If the myth of tech over the past decade has been one of constant innovation, algorithmic scale, and new products and devices that “simply work,” the truth is that all of those illusions were made possible by the obfuscation of labor: the contract content moderators who sanitize the feeds of Facebook and YouTube from violence and extremist content; the warehouse workers at Amazon fulfillment centers trying to meet the guarantees of same-day shipping; the gig workers of all kinds — Uber drivers, food delivery cyclists, Instacart shoppers, among them — all of whom are at the whims of increasingly efficient platforms and wayward legislation.
And that’s not even to speak of the white-collar tech workforce that, while better compensated, is still being taken advantage of by NDAs and mandatory arbitration clauses that keep hidden the realities of discrimination and harassment in the office. But now, some workers across tech companies are organizing for better treatment and pay. Others are making efforts to unionize. Most importantly, the movement will reach everyone who works in tech — and anyone who uses those platforms. The story of the tech industry over the next decade will be the reckoning brought on by its workforce.
In a statement to The Verge, Amazon spokesperson Jackie Burke says the company is “eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI [artificial general intelligence] organization” as the company focuses on “initiatives that matter most for customers.” It’s not clear how many workers are impacted.
This is a story about how AI destroyed a long-running site of film data. It’s not just that search no longer refers traffic or that the site itself, The Numbers, is getting scraped. It’s also that there’s no way to defend 30-year-old webpages against malicious actors attempting to get the data early so they could win their Polymarket bets.
[Stephen Follows]
The ESPN, National Geographic, and Pixar divisions are among the most impacted according to Deadline, making this the second round of cuts this year since Josh D’Amaro took over the Disney CEO role in March. That Pixar blow comes despite Toy Story 5 earning almost $1 billion so far.
The petition, signed by more than 4,500 workers, calls for protections like guaranteed severance and offers of voluntary buyouts before the company does layoffs. You can read it on the Alphabet Workers Union website.
The petition will be delivered on Thursday to CEO Sundar Pichai and the heads of Google Cloud, platforms and devices, and Google Search.
[Alphabet Workers Union-CWA]
Rivian has had layoffs in 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and now, within a week of launching the long-awaited R2 SUV, layoffs in 2026. The Wall Street Journal reports the cuts made Tuesday affected less than two percent of its employees, which the company confirmed, saying it “restructured a handful of teams,” as it attempts to turn a profit for the first time.
If you’ve ever wondered what the hell is going on with Bending Spoons’ “buy, do layoffs, ????” strategy, perhaps the statement it filed Monday with the SEC for a public listing will explain.
Named for the scene in The Matrix, it’s pulled this move with brands including AOL, Vimeo, Meetup, Evernote, Eventbrite, Brightcove, WeTransfer, Filmic, and many others, hoovering up and leveraging their accumulated 500 million users, data, and 9 million monthly paying subscribers to raise more money for more acquisitions.
Following Rockstar’s firing of more than 30 developers last year in a move accused of being “union busting”, developers at the studio have formed the Rockstar Game Workers Union. According to Game Developer:
Now, the union is preparing to take Rockstar to court over the firings. RGWU says that more and more workers are joining from every one of Rockstar’s sites across Edinburgh, London, Leeds, Lincoln, and Dundee.
[Game Developer]
After the Wikimedia Foundation abruptly dissolved a beloved team of engineers, Wikipedia’s volunteers are angry — and discussing how they can push back.
The new deal, still being voted on, ensures enormous bonuses for memory chip workers but much smaller payouts for everyone else. Two Samsung unions take issue with that: one says its members will vote against the deal, the other says it’s taking legal action after being denied the chance to vote.
The New York Times and Reuters report that a memo was sent to Meta employees on Monday reassigning 7,000 of them, and said that “As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI native design principles into their new org structures.”
The memo told employees to work remotely on Wednesday, when it will lay off about 10 percent of its workforce, roughly 8,000 people, with emails sent at 4AM local time.
All 42 “regular part-time and full-time employees” of the studio, behind games like Psychonauts and Kiln, will be part of the union, Aftermath reports.
[Aftermath]
Here’s what Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said about the decision:
Today’s actions are not a cost-cutting exercise or an assessment of individuals’ performance; they are about Cloudflare defining how a world-class, high-growth company operates and creates value in the agentic AI era.
That’s the question nine senators and members of Congress have asked in the wake of its decision to close Maryland’s Towson Town Center store. It was the first store to unionize, in 2022, but union staff say they’re not being allowed to transfer to other stores, while non-union employees can.
Japan Airlines will start trialling Unitree robots for moving luggage and cargo in May, with the experiment running until 2028. The airline is also planning to use the robots for cleaning aircraft cabins and eventually hopes to deploy them permenantly to help cope amid Japan’s labor shortage and rising tourism.
The job cuts could affect around 10 percent of Meta’s workforce, or around 8,000 employees, according to Reuters. This is reportedly the first of two waves of layoffs planned for this year, and follows an earlier report from Reuters that suggests Meta could cut as much as 20 percent of its workforce.
Iron Galaxy Studios, which has also helped support and port dozens of games, including BioShock Infinite, Diablo III, and The Last of Us Part I, is cutting around 90 employees, according to Kotaku.
The layoffs follow last year’s job cuts at Iron Galaxy Studios, and come as the developer works to “adapt to the climate of the video game industry,” according to a post on LinkedIn.
The stores are all located in struggling shopping malls. Employees at the non-union shops can transfer to nearby stores, but union workers from Towson, Maryland can apply for open roles. Apple says this is due to their collective bargain agreement, which the union disputes, threatening legal action.
The first-of-its-kind rest stop, which includes e-bike battery recharging equipment, was erected in record time thanks to NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s request to get it done in time for his first 100 days in office. Workers had to improvise a crane-lift because they didn’t have the right permit, and also deal with a misplaced electrical wire. But in the end, they finished it. (Hopefully future shelters will include bathrooms, though.)
[New York Times]
The cloud giant has started notifying workers of the cuts, which are in the “thousands,” sources tell CNBC. Oracle reported employing 162,000 people as of May 2025, and has plans to raise between $45 and $50 billion this year for its AI infrastructure buildout.
The Information reports that the job cuts will affect “a few hundred” employees across the company, including in its Reality Labs division, which experienced a round of layoffs in January as Meta pulls back on the metaverse. The layoffs also reportedly impact workers on its social media, recruiting, and sales teams.
[The Information]
Last year, content moderators who’ve risked consequences like PTSD working for Big Tech companies have started to organize for better treatment in the last several years. Now, Meta has announced a wide rollout of its AI support assistant for Facebook and Instagram, and that it will “reduce our reliance on third-party vendors” employing humans for content enforcement.
While we’ll still have people who review content, these systems will be able to take on work that’s better-suited to technology, like repetitive reviews of graphic content or areas where adversarial actors are constantly changing their tactics, such as with illicit drugs sales or scams.
The contract, which will cover more than 70 workers, includes things like guaranteed wage increases, restrictions on mandatory “crunch time,” and “enhanced regulations around the usage of AI and generative AI in the workplace,” the Communications Workers of America (CWA) says in a press release.
[Communications Workers of America]
The previously-rumored cuts follow an accidental calendar invite sent last night. They come after 14,000 corporate jobs were cut in October, attributed partially to advances in AI. This latest round of layoffs is less than 5 percent of Amazon’s 350,000 corporate workforce.
We’ve been working to strengthen our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy. While many teams finalized their organizational changes in October, other teams did not complete that work until now.
A survey of 5,000 white collar workers suggests experiences differ greatly between CEOs and non-management employees. Forty percent of workers say it saves them no time each week to use AI and just two percent say it saves them more than 12 hours. Meanwhile, two percent of executives say they don’t save any time, and 19 percent say it saves them more than 12 hours a week.
[The Wall Street Journal]
The GTA VI studio now claims that firing dozens of employees last week for “gross misconduct” was because they were “found to be distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum.”
The president of the IWGB said to Bloomberg in response that Rockstar is “prioritizing union-busting by targeting the very people who make the game.” It’s planning a protest on Thursday morning.
Sources tell Reuters and Bloomberg that the job cuts could start on Tuesday, potentially impacting almost 10 percent of Amazon’s 350,000 corporate employees across logistics, gaming, payments, and cloud computing teams.
Amazon last held a major round of job cuts at the end of 2022 and into 2023, when it laid off 27,000 workers.
