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Amazon's Twitter Army Was Handpicked For 'Great Sense of Humor' (theintercept.com) 54

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: Amazon's small Twitter army of "ambassadors" was quietly conceived in 2018 under the codename "Veritas," which sought to train and dispatch select employees to the social media trenches to defend Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, according to an internal description of the program obtained exclusively by The Intercept. Amazon ambassadors drew attention this week as they responded to a wave of online criticism for the company's treatment of workers amid a union drive at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama.

Anticipating criticisms of worker conditions at their fulfillment centers in particular, Amazon designed Veritas to train fulfillment center workers chosen for their "great sense of humor" to confront critics -- including policymakers -- on Twitter in a "blunt" manner. The document, produced as part of the pilot program in 2018 and marked "Amazon.com Confidential," also includes examples of how its ambassadors can snarkily respond to criticisms of the company and its CEO. Several examples involve Sen. Bernie Sanders, a longtime critic of the $1 trillion firm who has been targeted by it in recent days. It also provides examples of how to defend Bezos.

"To address speculation and false assertions in social media and online forums about the quality of the FC [Fulfillment Center] associate experience, we are creating a new social team staffed with active, tenured FC employees, who will be empowered to respond in a polite -- but blunt -- way to every untruth," the project description reads. "FC Ambassadors ('FCA') will respond to all posts and comments from customers, influencers (including policymakers), and media questioning the FC associate experience." Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, said via email: "FC Ambassadors are employees who work in our fulfillment centers and choose to share their personal experience -- the FC ambassador program helps show what it's actually like inside our fulfillment centers, along with the public tours we provide."
According to the BBC, accounts claiming to be Amazon workers are using the @AmazonFC handle followed by a first name to praise their working conditions on Twitter. Twitter has now suspended many of the accounts, and Amazon has confirmed at least one is fake.
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Amazon's Twitter Army Was Handpicked For 'Great Sense of Humor'

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  • SOP (Score:5, Interesting)

    by youngone ( 975102 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @07:09PM (#61222774)
    Massive amounts of propaganda is a key part of any huge American corporation.
    The one I work for supplies constant reminders about how we're all part of the same team, and we should look for ways to do things better, and lots of other things that turn out to be lies.
    One of the admin people puts up a new series of posters almost every day.
    Amazon have a lie they need to sell outside the company, which is why they're using Twitter instead of posters in the break room.
    • Veritas thinks this comment needs to be -1, Overrated.

    • I totally thought Amazon was supposed to be cracking down on fake reviews...

  • Veritas the latin word for truth, what a strange choice.
    • Pravda, comrade.
      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        Indeed.

        The person who designed and built Amazon op shows the tactics of the RUSSIAN SIDE of the Eastern Front.

        Amazon op mimics the Russian approach, not the Western one. The Western side operates on a cut-n-paste basis in a manner very similar to an Indian support centre. Herds of language speakers (+/- some help from a dictionary) in a barn somewhere cut-n-paste shite. If you put posts next to each other, they are all alike if not identical, despite coming from different people. The humour is practical

    • by DavenH ( 1065780 )
      Anything with "truth" in its name is near-certain to be its antithesis. Like, when you see a youtube channel called TruthAmericaNews, you know it's lies and distortions. Same with regimes that call themselves "Democratic People's Republic (not dictatorship! note!) of XYZ". Why are they trying so hard, one asks?
      • by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

        CNN - The Most Trusted Name in News
        (2003 Cable News Network LP, LLLP. An AOL Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved.)

      • Anything with "truth" in its name is near-certain to be its antithesis. Like, when you see a youtube channel called TruthAmericaNews, you know it's lies and distortions. Same with regimes that call themselves "Democratic People's Republic (not dictatorship! note!) of XYZ". Why are they trying so hard, one asks?

        Or like when my ex-wife asked me for the truth.

    • Clearly chosen for their humor skill, not for their fact-checking ability, as shown by recent tweets. You have to be especially silly to lose a twitter war to AOC.

      The only reason this kind of thing works is because people, the general population, would rather win than be right.

      • No amount of "skill" can compensate for the fact that they're pushing a corporate HR line.

        And if there's anything that's loathed on all parts of the political spectrum to day, it's corporate HR bullshit.

  • To me this is getting dangerously close to pinkerton's...

    When are they going to hire goons to physically defend their name....

    • Google it. They're a PMC, or at least they dabble in it (in as much as anyone can "dabble" in that line of work).

      And if you think Amazon doesn't have people digging up dirt ala Pinkerton on everyone and anyone who tries to Unionize then you need to learn how to use Google, they've been caught more than once. Walmart's even worse (or better, in the sense that they haven't even gotten a vote yet).
    • by Hentes ( 2461350 )

      Well, Amazon already hired the actual Pinkertons [nypost.com].

  • When people tell me they have a great sense of humor, then I can be certain they don't. It's not that I'm skeptical of random unsupported claims but instead it's that I have years of experience dealing with inane boring morons with an unreasonably high opinion of themselves.

    P.S. I say amusing things from time to time. But I would starve to death if I tried to make a profession out of my comedy act, unless there is a category of comedy of errors.

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Still, I'm sure they can afford the very finest sock puppets. Being Amazon they probably have some data-driven sock-puppet humor metrics algorithms that tell those sock puppets that they need to be 25% more snarky and ten percent less self-deprecating.

    • And that's just the guys at the Fulfillment Centers. Over at the Mechanical Turk division they could have their own tv show, they're so funny. Who needs public relations when every third person is a Henny Youngman.
    • What they really mean is great ability to troll. This is nothing new, but it's always disheartening to hear about.

  • Not true! (Score:5, Funny)

    by RoccamOccam ( 953524 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @07:20PM (#61222822)

    This report is such a load of crap!

    But, while we're chatting, let me tell you about Jeff Bezos -- great guy and so nice! The other night his wife told him told to take a spider out instead of killing it. He was gone for hours. When he got back he told his wife "We went and had drinks. Cool guy, wants to be a web designer."

    • Totally fake. Why would he want to be anything other than a search indexer?
    • "We went and had drinks. Cool guy, wants to be a web designer."

      I heard last time he tried to spin one up he was fired for it having too many bugs.

  • Brunt! FCA! (Score:4, Funny)

    by halltk1983 ( 855209 ) <halltk1983@yahoo.com> on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @07:29PM (#61222846) Homepage Journal
    Fitting that Amazon chose the acronym made famous by the Ferengi, responsible for ensuring that all actions are to seek maximum profit even at the cost of the hardship of the individual.
    • off topic mod?

      Time was related star trek jokes were always on topic here. Nerd culture had mutated these last 20 years (no shit).

      Anyways off to get some hot grits.

      • off topic mod?

        Time was related star trek jokes were always on topic here. Nerd culture had mutated these last 20 years (no shit).

        Anyways off to get some hot grits.

        Well, in defense of the bad mod, Natallie Portman its allready 39-40 years old :-P

  • by Jerry ( 6400 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @07:38PM (#61222878)

    when he hired James Plamondon to run Microsoft's disinformation campaign as a "Technical Evangelist". Plamondon calls developers "pawns" and hired a bunch of "Linux Evangelists" to haunt the comments sections and attack Linux and Microsoft competitors with unbelievable lies. Not so unbelievable compared to what the mnm does today.

    One journalist whose name was Joe Barr wrote an article called "Slime", in which he reveals what he discovered about Microsoft evangelists beginning with his time on the old IBM forum on Compuserv and later.

    https://www.sealtd.net/quattro... [sealtd.net]

    Microsoft was/is the single biggest impediment to Linux progress, and I believe deliberately so. It began with James Plamaondon, who created Microsoft's "Technical Evangelists". He formed his team after advertising for "Linux Evangelists". Their sole purpose was to invade comment sections on stories about Linux and plant anti-Linux posts. In response to the Combs vs Microsoft trial Plamondon himself gave a Mea Culpa, but that was after he took the money and ran to Australia. Prior to the DOJ vs Microsoft trial, in which they lost both the trial and the appeal, but stole the judgement using political chicanery to get the judge replaced. She promptly let MS "negotiate" their own punishment. It turned out to be three "monitors", residing on their campus in Redmond, two of whom were picked by Microsoft. Oh, they also got a free pass on ALL crimes committed prior to the trial. Before the trial, PC vendors were forced to sign secret deals with Microsoft which forced them to install or bundle Windows on EVERY PC they sold, even to folks who wanted only the hardware so they could install Linux. If a PC OEM tried to sell only the hardware MS would raise their unit costs on Windows to make them noncompetitive with other PC OEMs. Dell tried that twice but was forced back into line. Walmart put a laptop on their shelves featuring Linux and they sold like wildfire. MS sent a letter to Walmart's exec explaining how their supply of Windows computers would dry up (by raising unit prices on PC OEMs who supplied Walmart) and Walmart killed the offering. This is documented in the Combs vs Microsoft trial.

    The OLPC initiative, designed to put a $100 laptop with wifi networking into the hands of kids in 3rd world countries, was introduced using Linux as kernel and running software on top of it. Microsoft killed that initiative, partly by subverting the man whose idea it was.

    I could go on and on because the trail of Microsoft's skulduggery is long and vile, but I hope you get the point.

    • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @08:15PM (#61222942)
      aren't nice people. [khn.org]

      It is weird how many Gates apologists there are on /., given that any /.er should know he singlehandedly held back PC software by 30 years and counting (BeOS could do things on a 400mhz AMD that my Win 10 box running on a quad core i5 still can't do). I can't tell if they're paid shills or kool aid drinkers but on /. of all places they should know better.
      • by _merlin ( 160982 )

        BeOS could do things on a 400mhz AMD that my Win 10 box running on a quad core i5 still can't do

        The trouble is, BeOS was more of a proof-of-concept than a real OS. It never supported things as basic as printing, and it didn't have binary compatibility between major versions do to dependence on the C++ ABI. It implemented a lot of cool ideas, but I think NeXT was a better choice for Apple - filling in the gaps in BeOS would've been a lot more work.

      • BeOS could do things on a 400mhz AMD that my Win 10 box running on a quad core i5 still can't do

        I get what you're trying to say... but at the same time, please tell me you're exaggerating.
        Because "being able to print with a parallel port because my i5 doesn't have one" really doesn't count as an OS deficiency.

        BeOS was a neat toy back in the day. But I have played with it recently, and like AmigaOS today... to say it's showing its age is generous.
        There are also people who like to say their Amiga runs better than their i5, but they are equally full of shit.

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by blarkon ( 1712194 )
      Yeah because what starving kids needed was a shit laptop instead of people digging wells. OLPC will stand out in history as one of the dumbest fucking aid projects ever. Only arrogant ivory tower nerds would think that giving someone a laptop would actually solve any problem related to living in the third world.
      • by nagora ( 177841 )

        Yeah because what starving kids needed was a shit laptop instead of people digging wells. OLPC will stand out in history as one of the dumbest fucking aid projects ever. Only arrogant ivory tower nerds would think that giving someone a laptop would actually solve any problem related to living in the third world.

        One problem related to living in the third world is that you have no way of selling your time to foreigners. You can only sell it locally, and in return you get currency which can only buy locally-produced things (because the exchange rate is so awful). You're stuck in a closed system with no way out.

        Sure, it's important to have clean water, but that just improves the living conditions in your jail. A laptop with even basic Internet connectivity gives you a chance to reach outside and sell your time to some

    • Was "ClubWin" a part of that? I remember that was Microsoft's answer to TeamOS/2.
    • by kubajz ( 964091 )
      So... would anyone on the Veritas team consider redirecting the discussion from Amazon to a favourite Slashdot villain like Microsoft? I am not accusing you, just pointing out how difficult it is to have unbiased discussions on social media these days and how easy it is to suspect perfectly normal commenters of being paid by whoever we don't like :)
    • Just like how they're using CoCs and blue haired transexuals to destroy free software now.
  • Fortunately, corpo scum don't know what humor is.

  • my children, will grow up to create a vast bot army! Bwwahahha!

  • by Harvey Manfrenjenson ( 1610637 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @09:54PM (#61223140)

    My very *first* reaction was to cringe at the thought of what this soulless PR hack thinks is "a great sense of humor". (I'm pretty sure I literally *cringed*, the way you do when you see an insect).

    My second thought was, yeah, astroturfing is bad and Amazon sucks.

    My third thought was, who really cares? Amazon just did us a favor: They announced (admittedly a bit late) that these twitter accounts are not "real" twitter accounts, but paid advertisements. And if *I* know that, then surely Amazon's target audience (mostly their own employees) also knows it. So there's no real astroturfing, and no real deception being carried out here.

  • by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Thursday April 01, 2021 @03:07AM (#61223536)

    Of the kind that only true psychopaths manage.

    Not being funny, but playing somebody who is funny. In a way that creeps everyone out but them.

  • So let me get this straight. Reports of warehouse workers pissing in bottles to meet performance quotas, and Amazons answer to that, is to send in a bunch of fucking amateur comedians?

    (Worker Rights) "Am I a joke to you?"

    (Amazon) "Clearly you are."

  • ... regular employees would speak freely and positively about the company and there would be fewer attacks or horror stories to begin with. The fact that they have to send in waves of "ambassadors" (i.e. basically a troll army) basically confirms what we already know - Amazon is extremely paranoid and micromanaged up the ass.

"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." - H.L. Mencken

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