Friday, Oct 14, 2022 • 33min
Meta's Metaverse isn't bad, it's just boring and other TC news
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This week Darrell talks with Taylor Hatmaker about her adventure into the metaverse at the Meta Connect event. And Haje Jan Kamps comes back to take the guest seat and talk about a Dutch Court’s ruling that employee productivity monitoring using webcams is a human rights violation. And as always, Darrell will catch you up on the tech news you may have missed this week.
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Darrell Etherington
Taylor Hatmaker
Haje Jan Kamps
Transcript
Verified
Darrell Etherington
00:01
Hi, I'm
TechCrunch
Managing editor Darrell Etherington, thanks to Haje
for stepping in while I got married last week.Share
00:07
This is the
TechCrunch
podcast where we cover everything you need to know about the week's top stories in tech from the people who wrote them.Share
00:14
This week I'm talking once again with Taylor Hatmaker about her adventure into the
metaverse
at the Meta
Connect event and Haje Jan Kamps
comes back to take the guests and talk about a Dutch Court's ruling that employee productivity monitoring using webcams is a human rights violation.Share
00:28
Before we get into all that, here's what else is going on in tech news this week.
Share
00:34
This week was
Microsoft's
big annual hardware event but the Surface
devices it revealed were relatively boring updates. One of their side announcements was the real star of the show. New software products that use AI
image generation powered by dolly too.Share
00:48
A new app called designer will allow users to create fit-for-purpose images for sharing the platforms including
Instagram,
Linkedin
and Facebook
. Microsoft
is adding some of its own AI smarts to the mix to help users create ready-to-share images from text prompts.Share
01:01
Image creator on the other hand, will be accessible from the being images tab or directly in the
Microsoft
edge browser, acting more as a simple front end for dolly to API without any custom AI tweaks. More about this on TC from Kyle Wiggers.Share
01:14
Netflix
has revealed when it's ad-supported 6,99 monthly plan will launch setting November 3rd is the start date in the U. S. and select other markets. This ad-supported Netflix
plan has been in the works for a while now though the company had previously said that it would be made available only in early 2023. Some Netflix
content from the paid service won't be available to ad supported customers.Share
01:34
However
Hulu
meanwhile is raising its subscription prices adding $1 to the monthly cost for ad-supported tiers and an additional $2 monthly for plans. Without ads. That means Netflix
with ads is now $1 cheaper than Hulu's
ad-supported plan. You can read more about both pricing changes from Lauren Forrestal on the site.Share
01:52
Uber
, Lyft
and DoorDash
stocks also big drops earlier this week when the U. S. Department of Labor
revealed proposed changes that would reclassify contractors as full-time employees in some key regards. Until now this has been a battle fought mostly on a state-by-state basis including through the high-profile AB 5 and Proposition 22
regulatory measures in California. The draft guidance is now in a public review period though it faces criticism from both sides already for not going far enough. More on this on TC from Harri Weber.Share
02:22
I talked with Taylor about what it was like to be a floating torso in the virtual room for the
Meta
Connect conference.Share
02:30
Hi Taylor, how's it going?
Share
Taylor Hatmaker
02:31
Hello. Pretty okay.
Share
Darrell Etherington
02:33
Welcome back from the
metaverse
. I hope you had a fun time in it. It's exausting. Glad to be back! I've been there for a long time.Share
02:42
It looks, it looks exhausting. I think you talked about this in the article, but we all had like, it was like a draw-straws situation of like who's going to get the headset out and get it going and like do all the stuff in the software updates and whatever is required to go into it, right?
Share
02:57
But you bravely volunteered and got it all going. So kudos to you for that. But you also got the reward.
Share
03:05
I did.
Share
03:05
Which is the article not the actual experience.
Share
Taylor Hatmaker
03:09
Oh, I thought was being at this podcast. So many rewards in the
metaverse
.Share
Darrell Etherington
03:14
Yeah, so I mean for our listeners in case they missed it this week was
Meta Connect
, which is Meta's
annual now their only annual really conference or event or thing where Mark
comes out and does a song and dance on a stage, although it's no longer a real stage.Share
03:30
But yeah, the overt intent I guess would be to talk to developers who are interested in getting into
metaverse
step. But there's also a lot of other announcements and they kind of, well are there are there? You're looking skeptical, this is an audio podcast. There was an attempt at other announcements, let's say that.Share
Taylor Hatmaker
03:48
Yeah, this is my skeptical podcast face. Yeah, I mean they announced new hardware, you know, I think
Meta
was in a weird position coming into this one, arguably they're often in a weird position because they're weird company that has lots of shady stuff that makes people unhappy a lot.Share
04:03
But there have been some reporting like leading up like the day before, I think it was Monday or like it might've been Sunday and Monday? I can't remember, I think the
New York Times
had a report that was like internally even no one is using Meta's
VR
, where no one is hanging out in the virtual world is basically forcing their employees to enter the metaverse
and interact in a professional manner.Share
04:24
And it was just like a pretty devastating story. So I think for me, somebody who's followed
Meta
- formerly Facebook -
now for more than a decade, which is horrifying.Share
04:32
I was kind of expecting them to come back with some kind of retort in a way to be like, "Well you said we suck, but we have this awesome exclusive game", or something, you know, and they just went different direction because you know, they are
Meta
.Share
Darrell Etherington
04:46
Yeah, I mean that was the timing, you know, obviously on the
New York Times
and and the verge was the other, the verge reported first, the low adoption and then the New York Times
had their great sort of overall look at, you know, that plus a bunch of other stuff around the metaverse
efforts, right?Share
05:02
But yeah, it was like the anti curtain raiser, like typically, you know, pr companies, this is a little inside baseball for you folks listening.
Share
05:09
But at some of these large tech companies will try to see this sort of like a curtain raiser ahead of these events and they'll maybe select one outlet or something and do an interview with them and kind of like not tip their hand but get into the thinking around what they want to do and then they'll do you no seed executive interviews like after two, which they did
Meta
did this time, and actually made Mark
quite available not to take rush, but I mean we were not mad, we knew what we knew what he would have said anyway. And you know, nothing that was a surprise.Share
05:40
But to your point, like the tone of it was not anything that was like, not, you could both things can be true. You can read those reports that came out that were very negative and then you can see what, what, you know, announced or revealed and it was like, yes, both of these things.
Share
05:56
One actually supports the other and in some ways metas presentation I think supported a lot of the earlier reporting by omission. Like you were saying like they didn't really bring out like a big, huge, amazing game or like reveal any super blockbuster stuff that was like, oh, people are really, really invested in this and behind this and really excited about this, right?
Share
Taylor Hatmaker
06:16
You know, the consensus is kind of like, you know,
Meta
by Oculus
. Oculus was a brand, people could get excited about and they were for a while, you know, Facebook-defied it. And now it's it's all Meta,
and Meta
came out yesterday and was like, okay, so I mean they didn't say this, this is kind of the subtext, you know, they're just kind of staying the course.Share
06:33
They're like, "Okay, so we're not generating a lot of excitement in the consumer space, we're gonna release this game on NVR", that was like the hottest game ever two years ago, You know, they're releasing like
Among Us
for VR
is just like, "Really?"Share
06:46
Like, I feel like that should be sailed but then there was the most exciting, we were like...
Share
06:51
This is kind of exciting and everything else was like, "meh".
Share
Darrell Etherington
06:54
I mean it would probably be kind of fun, but there wasn't a lot for consumers there, right?
Share
Taylor Hatmaker
06:57
So they're just like, okay, we're quadrupling down on enterprise and that is just, you know, not the exciting vision of the
metaverse
that a lot of people who probably think of gaming and think of, you know, more traditional social networks and stuff kind of moving into these VR
spaces had in mind. Ff they were even paying attention to this at all, which is totally arguable, right?Share
Darrell Etherington
07:15
And like, I think they were trying to point out some of the places where they see opportunity like fitness, right? But although they're in their own problems there with the within acquisition being challenged by the
FTC
, right? Am I thinking of the right US... Okay.Share
Taylor Hatmaker
07:31
I haven't checked in on that in a minute. But that was happening.
Share
Darrell Etherington
07:33
Yeah, they're claiming that it's anticompetitive potentially for
Facebook
to acquire that company which is the maker of Supernatural, one of the most popular fitness games or experiences on the Oculus
.Share
Taylor Hatmaker
07:44
And it is like a killer app. Like that is an app like
Facebook
, Facebook
Meta
needs needs killer applications for the metaverse
. Like I need a reason like so you know, they send me the hardware like Meta
, you know, I have a review for Meta
and I open it and it's like I think it's the onboarding that any normal consumer has.Share
08:01
You know, you open the box and you're like "Okay, I'm getting configured whatever", and then you pop into it and they didn't even have games or things like you know, any of the fitness stuff preloaded onto it. So like the consumer experience previously and I do think that's changed in July, I think now it's shipping with Beat Saber which is like a killer app for the
metaverse.
Share
08:19
Previously you just like open this thing, you put it on your like this is kind of uncomfortable and you turn it on and then you're just in this like store and you're like, well I don't, there's nothing in here for me to do unless I pay like 60 bucks or whatever for like an unproven thing.
Share
08:31
There needs to be more demos. There needs to be, you know preloaded software and I think they apparently just figured that out a few months ago, but like, it's just a strange experience overall, they really need to sell why anyone should be doing this at all, why anyone should be, you know, participating in this kind of stuff in a different modality to begin with.
Share
Darrell Etherington
08:47
Yeah, that's a good point, assumes a certain amount of enthusiasm already going in, right? Like the way they used to do it, where it was like, "Okay, we know, you know why you're here and you're going to go seek out something actively and then you're gonna have that fun because you already are pre informed about some of it". But that's like not the assumption to make, if you really want to make it a mass-market device, right? Which they seem to want to do.
Share
09:08
Some other companies and attempts have done really good at that. Like
Valve
did a great job with their onboarding experience, sort of like getting you into how to use it, I forget what it was called, but...Share
Taylor Hatmaker
09:18
Yeah, you can even make the onboarding fun, like, I mean, you know, I tried to do this with Horizon World a little bit like you're walking around and you're like looking at billboards or whatever and then you like play a little game. But it's not fun, you know, and like you could make it super fun because at the end of the day, like VR is still really cool.
Share
09:32
I think that, you know, a lot of folks at
TechCrunch
yesterday published pretty skeptical stories where we're like, "ah" you know, that is doing this in VR
, but like a lot of us are actually pretty into new technology, you know, we want this stuff to be cool. So it's even more disappointing. I think when you're like, why can't they get this right?Share
09:47
I mean, I think we, there's lots of reasons that we know why with
Meta
, but it's cutting edge technology, It's pretty fun. They're fun experiences in there to be had. So it's weird to have such a hard time getting people enthusiastic about that or bringing in new users into that experience. I mean, the hardware based expensive doesn't help. That's like a whole other conversation obviously. But...Share
Darrell Etherington
10:05
No, yeah. And the Quest Pro they announced $1,500. Like that is a massive outlay for what this can do right now, right?
Share
Taylor Hatmaker
10:13
Yeah, and that's just gonna be that high-end device where you're like, okay, maybe if I'm like, I don't know, like what kind of like some kind like engineer or like somebody designing some kind of products in three D. Or something. I'm trying to think of applications that are just like, which is a tiny sliver of that actual profession, tiny, tiny sliver are going to be people willing to do this.
Share
10:30
You don't have like workflows that they're already super dedicated to. Yeah. So like that high end device, I mean, you know that that exists just like as a proof of concept of all the new technology they can introduce, I'm sure. But I just think
Meta
again, has a fundamental misunderstanding about like what people want and like doesn't really even want to give it to them I guess.Share
Darrell Etherington
10:49
Well you, I mean you experienced them delivering what they, I guess imagined is a great experience in VR right? Like they offered the opportunity to go and have to see the keynote in their Horizons app and you did that and it didn't seem like there. I mean it's kind of all over it. Like you thought this was going to be fun for people. I mean you had fun, but I don't think you have the fun that they intended you to have.
Share
Taylor Hatmaker
11:14
Well, I don't even think it's supposed to be fun at the end of this is like I've been serious though. Like, okay, like, you know, I will say I had more fun watching that even though it's like a chaotic hazard experience, getting my headset charged and then I like to have to push like 50 software updates and all this other stuff and that's on me for not being ready in advance.
Share
11:30
But like, you know, it's like it's kind of fun. I'm like walking around, you know, you're navigating
VR
with little joysticks and stuff and it's like marginally more interesting than just watching the things stream live.Share
11:40
But like it's very
Facebook
, it's like a utility, you hop on it and you're like, okay, it looks pretty bland. It looks like a bland normal kind of conference center. There's like the big floppy, infinity blue infinity sign logo, like kind of hovering ominously in the center of the courtyard, which I just walked straight through and then you know, you go into like a room like you would in a normal conference center and it like had the blandness of going to a conference, particularly going to like a Meta
conference.Share
12:05
I have been to this conference before was Oculus connect and I mean it was a little bit more flavorful then because it hadn't been totally Facebook-fied, but there is like a blandness too...
Share
Darrell Etherington
12:16
Like, I don't, why do you have sound-dampening walls in this virtual...
Share
Taylor Hatmaker
12:19
Yeah, I mean it's just, it's just one day and you're like, okay, look, it could look like anything in the world. Like imagine if like
Epic Games
designers for example, this is kind of one of the always the competitors like come back to, I mean arguably not a direct competitor, but it's complicated. Like if Epic Games
is like, hey, we're gonna have, we're gonna have an event in the metaverse
.Share
12:35
You're gonna go in, there's gonna be like psychedelic rainbow unicorns, you're riding to the conference, You know, it's gonna be wild and like
Meta
is like, let's just make this as tame and bland as possible because they want to appeal to everyone because that's their whole thing. And in doing that as a company, they basically have no identity of their own.Share
12:52
Like visually or anything else, even the product itself have a whole range about the hardware. The hardware design is just so calm and tame and bland and it's nice. It works well. You know, it's born out of the Oculus hardware obviously, but there's just no personality and software experiences in the
metaverse
feel like that to Horizon World feels the same way.Share
13:10
You're like, this is cool, but there's nothing going on. There's no edginess to it. It's not exciting or fun, you know, and I think they're obviously gonna have to link really hard on developers and really convinced cool developers to build interesting experiences for, you know?
Share
Darrell Etherington
13:26
Yeah, I mean, it's there's like something so sad about that when you're talking about that. Like it's it sounds like just a profound lack of imagination. It's like, oh, I envision the future and you're like, okay, cool. I mean it looks like it's a beige room, but it's not really there. It's in your headset, it's like, wait, what? No, you had anything, you had infinite resources, you had all the time.
Share
Taylor Hatmaker
13:47
Like that's the weird thing, you know, they're always like, I mean, you know,
Mark
Zuckerberg talking about innovation and talking about the next platform and all this stuff and that, that should be exciting.Share
13:57
But of all the companies to be putting out this hardware, all the companies to have bought
Oculus
when they did, you know, Meta
formally Facebook
as a company is not known for its imagination is known as being like a utility platform where you go and you connect with people. And it's, it's like we're all on it kind of like how we all have to, you know, we used all have to use landlines.Share
14:16
Like that was just a technology that we have and it's not a perfect analogy, but you know, it's a utility, it's not inspiring. They're a company that copies other people's products. They're just really insecure, I think about their own vision as a company and that comes across a lot in a lot of their products in my opinion, anyway.
Share
Darrell Etherington
14:32
Yeah it's very interesting to have the company like that building something so immersive too, right? I feel like it exposes even more because it's like you're literally immersed in their conception of what that is. And so once you're within that, I mean, to an extent that's already happening on
Facebook
, right?Share
14:45
Like it's quite immersive as far as they too deep scrolling, you know, website experiences, they want you to be there and not anywhere else, but to actually do that and then immerse you in, it's like we're going to see it all, we're going to see it in stark relief your flaws and you know, the lack of inspiration or imagination or whatever else is there, it's going to be exposed. Like, it's your company DNA at large, right?
Share
Taylor Hatmaker
15:08
Yeah, it's strange. I, maybe this stood out to me all the more over the weekend I was at
TwitchCon
, I had some meetings down there and I like, popped in and out of the conference center with, you know, 30,000 of my closest acquaintances.Share
15:20
It's just like, that is a company that, like, they are like, "Hey, we are tapping into what young people want and we are just delivering it to them left and right".
Share
Darrell Etherington
15:27
Yeah.
Share
Taylor Hatmaker
15:28
It's just like a smorgasbord of like, cool shit that people 30 and above. Like, don't understand very well...
Share
Darrell Etherington
15:34
Which is
Fortnite
that you just described Fortnite
basically, right? It's like, oh, look at all this cool ship, we just threw it in here. It's a blast. And then people are like...Share
Taylor Hatmaker
15:42
Yeah, it's just, it's maximal is, you know, and it's kind of the opposite, both visually and I think vision-wise or something, something like
Facebook
, like, Meta
, you know, like, that's a company that's just like, they are like, "Hey, we know what young people want, we're giving to them". And everyone is so excited about the product which is ultimately owned by Amazon
and that's something that makes it wild.Share
16:01
Yeah! And so does everybody else like this event. It's like, you know, 16-year-old kids walking around who are cooler than anyone you've ever seen in your life and you know, there's like streamers with lamb bows or whatever and you're like, this is wild and everyone is just stoked to be celebrating.
Share
16:16
This product is ultimately owned by
Amazon
, which is like, you know, is more like a Facebook
, more like a Meta
.Share
Darrell Etherington
16:21
Yeah.
Share
Taylor Hatmaker
16:22
So, and you know, I think if
Meta
had kept the product more separate from their identity, they could have pulled something like this off and they could have kept some of the early enthusiasm for the Oculus
brand because at least they had gamers and early adopters who were like, oh we like this, you know, that guy's kind of an asshole and they probably didn't think that, but like, you know, people were excited.Share
16:40
It was like... kind of had a different image at the time, but they kind of smooth everything over. They Meta-fied it.
Share
Darrell Etherington
16:47
Yeah, they tweaked it to baige, right? Like it's like adjust all the dials until it's beige, right?
Share
Taylor Hatmaker
16:51
Yeah, we'll have a product that works perfectly for gamers, for young people, for enterprise consumers, for, you know, it's just like that doesn't exist. It's not going to work, but they wanted to.
Share
Darrell Etherington
17:01
Meanwhile twitches like, Megan the stallion is going to work on master chief. People are like, "This is great!"
Share
17:08
Like, you can imagine me saying the same words for like a different companies conference and it being like, this is the worst ship, this is so dumb and forest and lame. And yet
Twitch
like pulled it off and people were just generally really thrilled and amused with that and like celebrating it right?Share
Taylor Hatmaker
17:23
And a company like
TikTok
probably could have done that too. I don't know that community quite as well, but that's a brand that young people are enthusiastic about. And again, Meta
is extremely self conscious about losing young people because when you lose young people then you turn to enterprise software, which is what they're doing now, you know, like Twitch
over the weekend.Share
17:39
For example, like I didn't hear a single mention of
virtual reality
. I think there's like one session maybe that was like, I don't even really understand the session was, I didn't make, it was something about building experience is for VR
but like it's not something that people are talking about because people are participating in their own version of the metaverse
already.Share
17:54
Which is, you know, everyone is just known by their handles there on
Twitch
all day, they're streaming, they're popping in and out of chat, they have their own memes and everything else and everyone's just playing all of these virtual experiences that exist elsewhere.Share
18:05
You know, they're not
VR
experiences, but just all kinds of stuff, stuff like Fortnite
, you know, stuff like Roblox
, like Minecraft
, there's so many social gaming experiences already with established communities, established worlds, you know, and those are really fun and people really like them and they're already there.Share
18:19
So you know, I don't know what that is going to do to lure people to its platform, but I think it's gonna have a tough time.
Share
Darrell Etherington
18:25
I think so too. I think my big takeaway from that event was that they want it too much and it's gonna scare everybody away from it forever. Maybe
Twitch
will be the one to just swoop in and like it's already here, basically we just do a little "jin-jin" left and right here, and then there you go: it's a metaverse,
ready-made or whatever, right?Share
Taylor Hatmaker
18:43
Yeah, there are a lot of companies that are pretty far ahead in terms of like the stuff that I think matters more than the hardware aspect. It's like weird that was like actually we're a hardware company now, you know, I think maybe they May have made the wrong bet, which is something they were really worried about.
Share
18:55
I was talking about this in our internal chat earlier which exists and it's very mysterious, but you know, for a long time I've recovered
Facebook
/ Meta
for a long time and there were years where Mark Zuckerberg
would get on these investor calls and be like, "I have made one grave mistake in my life and that was not realizing how important mobile was going to be".Share
19:12
Remember in the very early stages of
Facebook
, its mobile, it was terrible! It sucked, it was like broken, you could really use it and he was like I vowed to never make this mistake again and so he just said that for like years and then he bought Oculus
and he sees the next version, the next platform, the next modality for social technology in general as being er and I think there's an argument there which I should probably write and I'll probably feel that if I don't make this a story now.Share
19:36
But I think there's an argument and it is my argument that the next platform might actually be social gaming, something like much more loose, just virtual avatar-based worlds that are not hardware dependent because that's gonna bring a lot more people in and it's all about the people to begin with and again, that's the piece that
Meta
can never quite get right.Share
Darrell Etherington
19:52
Yeah, that's terrific. You definitely do have to write that article now and I'm gonna let you go do that right now. But yeah, it's like, I mean the headline is just
Mark Zuckerberg
has no chill and that's why he will miss the next major platform shift, right or something?Share
Taylor Hatmaker
20:07
He just always cares about the wrong stuff, you know? He's just like, "This is what the people want", it's like, "Have you talked to a person?" Like, "Talk to one!".
Share
Darrell Etherington
20:16
Virtually, virtually he talked to someone.
Share
Taylor Hatmaker
20:19
I left yesterday and he was still in there and he looked haggard.
Share
Darrell Etherington
20:24
Someone needs to check up.
Share
Taylor Hatmaker
20:26
To give him a monster energy.
Share
Darrell Etherington
20:28
Thanks so much Taylor, it's been great talking to you as always and I'm sure we'll have you on again soon.
Share
Taylor Hatmaker
20:34
Yeah, anytime.
Share
Darrell Etherington
20:37
Next up, I'm talking with
Haje Jan Kamps
about a Dutch Court's ruling that demanding employees turn on their webcams is a human rights violation.Share
20:46
Hello
Haje
and welcome back, and thanks for filling in last week too by the way.Share
Haje Jan Kamps
20:50
Yeah, I hear you were off doing fun things.
Share
Darrell Etherington
20:52
I was, I was getting married, which may be the listeners of this podcast you might be hearing that for the first time. So please send monetary gifts to... ahah, not revealing any private information, but...
Share
Haje Jan Kamps
21:03
Congratulations, I'm excited for you.
Share
Darrell Etherington
21:06
Thanks! Great to have you on. And we're talking about something that probably people have personal feelings about, given today's work environments. So do you want, give us a breakdown of what happened this week in this Dutch Court?
Share
Haje Jan Kamps
21:18
Yeah. So basically there was an incident where an American company based in
Florida
hired a person in Holland
and this person was asked to keep their webcam on at all times when they're working, so 8 to 9 hours a day. And at some point they were like, "You know what, I'm not going to do that". And they were pulled up in some sort of like meeting at work with HR and given instructions for what to do. And they were like, "I'm not doing that".Share
21:44
Now, the interesting quirk is like, if it was only the camera, I'd be like, "Okay, well that's a little weird", but it seems like this company actually does a lot of tracking. They do constant like screen monitoring, they do activity monitoring, plus presumably this person actually delivers some productive work. So they see the work coming out as well.
Share
Darrell Etherington
22:01
Yeah.
Share
Haje Jan Kamps
22:02
Yeah, so this person said, "You know what, I'm not into this" and he got fired. And he went to court and the court went, well, you know, there's a €50,000 fine, he has to pay back wages and vacation time and all that kind of stuff. But the interesting thing was, they pointed out that according to the court, this was actually a human rights violation and that made me go, "Wait a minute. That's interesting!"
Share
Darrell Etherington
22:24
That is interesting. So I mean, I mean there's so much about this just to start off, it's like, oh yeah, like you said, requiring someone to keep their camera on for nine hours a day. I think most listeners will probably agree with us and that it feels sketchy just off the outset, right?
Share
22:41
But then adding in all those other things, things like screen monitor or whatever else, and it's a
telemarketing
company. So there is one would imagine like you said, a deliverable, like probably a fairly concrete deliverable that they can more easily track, which is like number of calls done. Like those are typically recorded at a telemarketing
company, right? So...Share
Haje Jan Kamps
22:59
Yeah, and this guy did inside sales. So what I believe that means is up selling existing customers and receiving calls, right? He wasn't doing outbound as far as I understand and the person is anonymous and you score documents, I don't actually know their name. But yeah, I thought it was really interesting to hear them bring human rights into this.
Share
Darrell Etherington
23:16
Yes. Yeah, for sure! So is it specifically around the camera? Is that the thing that they are saying is in violation of this individual's human rights or?
Share
Haje Jan Kamps
23:25
Yeah. So the
EU
has adopted something called the european convention on human rights and article eight of that is the right to respect for private and family life and I have it in front of me here basically they say that everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence and there should be no interference on that, which basically means, look, you have a right to a private life.Share
23:46
Now, if you are a bank teller, there will probably be a camera on you, right to make sure you don't run off with money and to make sure that if there's a bank robber, they have some video of him.
Share
23:54
But I feel like in that circumstance it seems perfectly fair in a way to have a camera on you, what they're having a complaint about here is like, look, this person is in their own home. You know, there are people presumably in that home who don't have any sort of say in whether or not they're being videoed and I don't know about you, I don't need to be on video eight or 9 hours a day.
Share
Darrell Etherington
24:14
No, God, no, no, of course not! And I agree innately, I'm just like, and I also have the right not to have that happen, but it is an interesting distinction when you're bringing up that many hours a day, many people in the professional work sphere are on video for that many hours a day, right? Or if not more like, depending on whatever their their shift is.
Share
24:32
But like the intention originally there was like a clear separation, like there was no such thing as the sort of work from home phenomenon when those human rights doctrines were drafted, right? When these conventions and productions were drafted essentially. It's like super interesting for a precedent perspective and you wonder what else falls under that once you start to blur those lines, right?
Share
24:52
Because we mostly talk a lot about like, other aspects of what happens when you blur the lines of working from home and, you know, working from offices and like how do you manage morale and whatever, like, what tools do you use, Right? But then what do you get into like, rights, human rights and freedoms?
Share
25:07
Like, that's not something I've seen thought about or exploit very much, and now it's like being like it's happening, it's happening in law in practical scenarios. I mean, do you think that this is something that will be teased out further or will engender additional legal actions or anything?
Share
Haje Jan Kamps
25:23
Well, I would be surprised if this was the first time this wasn't mentioned right. I mean it just happened to be... I saw a news story about it and was like, "Hey, webcams, privacy, that's interesting". And it turns out that the court documents were public and in one of my many weird skill sets is that I speak fluent enough Dutch that I can read court documents.
Share
25:41
So I ended up going back in there and actually read the whole thing and somewhere near the bottom on this 50 page document, there was like, "Oh actually this is a human rights violation". I feel like they just dropped it in as I like Yeah, obviously as a matter of course, but to us from like American eyes, you'd be like, wait a minute, that is actually human rights sounds very serious.
Share
Darrell Etherington
26:00
Yeah, it does, it sounds very actionable, ahah.
Share
Haje Jan Kamps
26:03
Yeah, and this is wedged in this document, European convention of human rights, it's wedged between article seven, which is no punishment without law, right and article nine, which is freedom of thought, conscience and religion, which would be our
First Amendment
, right?Share
26:16
As you're like, "Wait a minute, those two things are very, very big things and this right to privacy", like yeah, it makes sense if that's in the, in the human rights convention, which is actually accepted as law in most countries.
Share
Darrell Etherington
26:28
Yeah, I mean, right, when you put it in that perspective because those other two are I don't think anyone would argue or there's no kind of yeah, it's a priori it's like of course these things are true, right? But when you bring that into it it's like, oh wait, this requires some teasing now, right?
Share
26:41
Which is perhaps not what previously was the case? I'm wondering if I don't know if you know this, but it's just come to me, but like, is this the same kind of right to privacy that has allowed for people to ask
Google
to forget certain elements of their lives and search things or whatever, right? Because that was also, you know, decided in European courts.Share
Haje Jan Kamps
27:02
And I think that is exactly the kind of if not this specific article, then these types of articles are used to defend that. And I think that makes a lot of sense. I mean,
Europe
traditionally has had a very strong sense of like, hey, you don't really have a business to snoop around in my in my stuff. And I feel like in the U. S. on particular after the Patriot Act
and various other like clauses that makes it possible to do large scale surveillance, that kind of stuff just doesn't really fly in Europe
for those reasons because the privacy thing feels like such a personal and inalienable, right?Share
Darrell Etherington
27:33
Yeah, for sure. Now I do think the other aspect of this is just kind of the practice itself, I I doubt that this is actually that unusual, right? Especially for a company like this, and I do wonder what is the discussion to be had, especially for tech companies of like where this line is?
Share
27:48
Because I feel like there's a kind of, there's a tiered system, I mean there's always a sort of like a class system when it comes to employment and employers, but if you think about, you know us in particular, let's just use our example because that way we're not putting fingers with others, but like we're very lax in terms of how we work with each other and we're a remote company and like there's effectively no monitoring going on, maybe there is, but I'm not privy to it, You don't know, nobody does, maybe my boss's boss is watching and everything we do, but I have no idea, right?
Share
28:20
But like that is like, we're fairly lucky in that, right? And then, whereas if you're a contractor, especially working on the kind of like that raw-edge of the technology sphere where, you know, content moderation or
telemarketing
or...Share
Haje Jan Kamps
28:34
Amazon
delivery driver.Share
Darrell Etherington
28:35
Yes, or
Amazon
delivery drivers.Share
Haje Jan Kamps
28:36
There's a lot of jobs... and I feel like there's actually, you mentioned a tier system between employer and employee, but I think, you know, there are professions and companies where the assumption is that you're going to deliver, right?
Share
28:47
And I feel like if you are a software developer at a startup versus a software developer at
Google
versus a Amazon
delivery driver or a contractor writer at TechCrunch
, right?Share
Darrell Etherington
28:59
Ahah.
Share
Haje Jan Kamps
28:59
There's a very broad spectrum between how much people trust you essentially and and how good your managers are in. I've worked with managers who absolutely wants to know what I did every microsecond of every day and right. And it sucks! It really sucks. And there is a paradigm shift that is happening especially as people are allowed to work from home, I think.
Share
29:21
Where some employers go well, I trust my employees, they have deliverables and as long as that gets delivered, cool, I don't really care how or when that gets done. And there are others who go, "No, I want you know what you do every minute of every day because I don't trust you" or "If I don't spend all my time monitoring on my employees, what am I even here for" kind of thing, right? It's like, it's a very the office approach to to management.
Share
Darrell Etherington
29:45
Yeah. But so the natural conclusion that I draw from that is that one force, there is market forces, right? So like the companies that do get that right end up being the ones that succeed and are able to attract talent, retain talent. So that is a key ingredient, but how much do you think this side that we're talking about today? Like the regulation part needs to play a role.
Share
30:07
Do you think there needs to be more heavy handed application of kind of these protections? Or do you think the shift naturally as companies get better at it will kind of help people get around shift like this?
Share
Haje Jan Kamps
30:19
Well, I think the challenges a lot of decisions, exploitative stuff, right? It's like proper late stage capitalism get as much out of your workers as you can write. And the challenge, of course, becomes when you blur the line between the workplace where I don't like the idea of being permanently surveilled.
Share
30:37
But if I walk into an office building, I kind of assume that to some degree, they check when my badges used, when my computer's on maybe how I move around the building. You know, I don't like it, but I kind of understand it. You don't get to do that when I'm at home, right? That's a very different...
Share
30:52
And I think the, the expression they often use is the "expectation of privacy". If I am sitting here, we're on video right now, even though we're recording a podcast, if my girlfriend walk behind me naked in my house, that is something that should be possible in an office that generally doesn't, right?
Share
31:07
But this is where you get the annoying blurred lines, right? I can understand that maybe
TechCrunch
wants to record me whether I'm working or not and I would have some thoughts about that, but I can kind of understand that.Share
31:17
But the problem is you don't, like in somebody's home, you don't control the whole environment and that's where it gets really fuzzy. And I think actually that's where I would welcome the law doing a little bit of like, "Hey, this is okay", "That's not OK", kind of thing.
Share
Darrell Etherington
31:30
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true. It's, it's a kind of catch-up. It's the catch-up that always goes on with sort of regulation and legislation that I think it's a bit more Maybe nuanced than it has been previously just because it is probably the first time in history where that work, domicile has crossed over. So 100% with the kind of personal domicile, right? I mean, excluding maybe serfdom or something, but that's a totally different story so...
Share
Haje Jan Kamps
31:52
Well, and I think actually we're probably both of us showing a little bit of privilege here.
Share
Darrell Etherington
31:56
Absolutely.
Share
Haje Jan Kamps
31:56
I haven't had that many jobs where I've been like monitored heavily, although they definitely exist and I have a number of friends who work in professions where, you know, every minute it is measured and if they take two minutes more than they're allowed in terms of bathroom breaks, they get to talking to
telemarketing
is one of those industries often because every minute counts, you know, and I'm wondering if I'm certainly a little bit blind to how many industries this happens in, but I think that's why the laws exist to protect those people, right?Share
Darrell Etherington
32:25
Yeah, for sure. Allright, well I hope that they continue to protect those people and I'm glad to see that this result in this case. And thanks for telling us about it, Haje.
Share
Haje Jan Kamps
32:34
Yeah. Thanks for inviting me.
Share
Darrell Etherington
32:37
That's it for this week. Thanks for joining us and remember to check out all the stories we talked about in this episode on
TechCrunch.com.
Also, TechCrunch
Disrupt is coming up next week on October 18th through the 20th, live in San Francisco,
with guests including Serena Williams
, Kevin Hart
, Dylan Field
and more.Share
32:53
You can still get your tickets, use code tcpot - all one word - to get 15% off passes excluding the online and expo type. Be sure to check out all the other TC Podcasts Found, Equity Chain Reaction in the
TechCrunch
live podcast.Share
33:07
See you next week.
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Darrell Etherington
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