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'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

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Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#91

Post by umvi »

caseysoftware wrote: post #74
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.

> 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. If you strike the word "online" this statement works for most of history. The only things that have changed are the sheer scale, speed, and cost of it. We have small teams that can generate more noise than a nation state could have prayed for just a generation ago.. and they're do…

What are the catastrophic downsides to real names and verified identities? Those things weren't catastrophic downsides before the internet existed when publishing your opinion in newspapers or books or whatever.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#92

Post by CobrastanJorji »

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.

It's funny how the ups and downs of evaluating a startup go:

Phase 1: "Okay, it's a Real Names social network, seems probably fine."

Phase 2: "Oh no, some sort of token economy. Well, maybe it--"

Phase 3: "Nevermind, it said the word 'blockchain,' abandon ship, this is doomed."

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#93

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

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…

For decades, I never thought people who kiss ass could have been serious. I was sure they were just cynically playing a game of advancement, and I despised them for it. What I've come to learn -- as disappointing as it is to me -- is that some people view this sort of thing as actual, legitimate opportunity, and are acting out of internal integrity. They don't see the hypocrisy of the power imbalance and how the company is using them when acting this way. It just doesn't factor into their equation.

Higher-ups look for these suck-ups, of course, but I see now that the "real" ones are the ones that really advance because of it. The process optimizes for what I call the "true believers." They wind up in positions where they can, and often do, impede the progress of people who want to make significant contributions to the bottom line.

The remaining open question in my mind is to what percentage the "true believers" actually occupy positions of serious power in a Fortune 500 -- say, at the highest 3 levels -- and how many people promoting them are just knowingly using them and their precious lack of objectivity.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#94

Post by devindotcom »

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…

I was going post that link but you beat me to it. When I wrote that it was as I suspected, disingenuous but not wholly invented - these were real people being bribed with cold cuts to parrot scripts, if I'm honest I might have done it to get off my feet for a couple hours in that situation. It was stupid and risible but you could understand it.

Now it's gotten much weirder. There are fake accounts that, looking at them, you're not sure who they actually benefit. I think a bunch just got purged. No one took them seriously anyway, so navigating the motivations in the space is super difficult. It's fascinating in some ways but in others I just want to ignore the whole thing.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#96

Post by colejohnson66 »

amelius wrote: post #11
brown9-2 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not really clear which type of "fake" they are - if it is non-Amazon-employees making a parody, or someone at Amazon making a not-really-existing persona: > It is unclear whether the accounts are real employees, bots or trolls pretending to be Amazon Ambassadors.

Quotes are not the appropriate tool to denote uncertainty.

It’s a common practice in journalism. They’re not using scare quotes, but regular quotes. They’re avoiding asserting themselves that the accounts are fake, and instead, diverting the assertion to the quotee (Amazon in this case).

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#97

Post by elmomle »

nemo44x wrote: post #83
elmomle wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Really? Did the Nazis give their prisoners a day out of the camp and 50 Deutschmark to treat themselves with? I don’t think it’s fair to compare this to genocide camps.

"Inspired by". And yeah, the conditions are far less extreme, but the dynamics of using prisoner's dilemma to reinforce order in the warehouse is deeply cruel, psychologically. Please don't argue that.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#99

Post by bitcharmer »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #85
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.

Equating every action of a million person company with their (soon to be former) CEO is disingenuous. Jeff Bezos isn't personally directly every action of every employee at Amazon. I know it's popular to hate Amazon, but we don't even have any evidence that this handful of Twitter accounts was created by Amazon employees in the first place, let alone personally directed by Jeff Bezos.

It was under his reign that this toxic workplace culture was created. It's 100% his doing.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#100

Post by booleandilemma »

Why can't we just have a social network that requires you to sign up using your government ID? No bots, no fake accounts - problem solved.

There won't be any anonymity on that network, sure, but there are plenty of other social networks where you can be anonymous.

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