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Bye, Amazon

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Re: Bye, Amazon

#961

Post by vinay427 »

Wilem82 wrote: post #941
la6471 wrote: post #938

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think many people in amazon agree with Tim Bray. The pragmatic ones know that these kind of stories have a heavy political overtone , but more importantly amazon probably have better conditions than all other retailers in the world. Granted it is not perfect but a more meaningful way to change the condition of minimum wage or low wage laborers is through legislative changes or basic income schemes.

> more importantly amazon probably have better conditions than all other retailers in the world That's not possible, the US has the worst worker protection laws in the world, it's really quite an undeveloped country in that regard.

Source needed on that first claim. I've spent a decent amount of time in some developing countries and I came out with no confidence that these types of labor laws are ordinarily enforced, if they even exist. I think you grossly overestimate these protections for relatively low-skilled labor outside of the developed world.

I'm not taking the claim you replied to at face value (it's exceedingly extreme to even be plausibly true) but they at least included a "probably" to allow for some doubt.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#962

Post by anon-kun »

ForHackernews wrote: post #960
mrslave wrote: post #911

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Daylight is the best disinfectant Shame about all the deplatforming then

Sunshine as disinfectant only works if the corrupt parties have some sense of shame; they change their behaviour when exposed. Providing a platform for vile attention-seekers doesn't make them less vile. They have no shame.

The point of not deplatforming people and keeping them in "sunlight" is NOT that they can keep getting shamed by others.

Its that a dialog can happen and people change there minds.

But sadly like you shown its not about finding a solution but winning, feeling superior and dragging other people down.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#963

Post by brodouevencode »

ForHackernews wrote: post #960
mrslave wrote: post #911

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Daylight is the best disinfectant Shame about all the deplatforming then

Sunshine as disinfectant only works if the corrupt parties have some sense of shame; they change their behaviour when exposed. Providing a platform for vile attention-seekers doesn't make them less vile. They have no shame.

I think there's some truth in that. But it also assumes that the consumer (of whatever crap they're spewing) isn't smart enough to understand or see this. IDK - I think most people are capable of seeing through it _provided_ they are exposed to counterpoints. That's not to say that there shouldn't be some level of monitoring. Obviously someone breaking an egregious law and posting it on YouTube should have their post taken down. Admittedly there's probably grey area in that too.

What worries me about content policing and deplatforming is that now the companies that run the platform become the de facto police. And as we see in this very post and many of the associated comments that is a very, very dangerous thing.

EDIT: clarity

Re: Bye, Amazon

#964

Post by smoe »

ultraluminous wrote: post #927
smoe wrote: post #895

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are in a position of power, why should you care whether people hate your guts? And only people that don't depend on you or that don't benefit from a good relationship with you will treat you like a monster. There is quite the discrepancy for example in European history between royals acting like monsters and people treating them as such. Sure, eventually you'll have the people grab the pitchforks and roll out…

Lynching slaves was immoral, unethical and "blameworthy" before it became illegal.

And did it stop because people felt bad about themselves doing so or because some people were pointing fingers at them?

Look, I absolutely agree that something can be and often is immoral, unethical and "blameworthy" before it is illegal, and maybe my non-native English is a bit clunky.

But I do not care about having the moral high ground. I care about continued bad behavior having consequences, society protecting itself from bad actors. This can indeed be done trough various means (non exhaustive):

- Create incentives to act in a more desired way

- Call for boycotts and shunning them socially to try to force them to change

- Change the environment so bad behavior no longer provides benefits

- Create / update law

- Actually enforce the existing law

- Having increasingly big protest movements up to revolution / civil war scale

I'm fine with any combination of those depending on context and/or as different steps of escalation. I just think a bunch of people voicing anger at corporations on the internet doesn't do anything and, on the other hand, in a lot of places the situation is not bad enough to justify violence yet. So I lean towards a middle way using the instruments of these supposed democracies to change things.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#965

Post by KirinDave »

mrslave wrote: post #911
brodouevencode wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMHO firing whistle blowers is the kind of action that should be called out as very negative and not something to be apologetic about. Agree 100%. Daylight is the best disinfectant, especially in publicly traded companies. Every CEO, CMO, etc loves white-knighting ("We care about the environment/our employees!") until the shareholders start calling. Then they're the first to start covering up problems. That's not t…

> Daylight is the best disinfectant Shame about all the deplatforming then

Do you think this statement makes sense?

Re: Bye, Amazon

#966

Post by esotericn »

softwaredoug wrote: post #779
taurath wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course as he is pointing out, he's in a position where he can afford to do so financially I'd just want to point out that the workers who are in the middle are the ones who can afford to do so financially and have the power to make management change things. If you're a programmer and make decent money, consider not putting yourself in a position where you must compromise your morals, such as accepting the compan…

Also why a FAANG anticompetitive stranglehold on tech is so horrifying. If you speak out against Amazon, will another tech giant hire you? Probably not...

Cool, so don't work for them.

At a minimum, Facebook, Amazon and Google should be split up.

Apple are trying to kill general purpose computing.

Netflix - well, they're just selling sugar water, I suppose they're the best of a bad bunch.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#967

Post by cromantic »

I applaud this move from Tim. It takes gumption to walk away from a VP-level FAANG salary for anything, especially personal morals. I have only one small thing to add as an ex-Amazon employee:

>Amazon Web Services (the “Cloud Computing” arm of the company), where I worked, is a different story. It treats its workers humanely, strives for work/life balance, struggles to move the diversity needle (and mostly fails, but so does everyone else), and is by and large an ethical organization. I genuinely admire its leadership.

This was not and (as far as I keep in contact with old coworkers) is not the case for people working in the data centers operations department. I imagine that area shares similarities with the average warehouse environment. There is a quick turnover (a year on average), a dependence on contracted workers, demanding physical labor, untrustworthy managers, and most of all, the dehumanizing metrics. I remember most of us had dreams to transition to cloud support and get away from the lonely and stressful life as a data center tech.

I think the only people feeling okay at Amazon are corporate and/or AWS software engineers. The rest are feeling the full effects of Amazon's corporate culture. Which is to say, the full rod of Bezos' sadistic corporate philosophy.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#968

Post by vkaku »

aguyfromnb wrote: post #196
jillesvangurp wrote: post #122

It's a wake up call, or at least an attempt at that, for the likes of Amazon that if they are looking to have reputable people, like Tim Bray, associate themselves and their name with you, there are certain standards that have to be met. Amazon, MS, Google, Apple, etc. rank among the most wealthy companies in the world and they've each had to deal with internal pressures where their employees voiced concerns about ce…

> It's a wake up call, or at least an attempt at that, for the likes of Amazon that if they are looking to have reputable people, like Tim Bray, associate themselves and their name with you, there are certain standards that have to be met. Prominent VCs are calling for people to get back to work every day on Twitter. The rest of the world is waking up to these people, but we have a long way to go before Silicon Valle…

It is surprising that the rest of the world is already woke, but the software engineers in these companies have not risen to the reality yet. And that has led to their successful manipulation of neglecting anything but money.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#969

Post by goatlover »

esotericn wrote: post #966
softwaredoug wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also why a FAANG anticompetitive stranglehold on tech is so horrifying. If you speak out against Amazon, will another tech giant hire you? Probably not...

Cool, so don't work for them. At a minimum, Facebook, Amazon and Google should be split up. Apple are trying to kill general purpose computing. Netflix - well, they're just selling sugar water, I suppose they're the best of a bad bunch.

Netflix as opposed to some other streaming service or cable? What makes them bad?

Re: Bye, Amazon

#970

Post by BurningFrog »

raihansaputra wrote: post #937
BurningFrog wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is maybe a radical argument, but I make it in good faith; if your business can only exist by paying workers at or below poverty wages, and/or enacting dehumanizing controls, it probably shouldn't exist. The problem is that once you close the business and fire the underpaid employees, they don't disappear. Now they're unemployed and make $0/hour. This blind spot fascinates me. The best explanation I've seen is…

Thanks for the link. I have some thoughts after reading it, mainly entangling with scale of the solutions, optics, and higher-order effects, but I think it's still an incomplete thought. It does drive people crazy to think about the things we can do for people who need help, the optics of how to help and how much can we help. Do you have any more books/articles related to this?

I don't have any more material I've vetted.

If you google "The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics", lots of things come up though. Happy hunting!

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