8 ms·
Amazon is paying to tweet nice things about warehouse working conditions
- jacob9706 8y agoJust another reason not to ever work for Amazon...
- Rotdhizon 8y agoIs this not illegal?
- CodeCube 8y agoIt should be
- kcbanner 8y agoHow is this any different from paid reviews.
- CodeCube 8y agoMy comment stands, "it should be" ... a paid review is tainted from jump street. At a very minimum, disclosure should be mandated (is this already the case?)
- notatoad 8y agowhether disclosure should be mandated, or already is mandated, these accounts were not hiding the fact that they were amazon representatives. disclosure was done. so what exactly should be illegal? Companies interacting with people on social media? PR in general?
- jhall1468 8y agoIt is disclosed. They have their titles (Amazon FC Ambassador) the Amazon box logo and their names are all @Amazon*. It's completely transparent, which you'd know had you read the article rather than the title. Don't mean to sound harsh, but the amount of comments on here from people that CLEARLY didn't read any of the article is astounding.
- frostwhale 8y agoI believe it is not illegal if they're not withholding who they are or their motivations.
- lainga 8y agoWell, they didn't really try to hide it. The Twitter accounts have a standardised format, all bearing the Amazon smile logo as their background ... identical structures to their bios and the title "FC Ambassador" in their name, followed by a cardboard box emoji.
- cm2012 8y agoYou think it's illegal for companies to transparently respond to customers and critics online?
- walterbell 8y agoHow is this different from "influencers" who are required to disclose when they are paid to advertise a product on social media? Amazon should be subject to the same disclosure requirement, which would negate the value of the tweets, which may remove the need for their employees to be put into this position. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/04/ftc-staff-reminds-influencers-brands-clearly-disclose https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/04/ftc-s... > The FTC’s Endorsement Guides provide that if there is a “material connection” between an endorser and an advertiser – in other words, a connection that might affect the weight or credibility that consumers give the endorsement – that connection should be clearly and conspicuously disclosed, unless it is already clear from the context of the communication. A material connection could be a business or family relationship, monetary payment, or the gift of a free product. Importantly, the Endorsement Guides apply to both marketers and endorsers ... consumers viewing Instagram posts on mobile devices typically see only the first three lines of a longer post unless they click “more,” which many may not do. The staff’s letters informed recipients that when making endorsements on Instagram, they should disclose any material connection above the “more” button.
- mirimir 8y agoTheir account names begin with "Amazon", so it's pretty obvious, no? @AmazonFCPhil @AmazonFCShaye @AmazonFCLeo
- ErikVandeWater 8y agoCounterpoint: Some people really like Xbox or have followers who like Xbox so they put Xbox in their twitter account name. It does not mean they work for Xbox. @AmazonFCPhil could be looking to connect with other people interested in Amazon. Names on twitter aren't enough to determine where someone works.
- cm2012 8y agoThey also clearly say they work for Amazon in their titles and descriptions.
- sincerely 8y agoIt's weird that the person who originally found the accounts thought they were bots - how advanced do people think chatbots are?
- xnxn 8y agoSome folks use "bot" as a synonym for "sockpuppet". I wouldn't read into it too much
- freehunter 8y agoYou might be surprised at what the state of the art is in very limited fields like this. They wouldn't be able to engage in back-and-forth, but seeing a tweet that says "@amazon just pay your workers more", a bot can churn out a response of "Did you know that Amazon pays warehouse workers 30% more than other retailers?" pretty easily. One human just writes 1,000 responses and maps them to various keywords. Scan for those keywords and pick a response that fits the keywords best and boom, done. Completely automated.
- aisofteng 8y agoUsing keywords isn’t accurate enough; you’d use a classifier for this.
- zzzcpan 8y agoIsn't use of propaganda illegal in marketing pretty much anywhere in the world? I guess being that big means it's all about power, rules don't apply to you anymore.
- cm2012 8y agoThis honestly seems like a pretty wholesome form of marketing to me. Have customer service reps clearly label themselves as such (All of these guys have "Amazon FC Ambassador" in their name, username, and profile, it's not hidden.) Have reps look for false statements about Amazon. Reps correct false statement with facts. It's literally adding truth and facts to the world in a transparent way.
- CobrastanJorji 8y agoI'm with you. If they were doing the same thing but without the labeling, it'd be much creepier in practice but much harder to notice. This is definitely better.
- themoonbus 8y agoIt's good they're transparent, but are you arguing that whatever the reps say is inherently truthful because Amazon is transparent about their role? I don't consider paid statements to be a good indicator of anything except that Amazon is trying out different PR tactics.
- cm2012 8y agoI'm saying everything they're saying appears to be factual, and also that they are transparent.
- amelius 8y agoOk, I just stopped trusting Amazon reviews.
- cm2012 8y agoYou could just ignore reviews posted by people named Amazon Ambassador Pete, like these are clearly labeled.
- camtarn 8y agoPrevious discussion (same tweets, different news article): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17831943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17831943
- akshatpradhan 8y agoYeah but all of a sudden this new title seems waaay more interesting considering the recent journalist describing his experience working as an Amazon Flex Driver. Just saying.
- ajsharp 8y agoWow this is a tremendously bad look.
- jhall1468 8y agoYes, it's horrible that employees of Amazon, with their titles, the Amazon log and @Amazon as their usernames are trying to hide the fact that their Amazon employees. 5 minutes of research would tell you this isn't a bad look at all. It's public and transparent PR.
- ghostly_s 8y agoThe part that looks bad is not the approach to disclosure. It's the part where Amazon is responding to well-sourced reports of inadequate working conditions by coercing counter-anecdata from other staff, rather than denying or refuting the reports.
- rev_jones 8y agoPerhaps its time to refute these tweets with those sources then? Have a debate with them instead of just accepting one side of the equation.
- mintplant 8y agoYou expect people to "have a debate" with a paid representative barging into their conversations? One whose paycheck depends on sticking to Amazon's side of the issues? http://wondermark.com/1k62/ http://wondermark.com/1k62/
- drewmol 8y agoSeems they are taking a similar approach as they do for negative reviews.
- Nasrudith 8y agoThe really bad look is that they are willing to pay money to sling "PR" but aren't willing to spend that money on even cheaper measures that could actually help the root problem like plopping down more watercoolers, fans and vents in the walls, or even dividing it into more breaks. That says "We are doing wrong, know it and not only don't care but we actively prefer it that way."
- tareqak 8y agoIsn't the fact that Amazon is going to these lengths to control the narrative suggestive that even they themselves consider this issue to be a sufficiently serious problem such that an investigation by a regulatory body (e.g. Department of Labor) would actually find something. I think the appropriate saying would be "where there is smoke, there is fire"?
- obulpathi 8y agoUsed to buy lots of things from Amazon. About couple of years ago, shifted to buying things from Costco and it's been a great experience. Everything I get is authentic, they only sell the best products and heard they treat their employees nicely. I stopped doing hours of review research to find out if the products are legit and if reviews were not fabricated.
- legohead 8y agoAmazon has the reputation of being terrible to work for, even as a software engineer. "It pays well, but work is hell" is the sentiment I get after interviewing developers from Amazon. At this point I don't know what they can do with the reputation. Just roll with it and accept it.
- rev_jones 8y agoJudging by the comments in this thread I think people just want to be angry at Amazon. I don't think I would want to work for an Amazon fulfillment center but most of these tweets are just facts. If you don't think these facts are correct you should debate them and find sources to back up the claims. Amazon wouldn't have employees do this if they weren't confident with the information they were providing. I don't think it excuses the working conditions but I think its good to see actual facts instead of biased information that is full of shady wording.
- aisofteng 8y agoThis post really exposes how many people comment without reading the article. This is a non-story and the vast majority of comments here are a waste of bytes and time.
- nicodjimenez 8y agoAmazon has a "we don't like to overpay" attitude about everything that makes it hard for them to increase wages in their fulfillment centers. They want even their white collar employees to have blue collar mindsets in terms of work ethic and cutting costs to benefit customers. If they could magically increase the wages of the FC employees and have no adverse consequences other than a slightly smaller profit margin, they might consider it, as it would be great PR for them. The problem would be that it would encourage employees to complain about working too hard and how they "deserve" to be paid more. The risk of employees trying to unionize might even go up. Amazon cares a lot more about customers than employees, and the truth is most customers don't really care about where their products came from. When people go to a restaurant, they don't ask how much the line looks or dishwashers get paid, they just want good food.
- troupe 8y agoI think most people that go into a restaurant assume that just as they were not coerced into buying a meal, the employees chose to work there from their available employment options.