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Comment by smurfysmurf | Hacker News Reader

I watched the all hands today. I just want to comment on the journalism here. For one, whoever this employee is that email buzz feed news is taken as representative to general feelings for all of Amazon employees which is ridiculous. Also the article makes this assertion "Though the company-wide Q&A was not meant to only address concerns about Amazon’s facial recognition deals with law enforcement, it was a major topic on employees’ minds.", which it has no data to back up. One question at the tail end of a 90 minute all hand does not make it a major topic.

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I think you make a solid point here. I do think Amazon and its employees should be debating their concerns on this topic. But if the only question/talk of Rekognition vis-a-vis law enforcement during the all-hands is that one question quoted by the article, then that doesn't justify a news story just on that one question at the meeting. That's not to say BuzzFeed isn't justified in continuing to report on the controversy and debate, just that this recent moment at the all-hands isn't news in itself.

Before the big Google walkout this week, there was at least one HN discussion about it a few days prior, with some commenters questioning the purpose/courage of a walkout if the employees aren't willing to quit. Well, even if Google employees didn't put money where their mouths were, participating in the walkout at the very least is a public statement. And when 20,000 [0] employees make that statement, there is no debate at all if a reporter describes the Google controversy as one that has sparked significant company-wide strife.

looks like you have an ex-Googler working at your company.

News should only be taken with a grain of salt in 2018

More like, news from certain sources should be taken with a grain of salt.

There are plenty of good journalists with high reputation that you can certainly take more than a pinch of salt with.

Samples?

Anything that hits the front page of nytimes.com or washingtonpost.com for example. Opinion pieces are a different ballgame, obviously.

Even reputations are hotly debated in this climate. I think a good habit is to read from as many sources as possible, including controversial ones, and making a private determination as to how to weight reporting.

There are enough sources supporting any worldview that there's a real risk that you'll just end up supporting whichever one you started with. I have no idea how you can do better though.

I struggle with confirmation bias, myself.

There's no shortage of people who share that same "belief", but would end up writing down a different and conflicting list of people than you, with no loss of accuracy

This is not some new phenomena that didn't exist until very recently. Critical thinking has been required since, well, 'news' was a thing.

I agree it’s not a new phenomena and never said that it was. I’d argue that our news was historically fair-minded up until the recent mass-scale polarization.

So you are here to tell us that employees don't actually care as much as reported about the ethics implications of their work, and that leadership didn't actually meaningfully address the topic.

... is that meant to be a comment in defence of the company?

The comment is not really addressing the topic at hand, just how the article here makes bigger claims than it actually has data to prove.

Not addressing the topic at hand, preferring to discuss technical points is precisely the industry tend that concerns me.

> trend that concerns me.

No one cares about what trends concern any one person.

This is Hacker News, not Manager News or Lawyer News.

You are perfectly welcome to find another industry if you don’t like this one.

This is a disingenuous statement. Given the common understanding that "software is eating the world," your suggestion is about as earnest as "you are perfectly welcome to find another planet."

Please don't get personal in HN arguments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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