'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#61

Post by uoaei » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #55

uoaei wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 astrot…

That's also plausible, and indeed not unlikely. In that case, I applaud the tactics. Bravo! brava! anonymous internet citizen and empathetic soul!

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#62

Post by thevardanian » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

kibleopard wrote: post #17

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.

Agreed for sure, but even the younger generations seem susceptible to believing whatever they read on Twitter, etc. There have been countless times I’ve seen people share info as de facto truth when they simply glanced at a headline Twitter pushed them without bothering to read deeper.

The secret is they don't believe in anything.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#63

Post by tcrow » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

kleer001 wrote: post #32

tcrow wrote: post #6

This is a problem the Voice.com social platform is attempting to tackle, read more about it here: https://about.voice.com/learn-more/ . I'm not affiliated with Voice in anyway, just someone who is eagerly awaiting open registration.

Interesting idea. Nothing to stop people being paid to voice another person's or company opinion though.

You're right, technically there is nothing to prevent that from happening, but I think the idea is that you only get one "Voice", so if you want to align it to something you don't necessarily believe in for the sake of money, then you will have to suffer the consequences of that. Might be a good way to thwart paid attempts at spinning undeserved corporate-positive narratives.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#64

Post by Judgmentality » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #57

Judgmentality wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I never felt like critical thinking was part of the curriculum in the United States. I've always been kind of amazed how poorly it's taught if it's taught at all.

Since we're just comparing anecdata at this point (or at least I am), if you have any data/studies or anything like that it would be appreciated.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#65

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

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.

There was. But the Internet makes it so much easier to deliver it with bad faith in industrial quantities, using manipulative sources who are not who they pretend to be.

The impersonation can be more damaging than the content, because it's a variety of toxic mental pollution - a form of betrayal - that lowers the SNR of the entire Internet.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#66

Post by elmomle » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #24

This old TechCrunch article from 2018 ( https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/23/what-is-this-weird-twitter... ) posted at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26636153 has a former "Amazon Ambassador" actually explain that job: > An actual former ambassador and three year Florida warehouse veteran Chris Grantham explained it in more detail to Yahoo Finance’s Krystal Hu, who shared the information with TechCrunch: >> When I…

Wow, does that ever sound inspired by the Kapo system in Nazi camps.

(edit: It was wrong of me to evoke Nazism due to its emotional connotations. I was reminded of the psychological systems of coercion that have been used all through history to efficiently keep oppressed people in line--which Amazon's actions reek of--but could have more effectively expressed my thoughts by saying "that sounds like a psychologically abusive system", or something of the sort.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#67

Post by nautilus12 » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

Does no one suspect any longer that Amazon is behind this? The Twitter Amazon partnership makes no sense if not for this purpose. The Parler situation suddenly has a new light, I guarantee if you dig hard enough you will find amazon had a nefarious part to play in in.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#68

Post by javajosh » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

kibleopard wrote: post #17

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.

Agreed for sure, but even the younger generations seem susceptible to believing whatever they read on Twitter, etc. There have been countless times I’ve seen people share info as de facto truth when they simply glanced at a headline Twitter pushed them without bothering to read deeper.

My hope is that it all seems like a joke to the youngsters, and they don't take any of it seriously. In other words, they know its a lie but share it anyway because it's funny to do so and a lie has a group momentum that can crush you if you stand in its way, so why bother? Look at gay marriage - the lie that it's akin to beastiality, or the lie that it will ruin straight marriate, these are lies that are actually quite funny as satire. But to treat them as sincere beliefs, and argue with them, is not worth the inevitable trouble and negativity.

Young minds know how to deal with the polluted informational space and learn to get value out of it one way or another.

The informational gems that we need to hold up with high regard are examples of sincere discussion and debate between those who disagree with each other and yet have a genuine goal to hear and be heard by the counter-party, a deep reluctance to deploy rhetorical tricks, and a willingness to support controversial views if they are supported by uncontroversial fact.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#69

Post by InitialLastName » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

blackearl wrote: post #16

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.

Might be partially true but young people with no critical thinking skills fall for it just the same.

Strangely, I see a lot of the same people complaining about the critical thinking skills of others and also lashing out at others for thinking critically about whatever conspiratorial narrative the former are selling.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#70

Post by simias » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

mox1 wrote: post #7

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.

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 don't buy the age thing at all. Younger generations are superficially more tech savvy but it doesn't really help here.

Just go browse reddit for 10 minutes if you don't believe me. I recommend the /r/GME cult for instance, but there are many others. People will gladly listen to anybody if they tell them what they want to hear.