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

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#211

Post by jasondigitized » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

ActorNightly wrote: post #164

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.

Imagine building a company from the ground up that is succesfull solely because it produces a lot of value to people, and yet random people on the internet still think all you care about is hoarding money and think they can make better decisions than you. Here is the summary of the issue. Firstly, pre-pandemic, unemployment was at an alltime low (and its trending that way to as places are reopening), very close to fr…

The free market dynamics you explained force the squeezing of margin which in turn squeezes time and energy from humans with a eventual race to the bottom to share that margin with shareholders. There are plenty of companies who decided to intervene and have learned to compete while balancing the interest of their workers, customers, and shareholders. Amazon is not one of these. The business model and Amazon’s key value of always thinking of the customer first will prevent the model from also considering the employee.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#212

Post by Barrin92 » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #198

Barrin92 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

censorship and discouraging socially unacceptable views is the upside . What else do you think throwing Amazon shill bots off your platform is? That's the entire point of identity systems. Deciding who stays in and who stays out and sanctioning bad actors. Identity makes it so that harming a community has costs, and helping a community accrues trust. That's all it is.

No, it is the downside. Everyone has 1 million different opinions that are going to be controversial to someone out there. I don't want it to be easy for anyone who disagrees with people, on anything, to track down someone physically, in real life. > Deciding who stays in and who stays Ok and I don't want you to be able to decide who stays in and stays out. It should be very difficult to keep others that you don't li…

>to track down someone physically, in real life.

That's not the same as having a consistent identity on the internet. You can easily think of an identity provider on the web that doesn't expose who you physically are, think of like a crypto wallet, or something like Urbit attempts. Having a consistent identity is what matters with an incentive to be a good member, we don't need to expose your real world name at all.

>It should be very difficult to keep others that you don't like out.

No, it should be very easy to keep people out, because that's the fundamental mechanism behind any community, defining its borders and limits. That's what freedom of assembly is. There should be many different communities and they all should easily be able to set differentiated rules for who can participate and who can't. This is the basis for pluralism.

A sort of free-wheeling over-connected hivemind like Twitter where it's either call the police or post what you want doesn't work precisely because it is not a community at all. The reason discourse has gone to hell is because there literally is only one and everyone's part of it.

That's why we're having a somewhat sane conversation on hackernews right now. Because this community is smaller, it's moderated, and we can to a degree escape from the shitstorm of mass social media. And that's only because the rules here are much more strict than they are on Twitter.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#213

Post by jasondigitized » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #185

marricks wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon warehouses have a far, far, higher turn over rate than other warehouses, probably because the conditions are so cruel. It’s really sad how many people get super invested in defending mega corporations. I hope it’s just employees trying to move up but you never know. https://labor411.org/411-blog/warehouse-worker-turnover-rate...

Why do you assume it's people leaving because of cruel conditions and not people being fired, especially given that they're open about firing lots of people and encouraging many to quit? They don't hide the ball on that.

Because they have calculated that turnover is more profitable than the cost of quality recruiting, training and on boarding. Firing people is super costly. The math of the churn and burn model is working.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#214

Post by finiteseries » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

twirlip wrote: post #208

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.

Vernor Vinge is 76 years old and outlined the issue of identity in the online world in his short story "True Names" waaay back in 1981.

Vernor Vinge was a professor of computer science and mathematics writing SF on the side, and thus qualifies under “somewhat tech savvy”.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#215

Post by WhompingWindows » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

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.

One counter-stance would be: authenticity of any communication is an unsolved problem. Lying, bias, cheating, misconstrual, forgery, libel, etc. are all problems that go back hundreds of years, societal rules can simply be broken for selfish reasons.

The Internet has given all speech a larger platform and more reach, which means that both authentic and inauthentic voices are amplified. Maybe the inauthentic voices gain a comparative advantage to non-Internet worlds, since they gain more attention via outrage or exaggeration. Does the fault lie on social media, content websites, or users?

So do we modify the Internet, or do we attempt to modify ourselves, or both?

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#216

Post by jmeister » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

ActorNightly wrote: post #164

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.

Imagine building a company from the ground up that is succesfull solely because it produces a lot of value to people, and yet random people on the internet still think all you care about is hoarding money and think they can make better decisions than you. Here is the summary of the issue. Firstly, pre-pandemic, unemployment was at an alltime low (and its trending that way to as places are reopening), very close to fr…

Great comment.

Free market efficiency + redistribution via taxes+coupons is the way to go.

Milton Friedman approves.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#217

Post by ClumsyPilot » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

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…

Try the same argument with something else:

"Humans have always produced CO2 and cut down trees. The only things that have changed in past 1000 years are the sheer scale, speed, and cost of it."

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#218

Post by Loughla » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

disabled wrote: post #182

Loughla wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Getting paid less on the basis of your disability is generally considered to be disability discrimination in the US. I mean, I get what you're saying. I work in Disabilities quite a bit in my profession - and your view is generally correct. But there are literal, specific carve-outs for employers to pay people with disabilities less. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/39-14c-subminim... >Section 14(c) of t…

Going to the toilet once per hour for 1-3 minutes is not going to allow a company to pay subminimum wages when the starting rate is $15/hour. It is a simple, basic, /reasonable accommodation/ necessary for me to be able to work, at any workplace, that Amazon is legally obligated to provide. In fact, it is the only accommodation that I would need to work at an Amazon warehouse! The law you mention above is exploited b…

Again, I agree with you. I do want to point out, though that those are not abstract concept or limited use cases. Any business, including competitive employment positions, can apply for that license, as long as they meet the parameters laid our in the law and regulation. I'm assuming that because of its size, Amazon would be excluded.

Honestly, though, I am not familiar with the application process as we refuse to use it.

That being said, I was genuinely just trying to point out that it is, in fact, legal to pay individuals with disabilities less than an individual without a disability.

Language is important. Claiming that trying to pay individual b (who has a disability) any less than what you would pay individual a (who does not) for any work is automatically disability discrimination is just wrong. I've been sued several times by people who believe that fact, and have been proven right in my statements by the courts.

I don't like it, but I don't control the law.

Please note, I am not saying your needs wouldn't be an appropriate accommodation from Amazon. Please note that I am not saying it is morally okay to pay individuals with disabilities less.

Maybe I'm being too pedantic. But honestly, the number of people who genuinely believe that they are entitled to get literally whatever they want however they want it, regardless of any other factor, simply because of their disability is just astounding.

Reasonable is the important part of accommodation.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#219

Post by undefined1 » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

vimacs2 wrote: post #179

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…

This rings so true and is seen in a lot of other industries as well. I believe the world of gaming is among the worst for this where hordes of customers ardently defend the clearly abusive practices of multinational companies that do not give the slightest shit about them except their influence on their bottom line. Gamers find it easier to be up in arms about journalists being bad at video games and women having too…

gamers are simultaneously angry with that Activision example AND the invasion of political activists into the hobby.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#220

Post by xmprt » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #170

disabled wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think they are making it illegal to go the bathroom they are just making it economically awful. If you miss X minutes in an hour, the whole hour doesn't count. You have to deliver X packages per hour everyday and one miss gets you written up, which can lead to firing. It's called disability discrimination. Getting paid less on the sole basis of your disability is generally considered to be disability discri…

>Getting paid less on the basis of your disability is generally considered to be disability discrimination in the US. I mean, I get what you're saying. I work in Disabilities quite a bit in my profession - and your view is generally correct. But there are literal, specific carve-outs for employers to pay people with disabilities less. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/39-14c-subminim... >Section 14(c) of t…

Laws usually aren't enforced as they are written. They are discovered in the courts. So even though those carveouts exist, whether they are applicable to this case or not is another question.