3 ms·

That's not what the rejection of this proposition indicates. The shareholders are not saying, "Amazon, sell to anyone no matter how bad." They are saying, "Amaz

That's not what the rejection of this proposition indicates. The shareholders are not saying, "Amazon, sell to anyone no matter how bad." They are saying, "Amazon, continue using whatever processes you are already using to determine who to restrict from using this product." It is very common for people who have a particular issue that they care about to attempt to require the board of a company to handle that issue. But if big companies acquiesced to all such requests, the board would take on a large workload, making sometimes detailed decisions where they have no expertise. Company owners delegate much of their authority to boards. Boards delegate much of their authority to employees. I am sure there will be entities to which Amazon would not offer facial recognition services. But that decision does not need to be made at the level of the board. BTW, this is why management almost always fights such propositions: it ties the hands of the company to use an inefficient decision process, for no provable gain on any worthwhile metric.

clairity 7y ago
you're argument is wholly misplaced. if it were a decision like "should we put this bin over on that shef?", then yes, it's reasonable to delegate to a rank-and-file employee. "should we develop technology that can lead to a surveillance state?" is not one of those decisions. that's a strategic decision entirely negotiated between the shareholders (via the board) and the management team, for which they should all be held accountable.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  Almost all useful technology could conceivably lead to better surveillance. Email is a great example. It is infeasibly expensive to open and read everyone's physical letters. But reading everyone's email is possible and is literally done in some very large countries. I believe that if the board of Amazon had more they wanted to say about this issue, either publicly or internally, they do not need a shareholder resolution to enable that -- especially a non-binding one. They can simply do so. So, the resolution's purpose is actually one of signalling the shareholder's stance on the technology being developed. Clearly, most shareholders agree with the board's implicit approval.
JohnFen 7y ago
> I am sure there will be entities to which Amazon would not offer facial recognition services. I see no reason to suspect that this is true.

clairity 7y ago

you're argument is wholly misplaced. if it were a decision like "should we put this bin over on that shef?", then yes, it's reasonable to delegate to a rank-and-file employee. "should we develop technology that can lead to a surveillance state?" is not one of those decisions. that's a strategic decision entirely negotiated between the shareholders (via the board) and the management team, for which they should all be held accountable.

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
Almost all useful technology could conceivably lead to better surveillance. Email is a great example. It is infeasibly expensive to open and read everyone's physical letters. But reading everyone's email is possible and is literally done in some very large countries. I believe that if the board of Amazon had more they wanted to say about this issue, either publicly or internally, they do not need a shareholder resolution to enable that -- especially a non-binding one. They can simply do so. So, the resolution's purpose is actually one of signalling the shareholder's stance on the technology being developed. Clearly, most shareholders agree with the board's implicit approval.

JohnFen 7y ago

> I am sure there will be entities to which Amazon would not offer facial recognition services. I see no reason to suspect that this is true.