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Comment by docker_up | Hacker News Reader

This is the problem with media. It starts with the media focusing on how many Amazon workers aren't making enough money. Political pressure mounts and Amazon increases everyone's salary to minimum $15/hr.

The media then changes focus to those that feel slighted by their loss in bonus. They stop focusing on the people who are now happy and keep focusing on the small percentage of people who are unhappy, and seem to revel in creating a narrative where Amazon is STILL doing something wrong.

This is the fake news culture that is driving people like me away from actually believing the news.

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>This is the fake news culture

OK slow the heck down here. I'm not convinced that what you're describing is a new phenomenon or just a natural outcome of the fact that the news needs ad revenue and thrives on clicks/views.

There was a point in time where "fake news" meant news that was completely invented and had no grounding in reality at all with the express purpose of misinforming people. I think it's really important that we don't (continue to) conflate this concept with the concept of clickbait.

What part of this is 'fake'?

Why should the media be cutting Amazon slack?

God, please, agreed, can we please stop using the term "fake news" for anything we disagree with and leave it for stories that are actually factually untrue?

There is nothing in this story that is false. It's fine to point out that the media likes to focus on outrage-inducing features, but that doesn't make the news fake.

I don’t know if I would call it “fake news,” but it is certainly derived from the 24 hour news cycle. When a new story is constantly needs recycling a old one is cheaper than finding a new one. This is’nt fake just a rehashing with a different attitude.

> the small percentage of people who are unhappy

Citation needed.

Unbiased point: Amazon can raise wages to $15/hr (or higher!) and STILL do something wrong related to how they compensate their workers. Pay/compensation structures for many workers are more complex than just "how many dollars are you given gross by your employer". If their compensation isn't actually better, then there's reason to draw attention to it.

As someone below said: If past(bonus + base pay) = current (base pay + bonus) it doesn't matter what the numbers are for base and bonus, they're still the same. And if things are still the same, there will still be people who are upset with their compensation.

This is a problem with Amazon PR misrepresenting a salary increase that isn't actually what they protrayed it as originally.

The outrage machine climbing ever higher toward peak nuttery. We already seem to be a point where the majority of the media output is focused on spurring outrage in a given story, talking about something we're all supposed to be outraged about, or trying to spark outrage where there shouldn't be any. Then it hands off to social media, where the consumers compete to see who can be the most outraged, for social tribe points.

Sigh.

Amazon's move probably represents the needs of a highly competitive labor market in the face of important holiday business, not "political pressure" or the media.

Fake news indeed.

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