“Crony capitalism” is one of those terms people use to try and maintain that there’s also a beneficial version what the 99% actually want is well-regulated fair markets favoring Industrial Production over Money Manipulation.Ġ5:55:48 Collapse replies (6) Reply View in chronology

The case alleges a conspiracy between technology firms in Silicon Valley to keep employees’ wages down and curb competition by agreeing not to poach each other’s workers. The lawsuit against big tech firms like Google and Apple over their hiring practices has been given class action status, making it easier for the workers to lever greater wads of cash out of the companies if they win. Here’s a relevant similarity, has corporations that have already been found guilty and fined by DOJ: Civilization is all about fairness and morality for the common good, Mike, NOT legalities that empower The Rich. Even in the ridiculously unlikely chance that this lawsuit goes anywhere, the only ones who will benefit are the class action lawyers.Īrguing legalities that allow The Rich to exploit the poor. Find a company that is making a lot of money and come up with some absolutely ridiculous reason for suing. Once again, this seems like the sort of class action lawsuit that gives class action lawyers a bad name. If these folks were really so “exploited” by Yelp, and “forced” to write for no money… then, um, why are they so upset that they “lost” that “job”? The best the lawsuit can offer up (and I’m not joking) is that the “cult-like rewards and disciplines” associated with the gamification drove people to continue to “work” for free. It appears that at least some of the plaintiffs are pissed off because, at some point, Yelp cancelled their accounts based on “flimsy explanations.” But, that seems to work against their own arguments. To argue that constitutes an employment relationship is simply laughable. But, again, all of that is voluntary and is no different than tons of sites with gamification/badges for activity. For example, Yelp has long had a “Yelp Elite” status, but if you’re not contributing lots of reviews, you can lose that status. Part of the argument, believe it or not, is that Yelp “instructed” these “unpaid employees” to do more work… because it had policies associated with its various gamification mechanisms to encourage them to write more. The lawsuit is also littered with out of context snipes at Yelp for other aspects of its business which have absolutely nothing to do with the legal questions in play. But that doesn’t make it an employment situation at all. The entire argument seems to hinge on the idea that Yelp gets value out of their reviews. Everyone has their own motivations for why, but the idea that it’s some sort of unpaid employment situation is ludicrous. They volunteer to share some reviews because they want to do so. They aren’t “hired.” They don’t have responsibilities or jobs that they have to do. Nothing about the relationship of a Yelp reviewer to the company is anything like an employment situation (or even an intern situation). To put it mildly, this is incredibly stupid. It appears that they’re hoping the recent success of a few lawsuits involving “unpaid internships” will now carry over to user-generated content sites as well. A class action lawsuit has been launched by a small group of Yelp reviewers, trying to make the (laughable and ridiculous) case that reviewers on the site are actually unpaid employees who are now demanding compensation. Remember when a Huffington Post volunteer writer named Jonathan Tasini sued the company for not paying him, even though he had volunteered to occasionally contribute stories? That lawsuit went nowhere fast, but it appears that others are now trying something similar. Mon, Oct 28th 2013 09:35am - Mike Masnick