filing fee for the arbitration was more expensive than just honoring their commitments, so even if I lost they’d be out several times what I wanted.
$3 million is to $1 billion like $3 is to $1000.