> <i>Internal listservs with more than 500 participants are now required to move to a moderated model where a manager must approve any content before its distribution, according to emails obtained by Recode.</i><p>Google did a similar thing in November [1]. This is starting to feel like a trend for tech companies reaching a certain level of size/maturity.<p>Now this may be a contrarian opinion, but I actually think this has the potential to be a <i>good</i> thing if you're on the side of workers. Here's why.<p>If you're organizing a union, trying to reveal "evil" projects, or otherwise trying to be a force for good in the company, as long as you're doing it on internal message boards everyone's still halfway-careful of what they say, and big movements/protests are less likely to happen.<p>But by shutting them down or forcibly moderating them, that will hopefully be enough of an impetus for employees to start using third-party forums, where they can "approve" each other through invites, and everyone can speak and organize freely (and with more anonymity if desired) and accomplish perhaps far more than they have so far.<p>As political scientists know, repression of citizens brings short-term stability at the cost of an increased long-term threat.<p>Obviously you can't know for sure... but this feels like the kind of thing that's going to backfire for Amazon (and Google), leading to <i>more</i> and stronger union organization, not less.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/technology/googles-new-internal-rules-take-hold-employees-complain-of-censorship/1753015/" rel="nofollow">https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/technology/googles...</a>