Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I've heard it's mostly true. Not only the CEO but a few SVPs can approve it, but yes a human must approve the update and it must be a high level exec. Part of the reason is because their SLAs are based on that dashboard, and that dashboard going red has a financial cost to AWS, so like any financial cost, it needs approval.
Being dishonest about SLAs seems to bear zero cost in this case?
Little honesty from cloud providers will ensure regulators don't step in.