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Hundreds of Salesforce Employees Object To NFT Plans (trust.org) 36

Hundreds of Salesforce employees globally are rebelling against plans by the U.S. enterprise software giant to enter the non-fungible token (NFT) market, according to internal documents seen by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. From a report: Salesforce told employees earlier this month it was exploring a series of NFT initiatives, including an "NFT Cloud" which could help companies around the world create and sell NFTs -- a kind of digital asset often linked to an image or piece of artwork, which is usually bought with cryptocurrencies. More than 400 employees have signed on to an open letter which was penned after the company's announcement, and is being shared in internal messaging channels. It is addressed to Salesforce's co-CEOs, and raises concerns about the environmental and economic impact of NFTs, calling them "unregulated, highly speculative financial assets."
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Hundreds of Salesforce Employees Object To NFT Plans

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  • by sentiblue ( 3535839 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @03:35PM (#62292621)
    No offense at all towards anyone who likes NFT. I alone just don't think this is a healthy thing. I mean a guy literally sells a picture of a rock for the price equivalent to my entire year net salary. There are other things sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars and it sounds to me like a way to clean money instead because the value of the item is no where above 100 bucks.
    • No offense at all towards anyone who likes NFT. I alone just don't think this is a healthy thing. I mean a guy literally sells a picture of a rock for the price equivalent to my entire year net salary...

      Doesn't even sell a picture of a rock. Sells an encrypted digital file certifying that you own a picture of a rock.

      • by ZipK ( 1051658 )
        At least the people selling land on the moon give you an engraved deed, suitable for framing.

        https://lunarregistry.com/moon... [lunarregistry.com]
        • At least the people selling land on the moon give you an engraved deed, suitable for framing.

          But how do you know they aren't selling the same lunar plot to someone else?

          If the deed was an NFT, you would know.

          Imagine spending billions on a launch vehicle, lander, and habitat, just to arrive on the moon and find someone else already living on your plot.

      • by splutty ( 43475 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @04:14PM (#62292857)

        Sells an encrypted digital ledger entry that certifies you own that digital ledger entry. Not the picture, not the rock, that entry.

        And nothing more. Everything else is just someone, somewhere, associating that picture with that ledger entry.

        Like an icon on your desktop being associated with the link file that eventually runs some executable. You 'own' that icon. Not the link, not the executable, just the icon.

        • I used to describe it as selling a browser bookmark to someone, but this works too.
        • by Falos ( 2905315 )

          Which had me thinking, if I can sell people a million dollar piece of paper and write anything on it, why am I not selling ledger claims that say:

          "Congratulations, you now own* an NFT of an NFT!" or "You now own* an NFT of a person!"

    • I tend to see it as art. The kind of thing Boggs would have created.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • It's probably more accurate to describe it as a way to "notarize" a digital "asset." At least in the same sense that anybody can write "you now own X" on a napkin and pretend that it means something.
        • That's the gimmick, but the heart of the issue is what value things have. Turn anything into a commodity and trade it! That is the Boggs-like arty angle. Well, that plus all of this seeming a lot like a scam.
    • it sounds to me like a way to clean money

      Bingo.

      If you or I post a NFT of our favorite rock.jpg for sale, no one will buy it. The ones you see selling for big bucks are doing so to make the income from shady dealings appear to be legitimate. Those dumb ape NFTs probably come with a "free" shipment of meth.

      • Hit submit a little early, I also meant to add:

        Additionally, if you buy one of these NFTs without having prearranged for your "free" meth, you'll soon discover that buying artwork used as a front/laundering method has left you with a possession of little resale value. Even in the real world, artwork is surprisingly difficult to resell without taking a loss.

        • Even in the real world, artwork is surprisingly difficult to resell without taking a loss.

          Plenty of "real" art sales are also laundering or fronting.

          NFTs are just digitizing what has been going on for many decades.

    • Thank you for correcting me guys... yes indeed the transaction only gives you the proof that you own the material, not the material itself.

      For those who worry your moon plot may be sold to others, worry not! NFT can prove that your plot is unique and you're the only owner.
  • by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @04:10PM (#62292843)

    In it, Salesforce criticized the spacefaring billionaires for ignoring Earthly problems in their race into the empyrean.

    In every US city, Salesforce has its name on the tallest building. I have always wondered what in hell that company does. The commercial would lead us to think it was feeding hungry millions or doing pharma research. But no: it's "customer relationship management" apparently now with a side of minting pictures of tulip bulbs.

    Salesforce, we are in awe of your great git to humanity.

    • In every US city, Salesforce has its name on the tallest building.

      I assure you, they do not.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      I don't actually know what the software does, but a couple years ago I worked at a company that used it.

      Some perspective on this company: They had us in tech support creating what would normally be called tickets, in some godawful weird 1980s software. (It had a field to enter your "car phone" number.) When Windows 7 reached EOL, they finally had to upgrade, since that was the last version to support 16-bit executables. "Microsoft Dynamics NAV" was the replacement. I'd never heard of it either, and it's def

  • Our planet is overheating, but Intel are pushing people to totally pointless wastage of energy with Bitcoin mining chips.

    Time for Intel staff to step up, do the right thing, and stop them.
  • TLDR: _Ownership_ (digital or otherwise) is nothing new - and NFT is just the new (currently best) way to record ownership.

    I'm sure I'll get flamed on here... but I don't understand all the hatred of NFTs. They are just a new digital record-keeping system for who owns what.

    We have TONS of digital (and paper) systems storing information on what is owned, and by whom - this is no different.

    For instance, there is entries in a database somewhere that says I own my house, the land it's on, my car, etc. The ide

    • NFTs are really just an elaborate scheme to pump Ethereum. That's reason enough to hate them.

    • You assume that said object has value to someone (beyond money laundering or hype). The ledger entry is nothing special-- just a really inefficient database. Sure, a ledger entry that is suddenly trustworthy saying that I own one ton of gold would be great. Just not sure how blockchain solves that trust or usability issue; what establishes trust of the selling entity and the exclusivity of the right.

      Comparing to trading cards is fair; scarcity (and liquidity) is what creates value. In and of itself, an NFT

      • What I like about it, compared to a database, is that the entry can’t change unless I take an action.

        If someone at the DMV modified the wrong entry in their database and now it no longer shows that you own your car it will be a mess to sort out. With NFTs that is not possible.

        • Impossible without a 51% attack anyway.

        • Sadly, no, the blockchain doesn't even manage this simple feat. There have been numerous scams, hacks and malicious actors who have exploited weaknesses in the higher level functions that operate on top of the various blockchains and then the blockchain maintainers pull effectively a coup to rollback the stuff they don't want. I suppose it's good news within bad that at the very least they are forced to do this (mostly) in the open so that you can see that there's now an "old" chain and a "new" chain and th

    • by jemmyw ( 624065 )
      Welp you've just painted a horrible dystopian nightmare to occupy my thoughts for the day. Everything I own being recorded on a public database over which I have no control and have to pay to participate in.

      > Epic records that that person owns it and can use it. This could be recorded via NFT instead... and it would have the advantages of being publicly verifiable and _transferable_.

      Only if Epic allows that to happen. Someone was getting breathless about this subject on another forum and their answer to
    • but I don't understand all the hatred of NFTs.

      If you're sincere about the lack of understanding, then I shall be sincere about attempting to explain it.

      Yes, it's super long, so the tl;dr is "databases exist and solve every use case noted because 'independent verification' is far less helpful than it sounds; also 'assigning value' is done differently for different things and a publicly accessible certificate of authenticity is not itself a store of value". With that, let's get started....

      They are just a new digital record-keeping system for who owns what.

      This is true...but the fundamental issue is that all the 'legitima

      • I won't say you 'summed up' my thoughts :), but I totally agree. Blockchain solves edge cases by adding complexity and new edge cases.

        I really think that people buying into an infallible 'beurocracy' should go back and watch Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil'.

  • Actual Fucking Things.

  • Does anyone here know of any of their acquaintance who actually bought an NFT first hand at any significant/material cost ?

    Because I know of no one. Just reading about it, hearsay l, people or devs just testing or trying it out by transacting their own test NFTs and such.

    If someone here actually bought one please stand up and tell us why for God's Sake

  • The employees can quit. And what does "unregulated, highly speculative financial assets" have to do with the environment? Investing in the future is always speculative. Nothing is guaranteed.

    Salesforce is a for profit business. It answers to the stockholders not a bunch of whining employees.

    The employees can quit if they don't like it.

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