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I feel like im talking to the borg

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161–170 of 387 posts

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. We're even psychologically inclined to agree with RO because "it" is "fighting the good fight" and "fighting The Man", etc. Whether she's legitimately exactly who she says she is or "it" is just a next-level PR AI whose sole purpose is harming Amazon, we have little way of knowing, especially outside this specific example.

"legitimately exactly who she says she is" as if the timeline of her twitter account didn't lend to her identity. Especially in contrast to the Amazon FC accounts which are brand new and follow 0 other twitter users.

I am kind of shocked at the conversation above simply because of how evidently right you are.

Does she have an agenda? Yes clearly. She isn't hiding it. She has a long history of laying it right out in the open.

Does Amazon have an agenda too? Yes and they are ham-handedly trying to pretend they don't.

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#162

I doubt these are bots. One of them says: > I don't get compensated per tweet. I get paid $15/hr whether I am answering tweets or out on the floor stowing. I do this 2 days a week and 2 days a week I stow. While I think it's weird that Amazon is doing this, I also doubt that the warehouse jobs are bad jobs. I've done manual labor for less than $15/hr and I'd much rather have a job like that than, say, a job in a rest…

I'm going to keep asking the same question and resort to ad hominem attacks until I get the answer that I am looking for!

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#163

I don't get this. There's a reason why they make AstroTurf green. If you're Amazon and you're trying to generate realistic good buzz about your work conditions don't name the accounts "AmazonDrone643278" or similar.

What they're trying to do is a bit of false transparency thinking if they show the people they're paying to tweet are associated with the brand it'll look less fake because "if they were being fake we'd hide it" or something similar. If it was paired with something less artificial and hyper cheery it might have worked but the relentless positivity and the fact that no one person replies more than twice it feel real fake real fast.

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you about the tree-like conversations. It would be great if there were a site or a an app that could display them AS trees.

Some of the FC Ambassador accounts may not be genuine. E.g. I'm fairly sure Slavoj Žižek isn't working in an Amazon warehouse. Then again - we're all in this gig economy thing, so maybe anything is possible.

Žižek is a rather famous philosopher and frequently engages in public discourse. Might be worth it to check his Wikipedia page[1] and/or YouTube presence.

Not saying this is he himself, but obviously not an Amazon employee at least.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#165
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience being in a union tells me it's not. But unions literally are (within the law) whatever their members decide they will be, so if you expect that of your potential union, it just means you expect it of your coworkers.

Some bad companies: no big deal, no one's making you stay, leave if you don't like it. Some bad unions: all unions are awful and the solution is to not have unions.

If a company is bad you can just switch to another company, if a powerful union is bad you'd have to switch to another industry.

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#166
post #40
post #15

Can somebody explain how to parse the page linked here? This seems like deeplinking Intl the middle of a conversation. Side note: it feels like Twitter specifically has done immeasurable damage to the discourse. Why does the communication have to be presented so confusingly? To an outsider it seems like it’s to create maximum outrage/confusion/dopamine response. That’s much scarier to me than a customer service team.

Came here to ask the same. Twitter is utterly unreadble to me. Since they are linked to quite often, I once wanted to give them feedback that their website is pretty bad and _really_ annoying to use with a browser since they nag and nag and nag about using their app instead (just like reddit). Well, that was fruitless since they of course wanted me to have an account for that... The web is not as good nowadays unfort…

What would it be OK for people to link to?

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#168
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you're either with them or against them. well if you're dealing with a corporate entity the size of amazon and their weird bot/shill twitter army that's pretty much the only sane response. Do you seriously think if you chat nicely with these PR people they're going to hook you up with someone who matters and amazon is going to have a nice chat about their anti-union practises with you over a cup of tea? Makes about…

> and if these combatative tweets bring attention to their PR campaigns than that's a plus I'm not convinced that's a thing. I see a lot of twitter styled activism and I'm not sure what the impact is outside of maybe some anecdotal events.

of course a single young person can't do much other than speak (which is after all supposed to be the point of twitter), but on the aggregate it does shift the conservation. Over the last few years people have become more aware of amazon's business practises and it is starting to be reflected in politics, on both sides of the isle.

Sure, a tweet chain like this isn't going to change the world, but it's better than nothing or to pretend you can have a genuine discussion with Seth "fc ambassador" your friendly neighbourhood employee who is literally reading talking points off a page

I mean just genuinely look at these accounts, there's a guy who looks like 20 and claims to have grandchildren, then there's someone switching gender mid-conversation, it's like something out of a Kafka novel. In East Germany people used to refer to the increasingly bizarre existing social order as Realsozialismus, I think we've entered Realkapitalismus.

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#169
post #125

I feel like this is twitter in a nutshell, and that goes for everyone involved. The very first response is "eally like? cause your workers are liars?" There we go, now the entire conversation is everything or nothing, you're either with them or against them. Then it's off into personal attacks and arguments about followers and etc. Nobody is talking to each other in any of that. They're just posting for everyone else…

It is Pavlov's dog experiment, where instead of the bell, you have a like/retweet Count conditioning and reinforcing behavior. Natural human interaction has never had a number placed next to every thought and utterance.

The numbers have fucked up the way people think and behave.

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#170
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modern capitalist societies—marked by a universalization of money-based social relations, a consistently large and system-wide class of workers who must work for wages, and a capitalist class which owns the means of production [....] Emphasis mine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

I expected another definition in the context of that comment, but fine. According to that, it's anyone who owns the means to production, and is thus the most open class possible. Rather strange to say they're dividing and conquering when anyone can join.

Anyone who owns the means but does not actually do the work of production. This is in contrast to a worker-owned structure. It leads to concentration of power, since the profit from many workers goes to one or a few owners. Each owner is more powerful than any one worker, so workers have to act collectively to have leverage.
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