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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

#101

Post by oh_sigh »

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?

What I worked on was more like a spreadsheet, so I didn't use any of the text-oriented steganographic techniques like replacing words with synonyms, etc.

I was able to develop enough variations that vastly outnumbered our users though, so even with just a portion of a screenshot, you could fairly easily figure out where it came from.

Just looking at possible CSS rules and you can see where the variations come into play - cell width, border width and styles, font color(e.g. the specific green or red that represents gain/loss), kerning, column placement , etc.

On top of that, I only fudged with display elements - the numbers were never changed. However, the numbers were updated on a near-continuous basis by ingesting various logs, so any column that was live(year/month-to-date, etc) would have only a very small time range where that number could have been displayed to the user.

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

#102

Post by DubiousPusher »

malandrew wrote: post #95
DubiousPusher wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So I watched the Cronkite stuff and it seems pretty similar to this.

https://youtu.be/VDv3_KfdBs4

So is your gripe generally applies to all contemporary journalism or specifically with CNN and Fox News? Isn't it just as likely that legacy news sources are still doing the news pretty much the way they always have but that the availability of alternative sources has allowed people to diverge their opinion from a mainstream one more than they could before? (Which I'm not saying is good or bad. I think it likely has benefits and drawbacks.)

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

#103

Post by throwanem »

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.

Lifting it from one of my comments downthread:

Better to make the world's worst excuse than lie in a way that'll instantly be revealed in discovery for any case that comes of this.

The surprise is that he let himself be reached for comment at all. Between that and the "yeah, I sure goofed 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

#104

Post by throwanem »

oh_sigh wrote: post #97
mavsman wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 desig…

Having done the same kind of work - yeah, that. For every Edward Snowden, there's at least ten thousand Frank Underwoods and Michael Scotts.

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

#105

Post by gowld »

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…

There's a difference between the US President and a single warehouse worker, no?

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

#106

Post by TechBro8615 »

tehjoker wrote: post #55
Mizza wrote: post #4

A really disgusting but predictable thing to fall out of this whole fiasco is to watch Obama-era staffers aggressively side with management against labour: https://twitter.com/JayCarney/status/1245474780746330119

2008: Obama wins Ad Age's marketeer of the year. https://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-marke...

2016: Cambridge Analytica is "the hack of the century" for using the exact same tactics

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

#109

Post by jshevek »

pas wrote: post #96
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm also interested. I was paying attention to memes during that period and don't remember any which fit.

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

#110

Post by jshevek »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #50
downerending wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but it was my impression that quality journalism was generally the case in the 1980s (in the US at least). What I was reading then certainly seemed to be. Separation of church and state was taken very seriously. These days, you can't start with the assumption that a story is written to J standards. Rather, you need to start with the assumption that it's pushing narrative, and hope to be surprised.

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.

No, things have gone from bad to terrible in the internet era.
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