Facebook has restricted access to news in Australia, and so far the tech giant seems to have taken a pretty broad definition of news. From a report: Some pages that don’t fit the traditional news genre have been stripped out as part of the stoush between Facebook and the federal government over whether the social media company should pay for Australian…
Tag: unions
Roku Plans To Produce Original Shows and Feature Films
Not content anymore with just streaming Hollywood’s old shows and movies, Roku is looking to produce originals: The company published a job listing for a lead production attorney, which spells out plans to build out an “expanding slate of original content.” From a report: This renewed push into originals comes just weeks after Roku acquired Quibi’s content library, for which the…
Google Workers To Form Global Union Alliance
Google employees from across the globe are forming a union alliance, weeks after more than 200 workers at the search engine giant and other units of parent company Alphabet formed a labor union for U.S. and Canadian offices. From a report: Alpha Global was formed in coordination with UNI Global Union, a union federation that represents about 20 million workers globally,…
Amazon To Face US Union Push In Year Ahead
In 2021, Amazon.com is poised to face a renewed challenge from groups it has long countered: unions. Reuters reports: Energized by protests at Amazon’s U.S. warehouses and a more labor-friendly administration assuming office, unions are campaigning at the world’s largest online retailer to see if its warehouse or grocery workers would like to join their ranks. A major test is expected…
EU Lawmakers Ask Jeff Bezos Whether Amazon Spies on Politicians
A cross-party group of MEPs has written to Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, demanding information on the online retailer’s monitoring of trade union activists and politicians in response to deleted job postings that described unions as “threats.” From a report: The letter, from 37 members of the European parliament, said they were concerned Amazon deliberately targeted workers seeking to organise, and…
Software Could Help Reform Policing — If Only Police Unions Wanted It
tedlistens writes: The CEO of Taser maker Axon, Rick Smith, has a lot of high-tech ideas for fixing policing. One idea for identifying potentially abusive behavior is AI, integrated with the company’s increasingly ubiquitous body cameras and the footage they produce. In a patent application filed last month, Axon describes the ability to search video not only for words and locations…
Cambridge Staff ‘Fobbed Off’ At Meeting Over ARM Sale To Nvidia, Says Union
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Opposition to the $40 billion sale of the UK’s largest tech firm, Arm Holdings, is mounting, as the trade union Unite said staff concerned about their future had been “fobbed off” and the company’s local MP urged the government to act. The government has so far declined to say whether it will…
When the Police Get Filmed, Is There More Accountability?
Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: Racism is not getting worse. It’s getting filmed,” Will Smith said in 2016. And this week the Washington Post noted a parallel pattern emerging: videos of violent police encounters which “contrast sharply with accounts by the departments or their unions.” The Post provides four examples of police officials providing “inaccurate or outright misleading descriptions of what has…
Is Support Now Growing for a Universal Basic Income?
Economist Tyler Cowen and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov (now the chairman of the nonprofit Renew Democracy Initiative) co-authored an opinion piece this week in Bloomberg arguing that “a pandemic is providing a tragic preview of some of the conditions UBI was conceived to address.” Though they worry about the cost of such a program, “And, though there are some…
Samsung Heir Apologizes For Corruption and Union-Busting Scandals
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The de facto head of Samsung, Lee Jae-yong, apologized on Wednesday for the corruption and union-busting scandals that have bedeviled his conglomerate, declaring that he will be the last of his family members to lead the South Korean corporate empire. During a nationally televised news conference, Mr. Lee, 51, said…