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.
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.
SOP (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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What one is doing is government action, what the other is doing is false advertising and marketing fraud. It runs afoul of communications laws, using communications systems for fraudulent purposes. One as a political attack against selected politicians who do not favour Amazon, brushing up against electoral laws as undeclared political advertising.
The false advertising, trying to convince workers who buy off Amazon, that Amazon cares about workers, blatant false advertising. Workers buy off Amazon and you
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Who is cheaper, Bezos or the CCP?
I hear the CCP pays 50 yuan per post, what is Bezos paying?
I think that needs to be quoted against troll censor moderation. However I also think you got the number wrong. I think it's 0.5 yuan/post. However I can't read Chinese, so I'm not sure what's going on there. Speaking as a tactician, I think they should pay trolls based on time consumption of the other side, perhaps with bonus payments for replies.
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Veritas thinks this comment needs to be -1, Overrated.
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I totally thought Amazon was supposed to be cracking down on fake reviews...
Veritas ? (Score:2)
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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
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CNN - The Most Trusted Name in News
(2003 Cable News Network LP, LLLP. An AOL Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved.)
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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.
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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.
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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.
Pinkerton's? (Score:1)
To me this is getting dangerously close to pinkerton's...
When are they going to hire goons to physically defend their name....
You know they're still around right? (Score:3)
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).
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Well, Amazon already hired the actual Pinkertons [nypost.com].
Hand picked by someone with a great sense of humor (Score:3, Funny)
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.
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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.
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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)
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."
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"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)
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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.
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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
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but if you say their is a dem twitter army you're a conspiracy nut.
And if you say the other guys are a bunch of illiterate fucking hicks, you're somehow elitist. But here I am, replying to some asshat who didn't make it far enough in English to distinguish their from there.
But no- keep exercising your expansive intellect and wisdom to choose the leaders of the country. You've a litany of good choices in your history, I'm sure.
Exactly what Bill Gates did ... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
It's almost as if Billionaires (Score:4, Informative)
It is weird how many Gates apologists there are on
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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.
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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.
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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
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How's that working out for them? (Score:2)
Fortunately, corpo scum don't know what humor is.
And you.... (Score:2)
my children, will grow up to create a vast bot army! Bwwahahha!
Mystifying (Score:3)
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.
Translation: Amazon Propaganda (Score:1)
#FORTIFIED!
Yeah, uncanny valley edition. (Score:3)
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.
Just laugh your abuses away. (Score:2)
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."
If Amazon were a good company... (Score:2)