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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

#91

Post by DubiousPusher »

malandrew wrote: post #76
DubiousPusher wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should consider the possibility that the news wasn't necessarily any better just more people had faith in a few sources such as broadcast news and national papers, leading to less contention of the facts.

Back in the day, news organizations could make money by just presenting the facts first ahead of any other news organization. Just being the first to collect and disseminate information was the key to success. Collecting and disseminating information is now a commodity and the way to be the first in front of someone to make money off add impressions requires virality, and the most clickbait biased content is how you…

Back in what day specifically?

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

#92

Post by stefan_ »

Zapolsky seems like the kind of person who, and you don't have to go too far back in history, would be drafted, deployed and then promptly unceremoniously shot in the back by those around him when they discovered his adventurous streak in putting them at risk.

Now that we are in a state of emergency, maybe we can instead arrest those psychopaths that sit at home in pyjamas, log into their Zoom meeting and draft up plans to disparage and terminate the people exposed and speaking up against unsafe practices. They are traitors, a net negative on the world.

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

#93

Post by throwanem »

JorgeGT wrote: post #90
throwanem wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ideally you don't want to count on a screenshot being published.

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

#94

Post by erentz »

Pfhreak wrote: post #28
throwawaysea wrote: post #21

This article's title is sensationalist. Based on the article's content itself, there doesn't seem to be anything in here about "smearing" at all. Definition from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/smear... : "to publicly accuse someone of something unpleasant, unreasonable, or unlikely to be true in order to harm their reputation" Second definition from https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/sm…

> Lastly, everyone seems to ignore that this employee violated a direct work order to not come on site... Keep asking why. Why was this worker ordered to stay home. Was it because he had a brief, 5 minute contact with a covid-19 patient? Other news outlets say that Smalls was unique in his being sent home. Or maybe was it because he was pushing for a union and the company wanted to find a way to keep him out. Given t…

He had been complaining to management and organizing before that. Sending him, and ONLY him, home was a punishment under the guise of being quarantine. They did not quarantine any other individual that had contacted the same person he contacted of which there were dozens.

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

#95

Post by malandrew »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #91
malandrew wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day, news organizations could make money by just presenting the facts first ahead of any other news organization. Just being the first to collect and disseminate information was the key to success. Collecting and disseminating information is now a commodity and the way to be the first in front of someone to make money off add impressions requires virality, and the most clickbait biased content is how you…

Back in what day specifically?

Back before collecting and disseminating information rapidly became a commodity. So basically before CNN approximately and definitely before blogs.

There's not a specific moment in time. There are specific innovations that accelerated and commodified the dissemination of facts, which each contributing to this decline in journalistic integrity and greater faithfulness to facts.

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

#96

Post by pas »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #69
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…

Oddly, it reminds me of the way big banks handled Occupy movement. That was the first time I saw memes used as a carrier for straight propaganda. It was a sad moment for me. Mostly because having seen one of those memes, I immediately understood how terrifyingly effective they can be. Amazon has clearly learned a lot over the past few decades. odd edit: Just in case. I was kinda doing a fair amount of shorts on Amazo…

Could you show a few of those memes from back then?

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

#97

Post by oh_sigh »

mavsman wrote: post #86
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...

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

No guilt at all - mostly ambivalence. It was actually my idea to put it into the specific product, but it's not like I invented the technique or anything. It was only one small thing I worked on, 98% of my time was on something else.

I think the ability to leak information about the wrongdoing of corporations or governments is extremely important, but most of the leaks I see coming out of the tech industry seem designed just to score points in some internal political war or push the company in the direction that the leaker wants it to go. Or just for some weird form of self-aggrandizement

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

#98

Post by cmrdporcupine »

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…

I seem to remember "liberal" media being quite obsessed with reporting on never-Trump and disaffected conservatives who were horrified by Trump. In so far as Trump is presented as the voice of conservatives it's because conservatives in the US have made him that by supporting him with absolutely insane approval ratings, no matter what he does.

Also complaining about downvoting usually just leads to downvotes...

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

#99

Post by draw_down »

stefan_ wrote: post #92

Zapolsky seems like the kind of person who, and you don't have to go too far back in history, would be drafted, deployed and then promptly unceremoniously shot in the back by those around him when they discovered his adventurous streak in putting them at risk. Now that we are in a state of emergency, maybe we can instead arrest those psychopaths that sit at home in pyjamas, log into their Zoom meeting and draft up pl…

I’m with you. But of course that won’t ever happen.

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

#100

Post by [deleted] »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #91
malandrew wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day, news organizations could make money by just presenting the facts first ahead of any other news organization. Just being the first to collect and disseminate information was the key to success. Collecting and disseminating information is now a commodity and the way to be the first in front of someone to make money off add impressions requires virality, and the most clickbait biased content is how you…

Back in what day specifically?

[deleted]
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