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'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

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Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#151

Post by Agenttin »

fenderbluesjr wrote: post #124
gsk22 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial worth absolutely has to do with the fairness or lack thereof. Bezos has created nearly 200 billion dollars (!) of wealth for himself since founding Amazon, so debating the moral value of those gains in comparison to how everyday employees are compensated is well within reason. And if my employees said I was treating them unfairly, I would try to understand their perspective and make changes to improve worki…

Some people don't think that 'fair treatment' should be determined with the bosses wealth as a factor

It's not about his wealth. If Jeff had been independently wealthy before starting Amazon this wouldn't be an issue. The problem is the percentage workers receive of the value they generate. Jeff has gotten rich by pushing that number as low as possible, while also working to kill off businesses that might offer alternative employment to low skill workers.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#152

Post by eeeeehhhhh »

taormina wrote: post #103
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comp…

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... This is a fantastic read.

I knew this was going to be posted. I've been thinking about this post for a decade now and I can't help but feel that, although it does reflect part of reality, the Gervais Principle is overly cynical in my opinion, and those who adopt the view will have it compounded by confirmation bias because it is partially true.

The things described happen at toxic organizations but the author leaves no room for honest positive and meaningful work, and at risk of pointing out the obvious, there's a lot of meaningful work to be done.

To the author of this post, finding meaning in your employment means that you're necessarily a sucker or a psychopath. Where does that leave people like doctors who earnestly help their patients?

And God forbid you find the real nobility in doing your workaday job and doing a good job at it, and feel good about yourself. According to the Gervais Principle that makes you the ultimate sucker.

Adopting this philosophy is dooming oneself to a neverending feeling of being exploited and the argument that this is what is actually happening in totality is all philosophical opinion so why would I adopt a philosophy that is so personally ruinous, demoralizing, and demotivating?

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#153

Post by WalterSear »

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.

He did this.

https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/3/28/22354604/amazon-twitter...

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#154

Post by sushid »

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…

This reminds me strongly of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. These poor folks are overworked and used up and the "kiss asses" get a little something extra for busting up any hint of unionizing.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#155

Post by throwawaysea »

booleandilemma wrote: post #100

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.

> There won't be any anonymity on that network, sure

That's exactly why. It would allow ideas and speech with psychological safety to proliferate while everything else is shut down. It's bad enough already due to voluntary censorship (cancel culture).

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#156

Post by neilv »

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.

Since HN loves to veer wildly into rampant ageism, I'll bite... :)

When you make your age distinctions, you might be talking about people who are non-technical.

Early Internet techies predicted situations like this before they happened. (Pre-Web, we had all kinds of sci-fi predictions, awareness from historical analogues, etc. Post-Web, I talked with startup founders 20 years ago, who would also be 40yo+ by now, who predicted that their company's accounts would be used for shill identities for things like manipulation, and the implications of that.)

Passive consumers, of your under-40 group, who grew up in it never knew anything else, have had things framed for them, and are just starting to realize the situations we're now in.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#157

Post by goatinaboat »

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.

The problem is previous generations who don't really understand this.

No, this isn’t the reason, you’re missing some crucial context about the early to mid 90s Internet - most people were using institutional accounts. It was very clear that someone with a whatever.ac.uk or .edu or .mil or even most .com that weren’t ISPs were who they said they were, and anons were explicitly anons. Many people even had phone numbers and addresses in their .sig blocks posting on Usenet, or on their homepages. There was a pretty high degree of trust, it was comparatively civilised!

The problem is that people got stuck in that assumption.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#158

Post by Loughla »

hindsightbias wrote: post #77
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.

Googling for critical thinking curricula and high school district returns Henrico County (VA) on page 5 or 6. One would think if it were integrated with other studies it would be mentioned somewhere other than Edutopia and Walden adverts.

Have you ever dissected a novel in English class? Did you discuss motivations for various historical events in history? Did you talk about theory of public speaking purposes and styles?

I did, in a very rural, very underfunded school district - all of those things are critical thinking.

It is integrated into other studies. But there tend to not be "This lesson is critical thinking" sorts of headers on the lesson plans.

Look for the phrase "lifelong learner". That tends to be where the "critical thinking" lives for many schools.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#159

Post by maxwell »

booleandilemma wrote: post #100

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.

How would you authenticate the physical documents?

https://osamabinnaughty.github.io/FakeID-Barcode/sc.html

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#160

Post by rtkwe »

darkerside wrote: post #14
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.

Blockchain?

If it's cheap enough for everyone to access it's cheap enough for governments and companies to create mass accounts.
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