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It seems a reasonable request to me. How else were they going to suggest that you do it? There is a cut and paste here, but it isn't a demand, it is a "request"
by altitudinous 6y ago
It seems a reasonable request to me. How else were they going to suggest that you do it? There is a cut and paste here, but it isn't a demand, it is a "request".
Of course this is about to get downvoted because evil microphones.
- penandpaper00 6y agoThis is the comment. This tech writer is fueling rage culture to get attention. Its a request, PR doing their job -- please call it by what we brand it... "DAMANDING." What a joke. I hope the writer is also chucking his smartphone out the window and stops acting like a child on hipster Twitter because he can't get a job at a tech company.
- TheRealSteel 6y agoHow is is reasonable that people who don't work for Amazon be expected to speak like Amazon's marketing department?
- willis936 6y agoOr else. It’s bully behavior and should be setting off alarms at the FTC. Stunts like this should scare Amazon middle managers.
- altitudinous 6y agoThey didn't demand it, they requested it. The recipient can say No, and they probably have.
- Joe8Bit 6y agoReasonable or not, it's a super widespread practice for marketing and PR departments to 'insist' on certain language when their products are referred to. A super notorious example of this is Apple insisting/asking that their devices are referred to without any determiner like 'the' or 'an' e.g. 'We think THE iPhone is really important' to 'We think iPhone is really important'
- 867-5309 6y agoa bit like when referring to a deity: 'I love god' vs 'I love The God'
- willis936 6y agoThis one really annoys me because they’re asking people to talk like idiots so that people can stop and think for a second, “Is this person an idiot?” to generate more interest in their product.
- mola 6y agoNo, that's not what they are after. They are after psychological influence. The removal of "The" cements the brand in people minds as the only one of its kind. iPhone is just an iota away from the generic term phone. These things seem miniscule, but when they are part of a large scale strategy they have a real effect.
- willis936 6y agoThe reality distortion field died with Jobs. That might be what they say, but it’s clearly a faulty logic. It would be an embarrassing case of self-congratulatory behavior if it’s truly the case that the marketing department thinks dropping “the” somehow transforms a proper noun into a regular noun.
- dmix 6y agoThis is putting a lot of credit into the random marketing person’s grand evil plan, when in reality their job is busywork PR emails to outlets hoping they fix articles to make it sound better for the products in question. Companies like this hires tens of thousands and some people do dumb jobs. PR is mostly a pushing/prodding game with no guaranteed ROI, so they resort to weak attempts like this. It sounds distasteful with a light shown on it but it really isn’t too different to how most of the meat is made in the blogging industry as a whole. With these high output blogs mostly just repurposing corporate press release kits. I’m sure Vice only wrote the original blog post because some Amazon person emailed them a presser about this residential program, and Vice did their usual snarky article about it.
- mola 6y agoThe fact that an entire industry is distateful doesn't make it ok. This sort of article, which shines this light, might make these companies think twice before "asking" to control the narrative.
- fastball 6y agoReferring to an Amazon Echo as a "microphone" is reductionist to the point where it could actually confuse readers as to what is being discussed. A smart speaker has a microphone, but it is not "a microphone". It would be like Tesla taking issue with someone calling their car "an electric motor". Sure it has those things, but that's not what it is. Totally reasonable change imo.
- ludamad 6y agoIt's reasonable in a vacuum but "having an Amazon microphone in your home" is not the same as "having an echo device in your home." There is a clear intent
- fastball 6y agoYes, the clear intent is by the author of this article to use inaccurate language in order to scare-tactic readers into thinking Amazon just wants to spy on you. Amazon sells literal microphones in addition to the Echo. That sentence could be referring to literal microphones under the AmazonBasics brand for all I know.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pwinnski 6y agoIf the entire article repeatedly referred to the device as a microphone rather than by name, sure, that would be reductionist, and also silly. Fortunately, that's not what happened here, and the device is referred to consistently by brand name in the article. "While it’s natural to be chiefly concerned about privacy when your apartment comes with an Amazon microphone pre-installed, we should also be critical about where the data extracted from us ends up." In that one sentence, the actual one from the actual article, the word microphone is accurate and makes far more sense than anything else.
- etripe 6y agoRegardless of how one feels about microphones being installed in one's apartment, what makes this a reasonable request in your book? Because a business entity is just requesting a narrative that is more profitable to it?
- Angostura 6y agoPR people are going to be PR people. Any sensible journalist or editor would say 'No, it's staying like it is'.
- yoz-y 6y agoMore precisely any journalist or editor knows that such a demand might make a better story than the original article.
- draugadrotten 6y agoand somewhat less precisely any PR person knows that getting your product mentioned in a controversial article will be more viral than anything else compare Ryanair PR pieces on "paying for pee"
- rob74 6y agoYeah, the old adage that "any PR is good PR"... however Ryanair are already well-known enough, so they don't need that aspect, and at least for me personally, any article like the one you mentioned only solidifies my decision to avoid them if at all possible...
- yoz-y 6y agoSo it’s a win-win. We’ll give you a pretext to write crap about us and in turn you write it.
- altitudinous 6y agoIt is just a request. You can say No. That is the definition of request. They used the word request. Asking is fine. They could stay silent, or they could request. They chose to request. It is taken out of context, but as this is the only context supplied then it seems quite reasonable.
- onion2k 6y agoThe first time someone asks it's always a request. It's much cheaper for a marketing drone to send an email than it is for a lawyer to write an official demand. It's the second time they ask that you need to worry about.
- ceilingcorner 6y agoSure, refuse that request. But don’t be surprised when your Amazon affiliate account suddenly has issues, or your books strangely don’t come up in searches. The practice of corporations using carrots and sticks to manipulate media sources has a long history.
- bagacrap 6y agoI think the author simply wanted to call attention to his clever shade. But calling it a microphone doesn't even make sense and shouldn't be scary (a normal "dumb" microphone can't snoop on you). Plus, my car includes a microphone and I've never heard the car called a microphone.