TheLayoff Censorship of IBM Threads Has Gone Truly Ludicrous
Instead of culling the slop they suppress legitimate discussions regarding legitimate issues
About a month ago we complained about LLM slop and terrible trolling in TheLayoff. Staff of TheLayoff then began deleting loads of pages and censoring many new posts, many of which on-topic, legitimate, and polite. Sometimes you'd see a message and the next minute (or hour)... it's gone! We wrote about it and did videos about this around 2021 and 2022. It became very problematic. I ended up abandoning the whole site over this.
Now that it's happening again people speak out about it. For instance, take this active thread that we mentioned half a day ago: "It's amazing how closely these boards are monitored - I notice several postings here have disappeared today because someone couldn't handle the truth. It says a lot about the man who is ultimately responsible for Layoffs@IBM."
Someone then said: "I posted a thread about the Watson Ex Lax Challenge and it got deleted [...] Is one of Alvinds Pipmunks monitoring here ?"
The next (upvoted by many): "Yes, my post was deleted.... Here again... Sign up for the Watson challenge, join a team and do nothing. What really counts is to sign up/register... that is what RT wants, 100% registration so he can claim that the whole IBM is Watson/AI experts Lol!! Let's see if this post gets deleted... Rob?"
Then finally: "So do we see Slob Thomas with his pathetic hoodie and Krabanaugh? Give some goofy kickoff video ? Meanwhile those 2 clods probably need someone to do the challenge for them Watson Ex Lax is a giant piece of trash" (they talk about all this "hey hi" nonsense).
It's probably the first time in a while people there speak about the censorship without it being censored. There were clearly steps taken to suppresss discussion of particular topics.
The person speaking about the RAs a few hours ago said: "In Ontario Canada there is a common law precedent that awards one month of severance for every year of service assuming a good track record and that the company cannot make a case that you were terminated for cause. This is often capped at 24 months but can go higher depending on the specific details of your history at the company and your personal situation like age etc. IBM will never offer this up-front - you need to first receive the layoff and IBM's offer and then hire a lawyer to negotiate for you. I believe lawyers will charge between 25% and 35% of the total severance that they negotiate for you, assuming you engage them on a contingency basis, which to me seems the only safe way to go so that their interests are aligned with yours and your downside is limited."
There's some more mockery of the "Watson" slop in another thread:
Maybe some of these posts will get culled later.
To be clear, we do not argue that TheLayoff should not cull LLM slop. It should, as we said in:
- Messages in TheLayoff.com Drowned Out by LLM Slop (Comments Focused on Replying to Bot-Generated Provocation)
- TheLayoff.com Has Begun Deleting Trolls/AstroTurfers Infesting the IBM Section to Discourage On-Topic Discussion About Culls and Maladministration (Bad Strategy)
- AstroTurfing by IBM in thelayoff.com is Highly Risky (and Likely Outsourced)
The problem is that TheLayoff goes a lot further than this and nowadays suppresses discussion about the real issues (voices which IBM wants to bury). █