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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

>you're either with them or against them.

well if you're dealing with a corporate entity the size of amazon and their weird bot/shill twitter army that's pretty much the only sane response.

Do you seriously think if you chat nicely with these PR people they're going to hook you up with someone who matters and amazon is going to have a nice chat about their anti-union practises with you over a cup of tea? Makes about as much sense as telling hong kongers to be friendly to the people's liberation army

Calling on workers to fight amazon is the only reasonable thing to do and if these combatative tweets bring attention to their PR campaigns than that's a plus

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Putting aside that you've given up entirely on any form of discourse with the account you're responding to...

You aren't only talking to that account - you are having a public conversation in front of millions of people.

...and if the discussion goes something like:

Company A: "We believe in xyz."

Twitter B: "You are an <insert insult>."

...then what benefit have you delivered to the other millions of people reading? All you are doing is stroking the ego of those who agree, and fueling outrage for those that don't. No ones position is evolving.

Instead, you should recognize that the audience of your comment is the millions of silent readers whose combined opinions/votes/dollars have an actual impact. To them, a logical, well reasoned, and UN-emotional argument is persuasive, and far more likely to help you achieve your goal.

> To them, a logical, well reasoned, and UN-emotional argument is persuasive, and far more likely to help you achieve your goal.

I'm not so sure. Know your audience. On hackernews I agree. But there are forums where nobody reads or understands your well reasoned arguments..

So why use those forums? If all you can do on twitter or reddit and whatnot is engage in pointless flamewars, why post there at all, or read them?

What does anyone gain by spending time exchanging "biting sarcasm" (as per a sibling comment) on an online platform?

Are there issues that we need to resolve with debate? If so, will those issues be resolved by slagging off each other on the internets? If not, is it any point doing exactly that, instead of trying (very hard) to have a level-headed, thoughtful conversation?

(And I do mean _trying_ very very hard because the internets has made little snotty know-it-alls of many of us and that just sucks).

Because those forums reach a wider audience? Because not every forum espouses or encourages well researched and reasoned arguments?

I like both twitter and hacker news, for expressing myself in different ways. Each have their place. One place isn't better than the other. Humans are diverse and so are their needs.

I do think that a snarky witty reply goes farther.

Biting sarcasm is also not bad.

You want to be remembered by your readers and logical, well reasoned arguments dont hold up that well in that regard.

Company A: "We believe in xyz."

Twitter B: "You are an <insert insult>."

But that's not what happened. "really like? cause your workers are liars?" is not an insult, it's pointing out that your workers contradict you.

> a logical, well reasoned, and UN-emotional argument is persuasive, and far more likely to help you achieve your goal.

This is shockingly naive. Look at the world around you. Read history.

> and if these combatative tweets bring attention to their PR campaigns than that's a plus

I'm not convinced that's a thing. I see a lot of twitter styled activism and I'm not sure what the impact is outside of maybe some anecdotal events.

of course a single young person can't do much other than speak (which is after all supposed to be the point of twitter), but on the aggregate it does shift the conservation. Over the last few years people have become more aware of amazon's business practises and it is starting to be reflected in politics, on both sides of the isle.

Sure, a tweet chain like this isn't going to change the world, but it's better than nothing or to pretend you can have a genuine discussion with Seth "fc ambassador" your friendly neighbourhood employee who is literally reading talking points off a page

I mean just genuinely look at these accounts, there's a guy who looks like 20 and claims to have grandchildren, then there's someone switching gender mid-conversation, it's like something out of a Kafka novel. In East Germany people used to refer to the increasingly bizarre existing social order as Realsozialismus, I think we've entered Realkapitalismus.

I get how how an individual might feel they can't do much more or better than nothing. I would argue though that if they choose just to tweet and so forth, they're not doing much at all.

I'm still not sure that there really is much of a change with twitter style activism.

I suspect everyone who is inclined to belive a thing already are in their own protected circles (to use a google+ term ) and they're not changing much. The bots are the only crossover I suspect.

Personally when I am on Twitter, I unfollow a lot of the higher activity activist types (even the folks I know), because honestly even when I agree i don't care to see folks yell at each other.

I suspect "there's nothing else I can do" is still a net 0 in the end as far as change goes, well other than the aggravation of a twitter spat.

I'll add in my two cents.

I had a sneaking suspicion that Amazon's product quality overall was in the toilet due to low qualify manufacturing and co-mingling genuine products with knockoffs in the warehouses, but I didn't really have anything to back me up other than products that I was unsatisfied with. Then HN threads and comments started mentioning the same thing. That stuff has been spreading like wildfire.

I'd argue that voices in unison on Twitter would have a farther reach that a niche community like HN. I know people in my circles have been even more skeptical of products sold on Amazon for these very reasons.

> on the aggregate it does shift the conservation.

I think this is totally overblown. Reddit thinks they did it. Twitter thinks they did it. Politicians think they did it. News organizations think they did it. People in the streets think they did it.

Sure everyone contributes, but except for some limited circumstances, I'm going to give the least credit to those of us on the couch and put the most credit at the feet of the investigative reporters and researchers who provide more than mob shame and anecdotes.

Why, that's how mobs work, of course! We've see plenty of instances of mob justice on twitter.

https://theweek.com/articles/787650/how-twitter-facebook-are...

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-t...

> well if you're dealing with a corporate entity the size of amazon and their weird bot/shill twitter army that's pretty much the only sane response.

I don't see anything bot-like about the responses, I mean check this one out:

> Actually, we aren’t robots! We just love the Amazon website.

That's a perfectly normal human thing to say to another human who also likes human things such as carbohydrates and oxygen.

"I'm not a robot, I like carbohydrates, oxygen and Amazon just like you," strikes me as at least suspicious ...

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