#bossware — Public Fediverse posts

#UK mulls making #employers ask before installing #bossware
Proposals span AI productivity scores, keystroke logging, biometrics, and other ways to watch workers
Department for Business and Trade wants to know whether rules governing workplace #surveillance make sense as software increasingly tracks #employees' activity, measures their performance and supports decisions that affect working lives.
One in three UK orgs said it actively monitored employees' digital activity.
https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/08/04/uk-mulls-making-employers-ask-before-installing-bossware/5282440

#KaiserPermanente nurses say technology is making their jobs — and patient care — worse

https://themarkup.org/artificial-intelligence/2026/07/09/kaiser-permanente-nurses-say-technology-is-making-their-jobs-and-patient-care-worse

#healthcare #privacy #AI #bossware #surveillance

RE: https://tldr.nettime.org/@remixtures/116738719635974144

This is truly fucking evil #bossware

#workersrights #generalstrike #enshittification

Иллюзия присутствия: почему удалёнка в IT превратилась в культуру «тихого увольнения» (Quiet Quitting)

Эйфория от повсеместного перехода на удаленный формат работы (Remote First), ставшая визитной карточкой ИТ-индустрии начала 2020-х, к 2026 году сменилась фазой глубокого разочарования менеджмента. Задекларированная свобода и рост продуктивности на практике столкнулись с системным кризисом вовлеченности: размытием трудовой дисциплины, падением мотивации и потерей фокуса со стороны распределенных сотрудников. Ситуация, когда разработчик формально присутствует на созвонах, но фактически утилизирует рабочее время на сторонние проекты, личные дела или симуляцию активности, стала массовой. В настоящем материале мы проведем структурный анализ причин деградации контроля на "удалёнке", разберем, почему классический тайм-трекинг не решает проблему дисциплины, и исследуем экономические последствия низкой включенности инженеров для бизнеса.

https://habr.com/ru/articles/1044678/

#удаленная_работа #прокрастинация #таймтрекинг #тимлид #bossware #overemployment #quiet_quitting #психология_it #управление_командой #выгорание

Northeastern University: Workers’ information shared with third-party companies, new research reveals. “Companies are sharing workers’ identifiable information and online activity to third-party companies, including Microsoft, Google and Facebook, using employee monitoring software known as ‘bossware,’ new Northeastern University research has revealed.”

Are ‘#Bossware’ Tools Tracking You?
“Bossware” refers to the technology some managers use to supervise and surveil #employees in the #workplace. In recent years, the technologies used to surveil workers have become more sophisticated and widespread. With the rise of #AI, Karen Levy, a professor at Cornell, said has allowed #employers to monitor #workers in “more predictive or granular ways.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/01/business/bossware-work-surveillance-tools.html
https://archive.ph/AGP5X

:akkosad: Accenture tells staffers: If you want a promotion, use AI at work

｢ A memo sent to senior staff this week, and reported in the FT, informed them that promotions to top roles at the corporation would necessitate "regular adoption" of AI tooling, and it is tracking usage ｣

https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/20/accenture_tells_staffers_want_promotion/

#bossware #ai #aislop #accenture #bubble

Pluralistic: Big Tech joins the race to build the world's heaviest airplane (09 Dec 2025)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/09/temporarily-embarrassed-founders/

A Third of #UK Firms Using 'Bossware' To #Monitor Workers' Activity, #Survey Reveals - Slashdot
#bossware #privacy #surveillance

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/09/15/1747238/a-third-of-uk-firms-using-bossware-to-monitor-workers-activity-survey-reveals?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

A third of #UK firms using ‘#bossware’ to monitor #workers’ activity, survey reveals
Research suggests increase in office snooping is a trend that some #managers claim undermines trust with staff and is probably an underestimate, as roughly the same proportion said they don't know what tracking their organisations do.
Many monitoring systems are aimed at preventing insider threats and safeguarding sensitive information as well as detecting productivity dips.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/14/uk-firms-bossware-monitor-workers-activity

"You mention the manager wants to see if the employee is really working, I mean, is the manager really working if they're just looking at these screenshots [of employees' desktops] all day?"

#JonathanGood, 2025

https://nz-tech-podcast.captivate.fm/episode/exploring-real-time-chemical-sensing-with-scentian-bio

#podcasts #GorillaTechnology #NZTech #BossWare #WorkplaceSurveillance

The rise of #bossware and workplace surveillance, in places where much of us spend a substantial amount of our time, is a growing concern and a complex issue that crosses both state and federal law.

There is a pressing need for clarity on legal and ethical aspects.

In the meantime, here are some things you can do:

1. Get to know the software. Research unfamiliar apps and browser extensions.

2. Understand the network. Company WiFi and VPNs can track your activity even on personal devices. Use a personal hotspot or a separate VPN service for personal tasks and communications.

3. As a rule of thumb, never trust work apps. Tools like Slack, Zoom, Google Workplace, and Microsoft Office track user activity and allow your employer to retrieve information, such as what meetings you attended and whether you had your camera or microphone on.

Finally, review workplace policies, ask the IT department directly, keep personal and work data separate, and check your state's workplace surveillance laws as they vary across Australia.

#Bossware is not the #FutureOfWork. Nail this Joe Procopio quote to the door of every COO that wants to spend money on monitoring employees:

“There is no such thing as long-term sustainable success without human ingenuity."

https://www.inc.com/joe-procopio/tech-industry-workers-have-become-cogs-in-a-broken-system/91157000”

"Workers should have the right to know which of their data is being collected, who it's being shared by, and how it's being used. We all should have that right. That's what the actors' strike was partly motivated by: actors who were being ordered to wear mocap suits to produce data that could be used to produce a digital double of them, "training their replacement," but the replacement was a deepfake.

With a Trump administration on the horizon, the future of the FTC is in doubt. But the coalition for a new privacy law includes many of Trumpland's most powerful blocs – like Jan 6 rioters whose location was swept up by Google and handed over to the FBI. A strong privacy law would protect their Fourth Amendment rights – but also the rights of BLM protesters who experienced this far more often, and with far worse consequences, than the insurrectionists.

The "we do it with an app, so it's not illegal" ruse is wearing thinner by the day. When you have a boss for an app, your real boss gets an accountability sink, a convenient scapegoat that can be blamed for your misery.

The fact that this makes you worse at your job, that it loses your boss money, is no guarantee that you will be spared. Rich people make great marks, and they can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Markets won't solve this one – but worker power can."

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/26/hawtch-hawtch/#you-treasure-what-you-measure

#Work #WageSlavery #WorkerSurveillance #Bossware #Privacy #AI #DataProtection #FTC #USA

Nice. EU hacker collective reverse engineer #bossware app and Italy fines the company (again) from @pluralistic

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/23/hack-the-class-war/

Happy #LaborDay! In this piece from 2020, our staff investigates #bossware– tech that bosses use to surveil and control their workers, and how to protect yourself.https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/inside-invasive-secretive-bossware-tracking-workers

"#privacy risks in #Office365: The cloud version of Microsoft Office contains a #bossware mode that allows bosses to monitor their workers' keystrokes for spelling, content, and accuracy, and produce neat charts of which employees are least "productive."
The joke's on the boss, though: Office 365 also compare your department's to your competitors…

#Microsoft is gathering your trade secrets and handing it out to your direct competitors."

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/01/eruditio-libertas-est/

"Using the anonymized data in Aware's analytics product, clients can see how employees of a certain age group or in a particular geography are responding to a new corporate policy or marketing campaign, according to Schumann. Aware's dozens of AI models, built to read text and process images, can also identify bullying, harassment, discrimination, noncompliance, pornography, nudity and other behaviors, he said."

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/02/09/ai-might-be-reading-your-slack-teams-messages-using-tech-from-aware.html

#bossware #IA #unions

@georgebaily

In a fairer world, #bossware would only ever get the boss that deploys it into legal trouble, never the worker ...

Wiedzieliście, że Krytyka Polityczna publikuje po polsku eseje Cory'ego Doctorowa @pluralistic?

Np. ten o tym, że ciągłe patrzenie ludziom na ręce sprawia, że nie uczą się i nie rozwijają. Taka oczywistość, ale jednak nadzór np. w pracy jest powszechny. I ta nazwa #bossware - piękne:

https://krytykapolityczna.pl/swiat/inwigilacja-szkodzi-pracownikom-doctorow/

#Surveillance #Bossware #WorkplaceSurveillance #Privacy: "Learning, growth, and fulfillment all require a zone of privacy, a time and place where we are not observed. Far from making us accountable, continuous, fine-grained surveillance by authority figures just scares us into living a cramped, inauthentic version of ourselves, where growth is all but impossible. Others have observed the role this plays in right-wing culture war bullshit: "an armed society is a polite society" is code for "people who make me feel uncomfortable just by existing should be terrorized into hiding their authentic selves from me." The point of Don't Say Gay laws and anti-trans bills isn't to eliminate gender nonconformity – it's to drive it into hiding.

Given all this, it's no surprise that workers who face workplace surveillance in the name of "wellness" feel unwell as a result:" https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/15/wellness-taylorism/#sick-of-spying