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Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

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Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#81

Post by inerte »

malandrew wrote: post #77
inerte wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not because they said the organizer isn't eloquent or smart, but because Amazon wants to make this person the face of the movement. They're trying to make the whole movement look dumb by proxy, or that anyone who joined the movement is dumb because they're following a dumb guy. The public PR angle is that only a dumb stupid babbling person would deny the goodness that Amazon does for its employees and try to organize…

How is this any different than the liberal media making Trump the voice of conservatives in the 2016? (which backfired spectacularly and led to his rise and eventual win in the election). Before liberals downvote me. Conservative media does this too. In fact, journalism these days regardless of political views is riddled with making someone look bad to score cheap points. One of the most toxic more recent development…

It is no different. All communication is biased, and everybody has an angle. It is the joy of being a thinking social animal :)

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#82

Post by DubiousPusher »

koheripbal wrote: post #48
DubiousPusher wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately this is the low bar set by a lot of modern journalism. We need a way out of it back to neutral, factual reporting. Creating fact focused journalism is a laudible goal but I'd be curious of what specific time in history you think that this was generally the case?

The 1980's had excellent investigative journalism. Journalists these days limit their fact-finding to what tweets they can dig up.

Unless, you were gay or an intravenous drug user. Then you got to hear journalists literally laughing along with the Reagan administration's jokular jokes about the disease that might kill you. Or you didn't because no one reported about that at the time.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#83

Post by dylan604 »

MattGrommes wrote: post #43

Amazon really could be just as big as they are without going down the Walmart route of being actively shitty / evil. It sucks that they're choosing not to do that.

The only way to beat Walmart is to out Walmart them. Overwork and underpay employees, find the cheapest products forgoing legitimacy/quality/etc. It's not very shocking this is where we are.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#84

Post by guitarbill »

anigbrowl wrote: post #53
barryrandall wrote: post #8

This Vice story is just part of the smear campaign. Strategy: “We should spend the first part of our response strongly laying out the case for why the organizer’s conduct was immoral, unacceptable, and arguably illegal, in detail, and only then follow with our usual talking points about worker safety,” Zapolsky wrote. “Make him the most interesting part of the story, and if possible make him the face of the entire un…

“I let my emotions draft my words and get the better of me.” What a pathetic excuse from the General Counsel of one of the world's most powerful firms when caught engaging in employee retaliation. This isn't acceptable from any lawyer.

if you were cynical, you might say this is just yet another attempt at spin; to present himself as a relatable human (like "we all get angry, we all make mistakes", although note he didn't use e.g. angry, but "frustrated", "upset", and "emotions", vaguer and more passive options).

this could work, too, as long as you forget that drafting words seems to literally be his job (for which i'm sure he's handsomely rewarded).

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#85

Post by JorgeGT »

oh_sigh wrote: post #73
nitrogen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposedly so is the practice of using subtle variations in spelling, word choice, word order, spacing, typography, etc. to identify recipients of documents.

This is exactly what I worked on ~10 years ago at amazon, embedding steganographic information into a certain internal app that reported confidential sales numbers. Ended up catching the person who leaked this: https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/04/leaked-sales-data-puts-kin...

Out of curiosity, can you share a ballpark of how many different variations can you generate per, say, paragraph of text?

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#86

Post by mavsman »

oh_sigh wrote: post #73
nitrogen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposedly so is the practice of using subtle variations in spelling, word choice, word order, spacing, typography, etc. to identify recipients of documents.

This is exactly what I worked on ~10 years ago at amazon, embedding steganographic information into a certain internal app that reported confidential sales numbers. Ended up catching the person who leaked this: https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/04/leaked-sales-data-puts-kin...

Curious how you feel about that now. Any guilt about building that? Pride? Ambivalence?

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#87

Post by divbzero »

inerte wrote: post #19
_2d30 wrote: post #5

I know that that's the title of the article but I read the article and came away mostly thinking nothing was all that bad. Is it because the notes said the organizer isn't eloquent or smart that there is reason to be upset?

Not because they said the organizer isn't eloquent or smart, but because Amazon wants to make this person the face of the movement. They're trying to make the whole movement look dumb by proxy, or that anyone who joined the movement is dumb because they're following a dumb guy. The public PR angle is that only a dumb stupid babbling person would deny the goodness that Amazon does for its employees and try to organize…

Agreed with P that the dirty part is Amazon trying to smear an entire labor movement by focusing on this organizer. Ironically the strategy has completely backfired.

Agreed with GP that the other parts of the memo about obtaining and distributing masks don’t sound so bad at all, especially if they actually translate it into safer environments at warehouses and surrounding communities.

In general, I wish companies who want to avoid unions just treated their workers well enough that they don’t want to unionize — seems like the most straight up way to “fight” unions. It’s akin to simply improving your product to get more users instead of employing dark patterns or grey hat SEO.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#88

Post by throwanem »

nitrogen wrote: post #67
daenz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redacting is a long accepted practice when revealing information but preserving secrets.

Supposedly so is the practice of using subtle variations in spelling, word choice, word order, spacing, typography, etc. to identify recipients of documents.

Word choice works best, assuming the source is textual; simple alternation of synonyms gives 2^n unique versions in the number of replacement candidates, and it's not hard to automate. You ideally want to take measures to reduce the likelihood of a given recipient seeing anyone else's copy and thus having a chance to spot the variance, but there are ways to do that and in most cases it's not all that likely in the first place.

On the other hand, news outlets that receive leaks are typically well aware of these techniques and will act to frustrate them. When you see a leak reported on but not directly published, that's why. If you want to evaluate veracity, a good method is to look at any response made by the source. In this case, it's legit; if it weren't, the Amazon GC would say so. He's not going to lie in a way that discovery will make immediately obvious in any case that comes of this, so he made the world's worst excuse instead. The surprise is that he let himself be reached for comment at all - between that and the "yeah, I sure did goof it, huh?" style of what he said when he was, I wouldn't be too astonished to see a golden handshake eventuate in the fullness of time.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#89

Post by throwanem »

JorgeGT wrote: post #85
oh_sigh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I worked on ~10 years ago at amazon, embedding steganographic information into a certain internal app that reported confidential sales numbers. Ended up catching the person who leaked this: https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/04/leaked-sales-data-puts-kin...

Out of curiosity, can you share a ballpark of how many different variations can you generate per, say, paragraph of text?

If you choose N words to alternate with one synonym each, you can make 2^n unique versions.

Re: Leaked Amazon memo details plan to smear fired warehouse organizer

#90

Post by JorgeGT »

throwanem wrote: post #89
JorgeGT wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, can you share a ballpark of how many different variations can you generate per, say, paragraph of text?

If you choose N words to alternate with one synonym each, you can make 2^n unique versions.

Oh, I was thinking in more subtle things such as spacing, punctuation, sizing, kerning, etc.
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