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Amazon security staff reported its own tweets as “suspicious,” fearing hack

259 points by danso 6y ago

andrewnicolalde 6y ago
I'll never understand why companies think directly involving themselves in the political discourse is a good idea. It would honestly even be different if Jeff Bezos himself tweeted these things, but to see the Amazon corporate news account try to one-up Elizabeth Warren is so bizarre..
- kaesar14 6y ago
  There's reports (source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/29/jeff-bezos-amazon-twitter-social-media https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/29/jeff-bezo...) that Bezos got mad that the media department wasn't doing enough to combat the "outright lies" spread by the media about Amazon working conditions, which apparently spurred the latest tweets from the AmazonNews account. Seems to be a self inflicted wound from ego. Edit: Source requested
  - inetknght 6y ago
    > There's reports that [citation needed]
    - kaesar14 6y ago
      https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/29/jeff-bezos-amazon-twitter-social-media https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/29/jeff-bezo... Added
      - derg 6y ago
        It's also literally in the Intercept article with a link to the story lol: > According to Recode, the suspicious tweets in fact came at the behest of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who had recently conveyed disappointment to Amazon officials that the company was not pushing back against criticisms that he considered misleading.
        kaesar14 6y ago
        Whoops..
        derg 6y ago
        ha i meant to reply to the person asking for a citation but also another one you can add into your post.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - josefresco 6y ago
      https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/3/28/22354604/amazon-twitter-bernie-sanders-jeff-bezos-union-alabama-elizabeth-warren https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/3/28/22354604/amazon-twitter...
  - jaywalk 6y ago
    The article mentions this. And I can understand Bezos getting upset (although the "lies" may be more truthful than he thinks) but the way they chose to respond was worse than doing nothing at all.
    - derg 6y ago
      hell hath no fury like a displeased business tyrant imagine getting that mad as like the richest person in the goddamned world.
    - anonymousab 6y ago
      You could view it as Bezos or Amazon simply coming to terms with the fact that they are not subject to any rules of decorum, or at any risk from ever failing due to their public actions. That they, as the mega corp, have reached the point of being above society and have no need to be polite or conform to inconvenient social norms anymore.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - anchpop 6y ago
    If you feel that lies are being spread about you and you try to correct the record, how is that a self-inflicted wound from ego? Isn’t that what anyone would do?
    - kaesar14 6y ago
      If you're a person, sure. If you're a business and you have a good amount of Congress in your pocket, have near infinite wealth, and get away with a myriad of abuses against your employees, why draw the ire of the public with rude comments against sitting Congressmen and Congresswomen? Do you think these comments serve to further Amazon's goals, or have they hurt? It's clear to me as well that Amazon's replies were outright lies - they are making their employees defecate and urinate into bottles, and they do get away with not paying / underpaying taxes. They're not even correcting the record, they're just lying more.
      - anonymousab 6y ago
        >why draw the ire of the public Because that ire is powerless and asserting dominance over society is a series of shifts like this. They're going to tell people what their version of reality is, and people will have to accept it; There will be no comeuppance, and alternate realities and truths are to be forcefully disregarded whenever that's more convenient than ignoring them.
- rainyMammoth 6y ago
  I find it refreshing to see a company openly tweeting what they think and not issuing boring PR statement. It is probably going to cost them a lot in backslash though
  - zionic 6y ago
    Honestly despite my issues with amazon those tweets are refreshing. Sterile corporate communication is an outmoded boomer concept that appears to be dying with them.
  - funman7 6y ago
    I was thinking the same, might be a good example for exercising the average persons ability to not just blindly read slanted article headlines. They can easily see for themselves.
- advisedwang 6y ago
  I don't believe these tweets are aimed at the general public. At the time of these tweets they were in the final days of a union election. Amazon is trying to win over undecided workers from unionizing.
  - AlexandrB 6y ago
    That could only work if the workers didn't read any of the replies. Seems like a bad strategy.
- blihp 6y ago
  It's called sucking up to the boss. Whoever was responsible for the tweets evidently believed the Bezos would approve of the content. It gives him plausible deniability (after all, he didn't write it) and in many cases may improve the career prospects within the company of the person who did write it.
- vkou 6y ago
  > I'll never understand why companies think directly involving themselves in the political discourse is a good idea. Because the capacity to ignore politics is inversely proportionate to the danger politics poses to you. Large incumbent corporations are deeply dependent on preserving the status quo, in order to preserve their business model. Preserving the status quo requires active politicking.
- croutonwagon 6y ago
  Even more bizarre is some of them make no sense... Example: https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1375509172549132289?s=20 https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1375509172549132289?s=... Quote: >There’s a big difference between talk and action. @SenSanders has been a powerful politician in Vermont for 30 years and their min wage is still $11.75. Amazon’s is $15, plus great health care from day one. Sanders would rather talk in Alabama than act in Vermont. Hes the US senator for Vermont. He is charged with being a respresentative for the state of Vermont for the Union of the United States and is responsible for 1/2 of the votes for that state on Federal Laws. He is no more powerful than any other Vermont citizen in regards to their own state laws such as minimum wage...Its like they gave the keys to the account to some disgruntled intern....
slickrick216 6y ago
Somewhat off topic but this is actually pretty positive proactive approach to security in the finest spirt of due diligence. It should be ok for people to open tickets to look into curious things no matter how trivial. Tickets don’t have to become incidents. This is what triage is for. The real security incident here is how did the intercept learn of that ticket as that should really be classified.
- WalterSear 6y ago
  Is it, though? It strikes me as a sarcastic joke by burnt out security staff. Which would explain why we are hearing about it.
  - Twirrim 6y ago
    No, it's very much in line with the way Amazon Security staff operated when I worked there. They very much favour proactive reports, and heavily emphasised that they'd rather have a ticket and resolve it as nothing, than not be ticketed at all because you're not sure. Unusual behaviour on a twitter account are most definitely things they'd expect to have reported to them for evaluation, or expect to report themselves if they saw it.
    - WalterSear 6y ago
      Everyone, everywhere, favours proactive security reports, or should do so. This however, makes it possible to make security reports for political effect - after all, if your guidelines are to report anything suspicious, nobody can fault you for doing just that. Is it also standard policy at Amazon to leak security reports to the media, or discuss them with journalists after the fact? We both know that's not the case.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - slickrick216 6y ago
    This is why I said somewhat off topic as it could be like you said or it could a valid concern. I can’t really tell the intent. Irregardless I think it’s a good call to open a ticket. The amount of times I’ve seen something come from an innocuous user report is frightening. Actually rereading it again I would say the source is the person that opened the ticket and not a member of the security team.
Raed667 6y ago
For me, the recent (petty) twitter activity of @amazonnews was the final push I needed to cut all ties with Amazon.
- rainyMammoth 6y ago
  I sure hope that you cut all ties with Facebook and Google before that.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Do those places make you pee in a bottle? Or do they have restrooms like civilized businesses?
    - rainyMammoth 6y ago
      Do you have any proof of pee in a bottle? Or are you blindly believing the narrative that the New York times put out to drive clicks? Not saying it's not true but please be more critical. Google and Facebook on the other hand are directly destroying democracy and spying on you.
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  Really? I thought it was really refreshing to see a corporation not trying to kowtow to politicians. If Warren is saying stuff they find objectionable, call it out. If a business can't safely criticize a legislator on Twitter, that's pretty much giving up on free speech.
  - chewmieser 6y ago
    And it's within their free speech to find that level of pettiness (and straight-up lies for that matter) distasteful and move his business elsewhere... I agree with them - this is not a good look for Amazon. I have already essentially stopped purchasing on Amazon prior to this for various reasons (endless counterfeits and worker abuses) but will likely look to disband my relationship with AWS as well if they continue.
xbar 6y ago
The line between natural citizens and corporations is quite fuzzy. I do not like it.
- WalterSear 6y ago
  It's quite clear cut: there are significant consequences for natural citizens caught acting in an illegal or immoral manner.
josefresco 6y ago
Snark is not limited to just @amazonnews - also @amazon_policy . https://twitter.com/amazon_policy/status/1374739879570116610 https://twitter.com/amazon_policy/status/1374739879570116610
bredren 6y ago
We had a driver pour out a bottle of pee directly onto the street in front of our place from his open driver’s side van window on Saturday afternoon. My wife got a photo and then immediately after they delivered packages and left I went and took a photo because I couldn’t believe it. I had not heard about the controversy until then, but my wife had been following it. I read these tweets and I also didn’t believe they were real, they were far too aggressive. It was strange because I felt like I needed to know if it was in fact pee or not, but I also was not willing to bend over and smell it. It had all of the appearances of pee, yet the disposal was so obviously careless and conspicuous it was as though the person wanted to be caught. The up close photo I took shows two foamy sections. We discussed ethical issues of the potential for the worker being fired over this. And whether it ever okay to pour a bottle of pee out in front of some homes on a bike way. We also consulted a USPS mail carrier friend about what he has dealt with and USPS’ procedure for bio breaks. Gathering all that, I still chose to email the photos and ask Amazon how they intended to handle this. Waiting on a reply. Edit: This was a tough call, I added some additional details below. If the driver had knocked on our door and asked to use our bathroom, I'd have absolutely invited him in. This happened with a Fedex driver once before. That person ended up leaving pee on the seat, which was pretty gross.
- notJim 6y ago
  A bit surprised you sent the photos to Amazon. That person is likely to be fired. A bit of pee on the street is not going to harm anything or anyone (otherwise the streets around bars would be an enormous biohazard), although it's obviously gross.
  - Judgmentality 6y ago
    Is human pee any more gross than dog pee? This isn't a rhetorical question - I'm genuinely asking.
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      I’m unsure, but cat pee is in a class of its own. That stuff is evil.
fotta 6y ago
> According to Recode, the suspicious tweets in fact came at the behest of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who had recently conveyed disappointment to Amazon officials that the company was not pushing back against criticisms that he considered misleading. > But company personnel think Amazon’s aggressive actions on Twitter are “embarrassing.” It's amazing how tone-deaf Bezos sounds.
- AlexandrB 6y ago
  It's not surprising. The biggest danger of having tremendous wealth and/or power seems to be that you can no longer accept and integrate valid criticism from others.
  - nullc 6y ago
    There is so much criticism-- especially towards anything/anyone high profile-- including outright invalid criticism that there is potentially a selection effect: Everyone who listens to criticism gives up and we're left with people who are substantially immune to it.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - d1zzy 6y ago
    Which seems to apply to some of our politicians too. Like the reply from Elizabeth Warren saying that maybe Amazon should be split up because then maybe they wouldn't have time to criticize elected officials. Or otherwise "stop criticizing me or I'll make you hurt". Not very nice coming from a political figure in a democracy. I did find Amazon's responses to be tone deaf at best (mostly just disagreeing with them) but her reply to be much worse.
    - QuixoticQuibit 6y ago
      You’re clearly not being charitable to her if you read her tweet and thought she meant Amazon has to be broken up because their tweets are snarky towards her. She’s saying that Big Tech in general is so powerful—they can do whatever they want—and then snap back at politicians in snarky tweets without a care.
ksm1717 6y ago
Someone needs to do lexical style analysis against this Dave Clark’s tweets. It seems evident (same exact wordings and Bernie Sanders whataboutisms) and hilarious that he is responding to criticism of his personal account’s tweets from amazonnews https://twitter.com/davehclark/status/1375045409542823939?s=20 https://twitter.com/davehclark/status/1375045409542823939?s=... https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1375509172549132289?s=20 https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1375509172549132289?s=...
- rideontime 6y ago
  Not sure why this is buried. Dave Clark comes directly from the warehouse business and has himself used the "people wouldn't work here if this were true" angle. Really tries to portray the warehouses as something they should be proud of, reality notwithstanding.
gkoberger 6y ago
My read on this was that it was a snarky report done in protest. Ken Klippenstein is a troll who does things with a straight face, and likely so are people who leak to him. I don't think anyone really believed it was hacked, but rather it was a way to criticize it with plausible deniability.
- notatoad 6y ago
  Seems likely that the person who leaked it to Ken Klippenstein was the same person who opened the ticket in the first place.
- ncallaway 6y ago
  The only thing that stands out to me was the callout of different platforms used to send the tweet. I could see, along with everything else, that being enough to at least make the question worth raising.
- turdnagel 6y ago
  Agreed, and not really worthy of a news story.
- danso 6y ago
  The article includes a screenshot: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20532639/amazon-trouble-ticket.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20532639/amazon-t... Seems like a lot of detail (e.g. going back through the past 2 months of tweets to check the source label) for just a "hey this sucks!" protest. Also, seems risky to send a screenshot of your own ticket while logged into the ticket system, though maybe all the login template info is just outside of the cropped screenshot?
  - vineyardmike 6y ago
    >Seems like a lot of detail (e.g. going back through the past 2 months of tweets to check the source label) for just a "hey this sucks!" protest. FWIW, this is how much detail i'd put in for the plausible deniability "this sucks" protest if that were me.
  - 6y ago
boomboomsubban 6y ago
I wonder if the account purposely changed it's source label to avoid any pee bottle posts coming from "Sprinklr."
anonymousiam 6y ago
So Amazon/Bezos are learning how to behave on Twitter by example of Donald Trump?
turdnagel 6y ago
It's a news story that someone inside Amazon thinks the tweets are bad?
andonisus 6y ago
I am of the opinion that all truckers (or people in the delivery profession) pee in bottles to save time, not just Amazon drivers. Why is Amazon being singled out here? I suppose the argument is that it is caused by their aggressive delivery metrics and policies, but would t this be true of any shipping company? If drivers are incentivized to by the number of packages they deliver to meet bonuses or certain payouts, isn’t it logical they would do anything to save time? How would you even change the compensation or penalty structure to account for this?
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Amazon lied about it very publicly. They lied and said they didn't even know about it, and then an avalanche of evidence showing they knew about it was released.
  - px43 6y ago
    Did they? The tweet I saw was specifically talking about Amazon employees, and last I checked, none of the people driving delivery trucks are in any way employed by Amazon. My understanding was that someone had made the accusation that this was happening in fulfillment centers, which are employees, and Amazon was officially denying it. Amazon DSP drivers are hired and managed completely by third party companies. https://logistics.amazon.com/marketing/faq https://logistics.amazon.com/marketing/faq
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      It's not really that interesting a distinction if the vehicles are literally branded "Amazon" and Amazon is the only customer.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >Why is Amazon being singled out here Because Amazon is a brand upper middle class white collar types interact with. Swift and Schneider are not. Everyone thought they were at least a couple intermediaries removed from the trucker jugs. Just wait until they discover what construction site porta-johns are like.
ipsocannibal 6y ago
I think Amazon needs to ask itself how this barrage of reputational damage is going to affect tech recruiting. Its been very slow to get on the remote work as the future train, its anti-worker crush the little guy cred is through the roof, and the hypocrisy of the LPs in light of recent company actions is blaring. Each of these is particularly off putting to a sizable portion of the typically left leaning US dev set Amazon tries to recruit. I guess Amazon has recourse as they can double down on hiring H1B's to sidestep negative perceptions in the US.
ullevaal 6y ago
Threads that are union-related always seem very foreign to me on HN, but one of the greatest advantages of living somewhere there is trust between employees, unions, employer organisations and the government is that the basic facts can be agreed upon. So you can have things like technical committees that analyse the basic facts of inflation adjustments of wages, wage changes in competing industries or economies and real wage increases. As well the unions in export-driven sectors negotiating first, and government and services employees falling in line, in order to continue to compete in the global economy. I believe this trust also builds productivity, but looks like Jeff Bezos has a different opinion.
1-6 6y ago
The parodical logo with the Amazon smile going through the Twitter bird was brilliant.
hikerclimb 6y ago
Good. Hopefully Amazon got hacked.
kerng 6y ago
Maybe Bezos personally tweeted this time.
citizenpaul 6y ago
I like it! Its a million times better than the usual corporate nothing platitudes.

259 points by danso 6y ago

I'll never understand why companies think directly involving themselves in the political discourse is a good idea. It would honestly even be different if Jeff Bezos himself tweeted these things, but to see the Amazon corporate news account try to one-up Elizabeth Warren is so bizarre..

kaesar14 6y ago
There's reports (source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/29/jeff-bezos-amazon-twitter-social-media https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/29/jeff-bezo...) that Bezos got mad that the media department wasn't doing enough to combat the "outright lies" spread by the media about Amazon working conditions, which apparently spurred the latest tweets from the AmazonNews account. Seems to be a self inflicted wound from ego. Edit: Source requested
- inetknght 6y ago
  > There's reports that [citation needed]
  - kaesar14 6y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/29/jeff-bezos-amazon-twitter-social-media https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/29/jeff-bezo... Added
    - derg 6y ago
      It's also literally in the Intercept article with a link to the story lol: > According to Recode, the suspicious tweets in fact came at the behest of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who had recently conveyed disappointment to Amazon officials that the company was not pushing back against criticisms that he considered misleading.
      - kaesar14 6y ago
        Whoops..
        derg 6y ago
        ha i meant to reply to the person asking for a citation but also another one you can add into your post.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - josefresco 6y ago
    https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/3/28/22354604/amazon-twitter-bernie-sanders-jeff-bezos-union-alabama-elizabeth-warren https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/3/28/22354604/amazon-twitter...
- jaywalk 6y ago
  The article mentions this. And I can understand Bezos getting upset (although the "lies" may be more truthful than he thinks) but the way they chose to respond was worse than doing nothing at all.
  - derg 6y ago
    hell hath no fury like a displeased business tyrant imagine getting that mad as like the richest person in the goddamned world.
  - anonymousab 6y ago
    You could view it as Bezos or Amazon simply coming to terms with the fact that they are not subject to any rules of decorum, or at any risk from ever failing due to their public actions. That they, as the mega corp, have reached the point of being above society and have no need to be polite or conform to inconvenient social norms anymore.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- anchpop 6y ago
  If you feel that lies are being spread about you and you try to correct the record, how is that a self-inflicted wound from ego? Isn’t that what anyone would do?
  - kaesar14 6y ago
    If you're a person, sure. If you're a business and you have a good amount of Congress in your pocket, have near infinite wealth, and get away with a myriad of abuses against your employees, why draw the ire of the public with rude comments against sitting Congressmen and Congresswomen? Do you think these comments serve to further Amazon's goals, or have they hurt? It's clear to me as well that Amazon's replies were outright lies - they are making their employees defecate and urinate into bottles, and they do get away with not paying / underpaying taxes. They're not even correcting the record, they're just lying more.
    - anonymousab 6y ago
      >why draw the ire of the public Because that ire is powerless and asserting dominance over society is a series of shifts like this. They're going to tell people what their version of reality is, and people will have to accept it; There will be no comeuppance, and alternate realities and truths are to be forcefully disregarded whenever that's more convenient than ignoring them.
rainyMammoth 6y ago
I find it refreshing to see a company openly tweeting what they think and not issuing boring PR statement. It is probably going to cost them a lot in backslash though
- zionic 6y ago
  Honestly despite my issues with amazon those tweets are refreshing. Sterile corporate communication is an outmoded boomer concept that appears to be dying with them.
- funman7 6y ago
  I was thinking the same, might be a good example for exercising the average persons ability to not just blindly read slanted article headlines. They can easily see for themselves.
advisedwang 6y ago
I don't believe these tweets are aimed at the general public. At the time of these tweets they were in the final days of a union election. Amazon is trying to win over undecided workers from unionizing.
- AlexandrB 6y ago
  That could only work if the workers didn't read any of the replies. Seems like a bad strategy.
blihp 6y ago
It's called sucking up to the boss. Whoever was responsible for the tweets evidently believed the Bezos would approve of the content. It gives him plausible deniability (after all, he didn't write it) and in many cases may improve the career prospects within the company of the person who did write it.
vkou 6y ago
> I'll never understand why companies think directly involving themselves in the political discourse is a good idea. Because the capacity to ignore politics is inversely proportionate to the danger politics poses to you. Large incumbent corporations are deeply dependent on preserving the status quo, in order to preserve their business model. Preserving the status quo requires active politicking.
croutonwagon 6y ago
Even more bizarre is some of them make no sense... Example: https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1375509172549132289?s=20 https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1375509172549132289?s=... Quote: >There’s a big difference between talk and action. @SenSanders has been a powerful politician in Vermont for 30 years and their min wage is still $11.75. Amazon’s is $15, plus great health care from day one. Sanders would rather talk in Alabama than act in Vermont. Hes the US senator for Vermont. He is charged with being a respresentative for the state of Vermont for the Union of the United States and is responsible for 1/2 of the votes for that state on Federal Laws. He is no more powerful than any other Vermont citizen in regards to their own state laws such as minimum wage...Its like they gave the keys to the account to some disgruntled intern....

slickrick216 6y ago

Somewhat off topic but this is actually pretty positive proactive approach to security in the finest spirt of due diligence. It should be ok for people to open tickets to look into curious things no matter how trivial. Tickets don’t have to become incidents. This is what triage is for. The real security incident here is how did the intercept learn of that ticket as that should really be classified.

WalterSear 6y ago
Is it, though? It strikes me as a sarcastic joke by burnt out security staff. Which would explain why we are hearing about it.
- Twirrim 6y ago
  No, it's very much in line with the way Amazon Security staff operated when I worked there. They very much favour proactive reports, and heavily emphasised that they'd rather have a ticket and resolve it as nothing, than not be ticketed at all because you're not sure. Unusual behaviour on a twitter account are most definitely things they'd expect to have reported to them for evaluation, or expect to report themselves if they saw it.
  - WalterSear 6y ago
    Everyone, everywhere, favours proactive security reports, or should do so. This however, makes it possible to make security reports for political effect - after all, if your guidelines are to report anything suspicious, nobody can fault you for doing just that. Is it also standard policy at Amazon to leak security reports to the media, or discuss them with journalists after the fact? We both know that's not the case.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- slickrick216 6y ago
  This is why I said somewhat off topic as it could be like you said or it could a valid concern. I can’t really tell the intent. Irregardless I think it’s a good call to open a ticket. The amount of times I’ve seen something come from an innocuous user report is frightening. Actually rereading it again I would say the source is the person that opened the ticket and not a member of the security team.

Raed667 6y ago

For me, the recent (petty) twitter activity of @amazonnews was the final push I needed to cut all ties with Amazon.

rainyMammoth 6y ago
I sure hope that you cut all ties with Facebook and Google before that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Do those places make you pee in a bottle? Or do they have restrooms like civilized businesses?
  - rainyMammoth 6y ago
    Do you have any proof of pee in a bottle? Or are you blindly believing the narrative that the New York times put out to drive clicks? Not saying it's not true but please be more critical. Google and Facebook on the other hand are directly destroying democracy and spying on you.
bpodgursky 6y ago
Really? I thought it was really refreshing to see a corporation not trying to kowtow to politicians. If Warren is saying stuff they find objectionable, call it out. If a business can't safely criticize a legislator on Twitter, that's pretty much giving up on free speech.
- chewmieser 6y ago
  And it's within their free speech to find that level of pettiness (and straight-up lies for that matter) distasteful and move his business elsewhere... I agree with them - this is not a good look for Amazon. I have already essentially stopped purchasing on Amazon prior to this for various reasons (endless counterfeits and worker abuses) but will likely look to disband my relationship with AWS as well if they continue.

xbar 6y ago

The line between natural citizens and corporations is quite fuzzy. I do not like it.

WalterSear 6y ago
It's quite clear cut: there are significant consequences for natural citizens caught acting in an illegal or immoral manner.

josefresco 6y ago

Snark is not limited to just @amazonnews - also @amazon_policy . https://twitter.com/amazon_policy/status/1374739879570116610 https://twitter.com/amazon_policy/status/1374739879570116610

bredren 6y ago

We had a driver pour out a bottle of pee directly onto the street in front of our place from his open driver’s side van window on Saturday afternoon. My wife got a photo and then immediately after they delivered packages and left I went and took a photo because I couldn’t believe it. I had not heard about the controversy until then, but my wife had been following it. I read these tweets and I also didn’t believe they were real, they were far too aggressive. It was strange because I felt like I needed to know if it was in fact pee or not, but I also was not willing to bend over and smell it. It had all of the appearances of pee, yet the disposal was so obviously careless and conspicuous it was as though the person wanted to be caught. The up close photo I took shows two foamy sections. We discussed ethical issues of the potential for the worker being fired over this. And whether it ever okay to pour a bottle of pee out in front of some homes on a bike way. We also consulted a USPS mail carrier friend about what he has dealt with and USPS’ procedure for bio breaks. Gathering all that, I still chose to email the photos and ask Amazon how they intended to handle this. Waiting on a reply. Edit: This was a tough call, I added some additional details below. If the driver had knocked on our door and asked to use our bathroom, I'd have absolutely invited him in. This happened with a Fedex driver once before. That person ended up leaving pee on the seat, which was pretty gross.

notJim 6y ago
A bit surprised you sent the photos to Amazon. That person is likely to be fired. A bit of pee on the street is not going to harm anything or anyone (otherwise the streets around bars would be an enormous biohazard), although it's obviously gross.
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  Is human pee any more gross than dog pee? This isn't a rhetorical question - I'm genuinely asking.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    I’m unsure, but cat pee is in a class of its own. That stuff is evil.

fotta 6y ago

> According to Recode, the suspicious tweets in fact came at the behest of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who had recently conveyed disappointment to Amazon officials that the company was not pushing back against criticisms that he considered misleading. > But company personnel think Amazon’s aggressive actions on Twitter are “embarrassing.” It's amazing how tone-deaf Bezos sounds.

AlexandrB 6y ago
It's not surprising. The biggest danger of having tremendous wealth and/or power seems to be that you can no longer accept and integrate valid criticism from others.
- nullc 6y ago
  There is so much criticism-- especially towards anything/anyone high profile-- including outright invalid criticism that there is potentially a selection effect: Everyone who listens to criticism gives up and we're left with people who are substantially immune to it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- d1zzy 6y ago
  Which seems to apply to some of our politicians too. Like the reply from Elizabeth Warren saying that maybe Amazon should be split up because then maybe they wouldn't have time to criticize elected officials. Or otherwise "stop criticizing me or I'll make you hurt". Not very nice coming from a political figure in a democracy. I did find Amazon's responses to be tone deaf at best (mostly just disagreeing with them) but her reply to be much worse.
  - QuixoticQuibit 6y ago
    You’re clearly not being charitable to her if you read her tweet and thought she meant Amazon has to be broken up because their tweets are snarky towards her. She’s saying that Big Tech in general is so powerful—they can do whatever they want—and then snap back at politicians in snarky tweets without a care.

ksm1717 6y ago

Someone needs to do lexical style analysis against this Dave Clark’s tweets. It seems evident (same exact wordings and Bernie Sanders whataboutisms) and hilarious that he is responding to criticism of his personal account’s tweets from amazonnews https://twitter.com/davehclark/status/1375045409542823939?s=20 https://twitter.com/davehclark/status/1375045409542823939?s=... https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1375509172549132289?s=20 https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1375509172549132289?s=...

rideontime 6y ago
Not sure why this is buried. Dave Clark comes directly from the warehouse business and has himself used the "people wouldn't work here if this were true" angle. Really tries to portray the warehouses as something they should be proud of, reality notwithstanding.

gkoberger 6y ago

My read on this was that it was a snarky report done in protest. Ken Klippenstein is a troll who does things with a straight face, and likely so are people who leak to him. I don't think anyone really believed it was hacked, but rather it was a way to criticize it with plausible deniability.

notatoad 6y ago
Seems likely that the person who leaked it to Ken Klippenstein was the same person who opened the ticket in the first place.
ncallaway 6y ago
The only thing that stands out to me was the callout of different platforms used to send the tweet. I could see, along with everything else, that being enough to at least make the question worth raising.
turdnagel 6y ago
Agreed, and not really worthy of a news story.
danso 6y ago
The article includes a screenshot: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20532639/amazon-trouble-ticket.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20532639/amazon-t... Seems like a lot of detail (e.g. going back through the past 2 months of tweets to check the source label) for just a "hey this sucks!" protest. Also, seems risky to send a screenshot of your own ticket while logged into the ticket system, though maybe all the login template info is just outside of the cropped screenshot?
- vineyardmike 6y ago
  >Seems like a lot of detail (e.g. going back through the past 2 months of tweets to check the source label) for just a "hey this sucks!" protest. FWIW, this is how much detail i'd put in for the plausible deniability "this sucks" protest if that were me.
- 6y ago

boomboomsubban 6y ago

I wonder if the account purposely changed it's source label to avoid any pee bottle posts coming from "Sprinklr."

anonymousiam 6y ago

So Amazon/Bezos are learning how to behave on Twitter by example of Donald Trump?

turdnagel 6y ago

It's a news story that someone inside Amazon thinks the tweets are bad?

andonisus 6y ago

I am of the opinion that all truckers (or people in the delivery profession) pee in bottles to save time, not just Amazon drivers. Why is Amazon being singled out here? I suppose the argument is that it is caused by their aggressive delivery metrics and policies, but would t this be true of any shipping company? If drivers are incentivized to by the number of packages they deliver to meet bonuses or certain payouts, isn’t it logical they would do anything to save time? How would you even change the compensation or penalty structure to account for this?

maxerickson 6y ago
Amazon lied about it very publicly. They lied and said they didn't even know about it, and then an avalanche of evidence showing they knew about it was released.
- px43 6y ago
  Did they? The tweet I saw was specifically talking about Amazon employees, and last I checked, none of the people driving delivery trucks are in any way employed by Amazon. My understanding was that someone had made the accusation that this was happening in fulfillment centers, which are employees, and Amazon was officially denying it. Amazon DSP drivers are hired and managed completely by third party companies. https://logistics.amazon.com/marketing/faq https://logistics.amazon.com/marketing/faq
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    It's not really that interesting a distinction if the vehicles are literally branded "Amazon" and Amazon is the only customer.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>Why is Amazon being singled out here Because Amazon is a brand upper middle class white collar types interact with. Swift and Schneider are not. Everyone thought they were at least a couple intermediaries removed from the trucker jugs. Just wait until they discover what construction site porta-johns are like.

ipsocannibal 6y ago

I think Amazon needs to ask itself how this barrage of reputational damage is going to affect tech recruiting. Its been very slow to get on the remote work as the future train, its anti-worker crush the little guy cred is through the roof, and the hypocrisy of the LPs in light of recent company actions is blaring. Each of these is particularly off putting to a sizable portion of the typically left leaning US dev set Amazon tries to recruit. I guess Amazon has recourse as they can double down on hiring H1B's to sidestep negative perceptions in the US.

ullevaal 6y ago

Threads that are union-related always seem very foreign to me on HN, but one of the greatest advantages of living somewhere there is trust between employees, unions, employer organisations and the government is that the basic facts can be agreed upon. So you can have things like technical committees that analyse the basic facts of inflation adjustments of wages, wage changes in competing industries or economies and real wage increases. As well the unions in export-driven sectors negotiating first, and government and services employees falling in line, in order to continue to compete in the global economy. I believe this trust also builds productivity, but looks like Jeff Bezos has a different opinion.

1-6 6y ago

The parodical logo with the Amazon smile going through the Twitter bird was brilliant.

hikerclimb 6y ago

Good. Hopefully Amazon got hacked.

kerng 6y ago

Maybe Bezos personally tweeted this time.

citizenpaul 6y ago

I like it! Its a million times better than the usual corporate nothing platitudes.