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What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

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Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#61

Post by jakobegger »

agwa wrote: post #43

Let's say you're a company with a serious PR problem about the working conditions in your warehouses. You set up 15 Twitter accounts claiming to be employees of your warehouses. You make sure the accounts are laughably bad at concealing the fact that they are shills, with cookie-cutter bios and responses that are obviously canned talking points. This ensures that the accounts are discovered and written up by various…

It's amazing how well this works despite being obvious propaganda. I felt my own opinion on Amazon Fullfilment Centers change as I read the article.

One thing that makes propaganda like this so effective is that journalists generally do not bother to verify any propaganda claims (eg. does Amazon really pay 30% more?), so even if they write articles making fun of you they still repeat your message.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#62

Post by dang »

danaris wrote: post #40
forapurpose wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it sounds like they did fix them On what basis? All we have is PR talking points presented, deceptively, as genuine opinions of real employees. That doesn't seem like evidence.

Maybe the bots have infiltrated HN, too?

Please don't go there, unless you have evidence. Internet discussions don't do well after this card is played.

This is in the site guidelines btw: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#63

Post by jancsika »

dlgeek wrote: post #54
DmenshunlAnlsis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when we used to call them shills instead of “brand ambassadors?” Good times. Now we have this Brave New World PR doublespeak that reflects the dehumanizing nature of working on the floor at Amazon a bit too well.

The difference is a shill hides their affiliation. These accounts are all clearly marked as being from Amazon. How is it any different from the various $Airline_Cares accounts on twitter that reply to customer complaints about bad service?

One of the "Ambassadors" responses from the article:

> "I can safely say that none of MY ideas have panned out anywhere near what Jeff Bezos has accomplished."

The most one can hope is that this is a bona fide Tweet from an employee who-- for whatever reason-- desires to self-deprecate in a completely voluntary, unremunerated defense of the company they work for during their off time.

Because if this is a PR drone posting self-deprecating statements in the name of an actual employee that's pretty humiliating behavior.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#64

Post by FC_Associate »

jancsika wrote: post #51
FC_Associate wrote: post #22

These accounts certainly seem like they are being directed or encouraged by corporate. I know quite a few of the ambassadors at the warehouse where I work and I don't think any of them would post these kind of responses on Twitter without some kind of direction from above. Also, in case there is confusion with the term "ambassador", from my understanding this is mostly an internal title for associates who lead some t…

Someone above wrote this: > People get bathroom breaks, but those count against your rate, and people do sometimes get written up for taking them, although that's as much a matter of Amazon encouraging ruthlessness in management as anything. I know of one anecdotal story of a worker who was apparently written up for the time it took them to clean up after their own nosebleed. Does this ring true to you?

So I want to be very clear that based on extensive reports I've read in the press, and anecdotes that have been shared online, what krapp said definitely goes on, but no, personally I have never witnessed that.

There are two main reasons why it's possible that I've never run across such cases, the most logical one being that I've worked primarily in a Delivery Station and not a Fulfillment Center. From what I've experienced the Delivery Stations are, for lack of a better term, not run as "efficiently" as the FC's, so the metrics that are used to track employee performance aren't quite as well quantified. There is still obviously a lot of performance tracking with regards to rates, but due to the less efficient and structured layout of the DS, there seems to be a bit more leeway given.

Also, I think I've been extremely fortunate with the management that I work under and they seem to take worker safety and the overall work environment very seriously. I can't imagine any managers at my station writing anyone up for taking bathroom breaks, and definitely not for handling a bloody nose. Again, just to be clear, I'm not at all refuting the accuracy of those reports, issues like that have definitely occurred in Amazon warehouses, but the environment at my warehouse seems to be significantly more worker friendly. I think this is probably due to our station managers' oversight.

Also, I've only been working at Amazon for slightly over one year, so it's possible that they have been making genuine progress on these issues.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#65

Post by darawk »

greglindahl wrote: post #60
darawk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, what? These people are representing themselves as employees of Amazon, who work in these factories. Unless they are lying about that , then they are in a position to know. Therefore, if they are making an assertion and it is untrue, they are lying. This isn't that complicated.

Is it possible that two employees at an Amazon facility might disagree about the ideal temperature of the facility?

Sure, but whether or not they get bathroom breaks is objective.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#67

Post by jancsika »

jakobegger wrote: post #61
agwa wrote: post #43

Let's say you're a company with a serious PR problem about the working conditions in your warehouses. You set up 15 Twitter accounts claiming to be employees of your warehouses. You make sure the accounts are laughably bad at concealing the fact that they are shills, with cookie-cutter bios and responses that are obviously canned talking points. This ensures that the accounts are discovered and written up by various…

It's amazing how well this works despite being obvious propaganda. I felt my own opinion on Amazon Fullfilment Centers change as I read the article. One thing that makes propaganda like this so effective is that journalists generally do not bother to verify any propaganda claims (eg. does Amazon really pay 30% more?), so even if they write articles making fun of you they still repeat your message.

Can you explain a little about what you felt changing in your opinion here?

What I got out of it was that Amazon had previously been dehumanizing their workers to the point that the PR drones have to now overtly brag about complying with OSHA laws.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#68

Post by eksemplar »

Had anyone ever done a piece of investigative journalism on the actual conditions at Amazon? A company that big will have some terrible managers, and the fact that it’s not discovering those easily, is problematic, but that doesn’t mean the entire company is rotten.

I’m a manager in a Scandinavian municipality, and because I work with lean and efficiency I get to see all sides of our operation. I’ve seen departments run so badly that employees were crying every day, and it took HR a year to fix it. I’ve seen departments where sleeping with the boss was the main road to a pay-raise. Hell one of our senior managers who sleeps with employees at the Christmas party, still works for us because nobody wants to step up in public. Some departments have 30% sickleave while others have 2%.

That doesn’t mean the overall working conditions are bad at the municipality. In fact we score 9/10 in employment satisfaction. This in itself is a bit of a problem though, because it’s higher than it should be, but that’s another story.

when you employ hundreds of thousands, you’re bound to have some really bad stories among them. Amazon may be all bad, and I could easily have missed the story that actually did the research, but I simply haven’t seen one.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#69

Post by RodericDay »

jakobegger wrote: post #61
agwa wrote: post #43

Let's say you're a company with a serious PR problem about the working conditions in your warehouses. You set up 15 Twitter accounts claiming to be employees of your warehouses. You make sure the accounts are laughably bad at concealing the fact that they are shills, with cookie-cutter bios and responses that are obviously canned talking points. This ensures that the accounts are discovered and written up by various…

It's amazing how well this works despite being obvious propaganda. I felt my own opinion on Amazon Fullfilment Centers change as I read the article. One thing that makes propaganda like this so effective is that journalists generally do not bother to verify any propaganda claims (eg. does Amazon really pay 30% more?), so even if they write articles making fun of you they still repeat your message.

^ this is the real propaganda right here

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#70

Post by greglindahl »

darawk wrote: post #65
greglindahl wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible that two employees at an Amazon facility might disagree about the ideal temperature of the facility?

Sure, but whether or not they get bathroom breaks is objective.

No. Different people have different opinions as to whether they get enough bathroom breaks.
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