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'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

bbc.com

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Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#51

Post by BitwiseFool »

kleer001 wrote: post #18
skohan wrote: post #3

I feel like authenticity of online communication is an unsolved problem. The web was supposed to be a democratizing platform: all you need to communicate with the world is an ISP and a keyboard. But if there's no way to control for authenticity, online sentiment will just be an arms race for who can pay for the best astroturfing.

According to a loose interpretation of Plato in The republic referencing the story of The Ring of Gyges anonymity basically ruins people. IMHO we'd need what we can't easily have, single-confirmed-identity-accounts for everyone. If Tim Berners Lee had been more of a pessimist, a historian, and a psychologist he might have baked in some end to end encryption with public/private key pairs and account centrality. But he…

I don't think verified identities would address the fakeness/authenticity problem because you could simply pay someone to shill with their verified account. Sure, you would know 'who' posted the opinion but you could never be sure if they were being compensated to do so. You also run into the issue of people being seemingly authentic with their views, but also being paid to promote them. Brooklyn Dad Defiant is a great example, he's consistent with his views, he's not anonymous, and he also got paid $60k by a PAC.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#52

Post by seneca »

kleer001 wrote: post #23
seneca wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagreed. Authenticity is incompatible with Anonymity. All the surveillance companies would love to tell you you can authenticate your identity with them and be anonymous elsewhere, but they, and Governments, are the exact entities we should be hiding out identities from. People need to be trained to be skeptical of voices online.

I agree with your main point. > People need to be trained But, hmmm, I don't think a call for education is a solution. That's basically whack-a-mole. Stupid people are born every minute, there's no stopping stupid. Better to put bumpers on them and keep the rest of us safe.

As much as the idealists in me would like to, I can't disagree. How do you go about achieving that in a democratic society though?

Misinformation is like a virus, and it spreads through a population easiest when they accept and share it. All that takes is for it to confirm some preconceived idea or to flatter them. Critical thinking, or at least base line skepticism, seems like the only inoculation.

You're not wrong that that may be too much to expect from people though.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#53

Post by egypturnash »

failrate wrote: post #40
barsonme wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps one angle to tackle the problem is to educate the group(s) of people who continue to believe whatever they read on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Unfortunately this isn’t just limited to the over 40 crowd. People are willing to believe whatever affirms their beliefs. Growing up on the Internet does not change this.

I remember before common folk had internet, and there was still disinformation, misinformation, and plain bullshit.

Media literacy, marketing techniques, and propaganda techniques really need to be part of an elementary school education. But the US's education system is a giant underfunded mess, so good luck adding anything useful like that. I got a decent education in that sort of thing but it was entirely through my parents and stuff they got for me, Consumer Reports used to have a great kid's magazine that combined reviews of kid products with that sort of education, for instance.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#54

Post by HDMI_Cable »

fipar wrote: post #39
mox1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and if you are somewhat tech savvy OR "grew up" on the internet (say 40 and younger) you understand this. The problem is previous generations who don't really understand this. Perhaps one angle to tackle the problem is to educate the group(s) of people who continue to believe whatever they read on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

I agree on the need to educate people, but disagree on the age group criteria. I've met enough people under 40 who believe whatever they read online, especially if it confirms their existing set of beliefs.

That’s basically everyone. Confirmation Bias is one hell of a drug.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#55

Post by oh_sigh »

uoaei wrote: post #48
oh_sigh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point. Unions have never done anything shady, they're too busy feeding the poor and rescuing kittens in trees. Snark aside, OP never said it was the union doing it. It could just be someone outside the potential union members who just supports unions in general, or doesn't support Amazon, who is doing it. What other explanation is there? Do you think there is some die-hard Amazon supporter who goes out…

Essentializing all unions based on the behavior of a few of them, vs summarizing a single company's behavior who has a visible and obvious track record of breaking up unionization efforts via nefarious and underhanded tactics, are completely incomparable. If you want snark, have some back: where did the big bad union boss touch you? > What other explanation is there? Hired a shoddy offshore bot-writing and astroturfi…

I never said I was anti-union. I'm just pointing out that unions aren't 100% pure forces of good. They have a good idea at their heart, and frequently they are abused by insiders for personal gain.

> Occam's razor

Amazon has an ambassador program, where they basically pay workers to post on twitter about how good their job is. You're saying they have a program for workers to post on twitter, and they also hire astroturfers to make fake posts of the same thing on twitter, using photos of moderately known celebrities as their backgrounds? I don't buy it. Amazon made the mistake of creating a system where accounts are "verified" merely by a prefix of their name - "@AmazonFC...". Therefore anyone can make an account that looks like "@AmazonFC...", not just Amazon. What amazon should have done is have a single official account, or even a single official account which links to other official accounts.

Occam's razor tells me that the most likely creator of these accounts is a troll who browses reddits ABoringDystopia sub, and is just having fun.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#56

Post by silicon2401 »

skohan wrote: post #3

I feel like authenticity of online communication is an unsolved problem. The web was supposed to be a democratizing platform: all you need to communicate with the world is an ISP and a keyboard. But if there's no way to control for authenticity, online sentiment will just be an arms race for who can pay for the best astroturfing.

Your comment shows how the web _is_ a democractizing platform, and how democracy is imperfect. Just like in meatspace, the winners are the people who can get the biggest crowds to support their ideas, not just the ideas who have the most supporters.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#57

Post by BitwiseFool »

Judgmentality wrote: post #50
BitwiseFool wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to knock people for 'lacking critical thinking' but the truth is we're all predisposed to believe what aligns with our personalities and worldviews. And people like to harp on the idea that we should be teaching critical thinking in schools, but we already do this and we have been teaching it for decades.

> we should be teaching critical thinking in schools, but we already do this and we have been teaching it for decades. This is news to me. What countries are you referencing?

The United States, where I went to school. I also want to apply some critical thinking myself and ask "why wouldn't schools have critical thinking as part of their curriculum"?

Teaching critical thinking skills is not some revolutionary idea and it's not like educators want to avoid teaching people how to do it.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#58

Post by hooande »

cecida wrote: post #43

Imagine being worth 185 billion dollars and still obsessing about your workers advocating for better pay and conditions? What a miserable existence that must be. Bezos has always struck me as a man who cares about nothing else only his own personal wealth and success. There is no joy in his life.

how would you respond if people said you were treating your employees unfairly? financial worth has nothing to do with it. if he feels that charge is untrue, he should push back against it.

I would not be nearly as measured in my response. no sir, I am not the one

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#59

Post by dave_sullivan »

skohan wrote: post #3

I feel like authenticity of online communication is an unsolved problem. The web was supposed to be a democratizing platform: all you need to communicate with the world is an ISP and a keyboard. But if there's no way to control for authenticity, online sentiment will just be an arms race for who can pay for the best astroturfing.

Klout. I'm kind of kidding but kind of not. I agree with you that it's a real problem.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#60

Post by vecter »

asdff wrote: post #13

This reminds me of the "fake" uber drivers who were texting me last election to vote yes on their hand tailored, virtually immutable proposition 22. Unfortunately this sort of easy stuff works on so many people. Prop 22 passed with 58% of the vote and they won. The cynic in me says Amazon knows they won't lose.

That's b/c Prop 22 actually left many drivers worse off. The majority of drivers prefer flexibility.
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