yeah, I conveyed a similar feedback to the author of the article. Thanks for the analysis

what’s wrong with the title?

I don’t understand your downvotes. If they are from scabs, or they are from people who only read the title and thought this is some managerial shit.

because I joined a long time ago?

ok, scab

We have plenty of text-based community platforms, depending on the country you’re in. It’s all stuff that will be presented at the call.

We are throughout USA and Europe. I can give you personal advice as someone who emigrated, and you might want to ask the question in the community chats of different chapters, but TWC is for collective action, not for individual career support

we don’t take dues and we are not an union in a legal sense. Requirements: time, energy, and motivation to learn and contribute. You’re going to get trained on things once you join.

Join our community space before the 101 if you like: https://techworkerscoalition.org/subscribe/

I unionize people in the tech sector. Childish nerds are much harder to work with than anybody else.

I would pick a coked out analyst over an emacs user every day

nerds are often egotistical, selfish and individualistic. Let’s kick them out and unionize instead

So the author’s argument is that youth have just gone to gig work instead of traditional jobs. OK, maybe true, but first of all, this is not a good thing on its own either. And secondly, we have to consider why gig work even exists, aside from being a fresh new way to exploit workers and deny them the traditional protections of the labor market. Because there is a specific reason gig work exists right at this very transitional moment in the workforce, and I’ll give you a spoiler: It exists because of AI.

Considering the author is possibly the most relevant scholar on (against?) platform work, I’m quite sure he would agree with you. The article implies that AI is deskilling and displacing workers and that’s intrinsically a bad thing.

Well, I would say at least since the 80s, where the political movements started in the 68 lost steam and we entered a period of political irrelevance for the Left throughout the West. After the fall of the USSR, it got worse because especially in Europe the Left lost the leverage given by the threat of a soviet invasion/support. The G8 protests in Seattle and Genova kinda sealed the deal, showing that the future has been abolished.

It shouldn’t, but it does. Now what?

same author, more accessible stuff: https://networkcultures.org/longform/2025/03/18/seven-mantras-for-political-holism/

the assumption is that they are not customers. They are producer on a platform, which is very different. This is more similar to office workers striking alongside riders in a food delivery company rather than a consumer boycott.

That surprises me, marketing and sales being the main user of AI, I thought the back-office automation for sure was going to be by far number 1

Generative AI is a bullshit generator. Bullshit in your marketing=good. Bullshit in your backend=bad.

 > So the number 1 user is sales/marketing but it’s back office admin jobs that are most impacted?

GenAI is primarily adopted to justify mass layoffs and only secondarily to create business value. It’s the mass layoffs that drive AI adoption, not the other way around.

“alignment problem” is what CEOs use as a distraction to take responsibility away from their grift and frame the issue as a technical problem. That’s another word that make you lose any credibility

I’ve met the author IRL. He’s quite famous in his niche

The Free Software movement over the last 30+ years failed at every single one of their political goals. It’s effectively a political zombie which sometimes produces barely usable software for nerds. I know perfectly well what they advocated because at some point I was close to fall for it (more than 15 years ago), but it’s delusional dogmatism. The world moved on and the FOSS movement failed so bad that their enemies are now in control of an Imperial fascist government.

You’re responsible for the technology you create. Unconstrained freedom is more often than not the freedom of the powerful to oppress the weak. Anything else is techbro ideology. FOSS ideology and techno-fascist ideology have the same roots in the freedom of information.

My call to action is unrelated to technological production, because technology doesn’t solve social problems. Unionize workers in Microsoft. If you really want, build software to facilitate the construction and deployment of worker power, and stop playing around with the liberation of software. As long as it’s “Free Software” instead of “Free people” you’re playing on the side of the tech oligarchy.