8 ms·
people need to look at the AmazonNews twitter handle, spews corpo BS at every turn almost like some intern got hold of that account
by villgax 6y ago
people need to look at the AmazonNews twitter handle, spews corpo BS at every turn almost like some intern got hold of that account
- missedthecue 6y agoThey pretty beautifully baited Sen. Elizabeth Warren into running her mouth today. She wrote - "I'll fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets." If she brings an anti-trust suit against them, it will be so easy for Amazon's lawyers to argue that she is only doing so to violate their first amendment rights, which she full out admitted to today.
- Jonnax 6y agoThey baited Warren by lying about the fact that Amazon warehouse / delivery employees have to urinate in bottles to meet deadlines? The tweets from their account caused significant negative press for Amazon on news and social media across the world. Amazon is a global company, this kind of disdain for employees isn't looked upon as favourably in other countries. It's bad for business. Especially from an official PR channel.
- JBSmoove 6y agoI don't care who was "baited" A US Senator threatening to retaliate and break-up a business because she didn't like tweets about her is straight-up authoritarian thuggery. It's the same shit Trump used to do but when Liz does it...well it's GREAT, she's "fighting for the working class"
- Jonnax 6y agoSo it's okay for a business to treat employees so badly they find they have to piss in bottles? And it's okay for their official PR twitter account to lie and say it doesn't happen? But it's not okay that a politician says they're going to do something about it?
- jbroson 6y agoAmazon's actions have absolutely nothing to do with this. US Senators should not be threatening retaliation against a company because of tweets that piss them off. Why is this only bad when Trump or a Republican does it?
- Jonnax 6y agoWhy can't US Senators do that? I presume the people that voted for Warren are on her side in this argument so she's being an advocate for their views. Just because you think Amazon's employees being forced to piss in bottles isn't bad to you doesn't mean that others sees it as an injustice that makes people angry. >Why is this only bad when Trump or a Republican does it? Maybe treat each event on a case by case basis rather than a blanket rule?
- dahfizz 6y agoI would expect more nuance from an HN reader. It's possible for both amazon and warren to be in the wrong.
- ScoobleDoodle 6y agoBut in this case the Amazon Twitter account is in the wrong while Warren is in the right. Amazon Twitter straight up lied. Warren is actively doing the job she was elected to do of motivating change to make laws and rules that will change the underlying foundation of the business landscape in ways that she and those who voted for her perceive as positive.
- Jonnax 6y agoI don't see where Warren is wrong here. Care to explain it? Because it seems like the point of view advocated is "Politicans should not express views I don't like on social media"
- dahfizz 6y agoIf Warren tweeted that she was going to break up amazon because they were harming consumers and mistreating workers, etc, that would be one thing. Instead, she is going after amazon as a personal vendetta because she feels 'heckled'. She is explicitly attacking first amendment rights. It's a textbook case of corruption / abuse of power.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoAmazon doesn’t come out of this looking good either, but it’s pretty bad for a Senator to go around telling people that she’ll break up your company if you “heckle” her with “snotty tweets”.
- 2-tpg 6y ago> the fact that Amazon warehouse / delivery employees have to urinate in bottles to meet deadlines? Amazon does not want its employees to piss into bottles. But sometimes employees (predominantly male I hope) do piss into bottles, because they did not plan correctly, or just had to go while on the road. If caught, these employees (and their managers) are then reprimanded. If they get a chance to defend themselves, of course they claim it was due to the deadline, not poor planning or bladder control or uncommon hygiene ethics. Amazon factually states: Hey, if we required our employees to pee into bottles to meet deadlines, do you seriously think people would work for us, and not 100s of other low-paid jobs which don't have that medieval requirement? Politicians: Hey, this you?! I have lots of pictures of bottles with piss! Where is your snotty reply now? You say that your employees do not have to piss into bottles, so how come I have those pictures?! Huh?! It is embarrassing to both sides. Especially for official government employees (who also don't have to pee into bottles to meet deadlines, but I am sure you can turn up at least some pictures: if not, find any traces of cocaine use in the Capitol, then posit that the US congress have their senators use cocaine in the toilet to meet deadlines. Or, you know, bi-partisan plan to have low-skilled employees share in the American dream made possible by Amazon, but I guess that does not fit inside a tweet).
- riversflow 6y agoThe warehouse/delivery worker abuse at amazon runs deep, and it goes far beyond employees peeing in bottles. Checkout the Frontline documentary, Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos [1] [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/amazon-empire/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/amazon-empire/
- 2-tpg 6y ago> it goes far beyond employees peeing in bottles. No, but solid rhetorics. This is the part you give proof of the fact that Amazon have their workers pee in bottles to meet deadlines. Not point to something else entirely that goes far beyond the things you pose as facts, which are not. Don't look at that! Look at this documentary that goes far far beyond it. Well played! And solid one for PBS for exposing the worker abuse that Amazon is now in court for! We need the free press to save worker laws.
- astrange 6y agoSenators don't bring antitrust suits against anyone, as far as I know. That would be a separate branch of government.
- eternalban 6y agoBut they can engage in virtue signaling like the rest of us. But in all seriousness, it would be optimal for a society that values liberty and freedom to move away from platforms to standards. No need to breakup FANGS if NIST or something similar defines qualitative API standards for social networks, or more broadly societal network services. And this will also be a huge boon for the startup space and true non-predatory innovation in the virtual services space.
- aetherson 6y agoSenators can pass laws increasing the grounds for antitrust actions.
- astrange 6y agoBut the things they say about the laws aren’t very useful if you’re suing to get the law overturned. (Related, you can’t use defenses like attorney-client privilege if Congress asks you to submit documents, you just do it.)
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago> "I'll fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets." I thought I liked her policies but this sounds authoritarian. I'd prefer politicians stay tf off twotter unless they got the stomach for it. They're speaking about "authenticity" and the problem of people hiding behind handles whenever given the chance. But they are themselves only interested in "engineering consent" for those who bankrolled their move into office. The consensus should be that they have to be able to put up with a very wide variety of opinions (and most certainly the "snooty" kind).
- mikeryan 6y agoBreaking up Big Tech isn’t an idle threat from Warren. It was an explicit part of her platform when running for president. She has always believed that some companies run afoul of anti-trust laws. This far predates a spat with an Amazon twitter handle https://2020.elizabethwarren.com/toolkit/break-up-big-tech https://2020.elizabethwarren.com/toolkit/break-up-big-tech
- missedthecue 6y agoYes, she's long pushed for it, but today she said she would so it so that they wouldn't heckle public officials. That's a huge difference.
- sudosysgen 6y agoThat won't work, because she's been talking about breaking up Amazon for years now.
- input_sh 6y agoTo me it feels more like some executive on cocaine found out the Twitter password.
- minism 6y agois this from https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1375536605415493635 https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/13755366054154936... ?
- input_sh 6y agoYup. Also see his article with screenshots backing up the pissing in the bottle claim: https://theintercept.com/2021/03/25/amazon-drivers-pee-bottles-union/ https://theintercept.com/2021/03/25/amazon-drivers-pee-bottl... 100% sure that wouldn't have happened if that tweet from @amazonnews didn't piss off some Amazon employee. They're really not doing themselves any favours by letting whoever posted those tweets to tweet from their official account.
- golergka 6y agoHonest question: what's wrong with these tweets?
- villgax 6y agoThe one denying claims of pee bottles is factually wrong & is actually evident from the operations staff guidelines, which probably the one tweeting doesn't know about.
- pseudalopex 6y agoThe peeing in bottles thing is true. Sanders is 1% of half of Congress. Not dictator of Vermont. They lied about what Warren said.
- andreygrehov 6y agoThis is the first time I hear about Amazon News account, but from a factual perspective, they are right, despite one like it or not. Sanders is indeed a powerful politician, which is what they said in the tweet. $11.75 vs. $15 is a 20% gap, which is quite a lot and is also a fact. Again, I'm looking at it purely from a factual perspective. It seems to me that the criticism mainly comes from people not liking AmazonNews being blatantly honest in their tweets and not giving a shit about political correctness. My impression is based on quickly glancing at the most recent tweets, so I could be wrong ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
- kome 6y agoholy fucking shit... https://twitter.com/AmazonNews https://twitter.com/AmazonNews you are right. woah. they are scared. they are really scared. it's like amazon entire business model is based on exploitation of labor.
- villgax 6y agoWait till you find out that they have a twitter handle & department for Public Policy as well. Why does a global e-commerce giant even need one unless they want to lobby/pressurise politicians & govt's altogether https://twitter.com/amazon_policy https://twitter.com/amazon_policy
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago>it's like amazon entire business model is based on exploitation of labor Wait till you find out how the electronics and clothes in your house are made and how the materials they're made from are sourced or what the workforce that picks the fruit and vegetables you see in the supermarket, endures. It is rarely (never?) discussed in the west how all the consumer goods are cheap simply because the supply chain relies on poor exploitable people and exploiting the environment. All we hear about is the positive spin, how capitalism and globalization have blessed us with cheap goods and how those poor farmers halfway around the world now have paying jobs, woo-hoo!
- shmageggy 6y ago> rarely (never?) discussed in the west I don't know, I see it talked about all the time, but nobody seems to be able to do anything about it.
- capableweb 6y ago> nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. Nobody seems to want to do something about it. It's easy, vote with your wallet. But since the choice is either A) help humanity by stop buying cheap consumer electronics or B) don't get any cheap consumer electronics to make your day 0.5% better, it seems we're stuck in exploiting humanity.
- vultour 6y agoI just found out about that account yesterday and it took me a minute to realise it’s not an onion spinoff.
- heavyset_go 6y agoFrom the @AmazonNews Twitter[1]: > You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one. Meanwhile, The Intercept has mountains of evidence that Amazon itself knows that its workers pee in bottles[2]. It's so blatant that I thought the account was a parody, but it's real. [1] https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1374911222361956359 https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1374911222361956359 [2] https://theintercept.com/2021/03/25/amazon-drivers-pee-bottles-union/ https://theintercept.com/2021/03/25/amazon-drivers-pee-bottl...