Interesting times. Social media is dictating countries, and companies governance. Of course, before internet there was media (newspaper etc) which used to do that.
But in these times people or rather mobs have got that power - for better or worse.
Social media is dictating countries, and companies governance
Like who?
Twitter is mob rule. Regardless of whether or not Twitter disrupts the Illuminati, it's not a great alternative.
It went to Twitter. And I think 'investigative reporting' is far too generous of a term as it evokes images of good journalism. This was a click-bait hit piece detailing a bunch of nothing.
What a work culture.
What's wrong with sending emails or messages at 3am ... if you don't expect workers to read and/or respond to the message at that time (as opposed to the next business day)? It just means the messages sits there in the inbox until the next day. So what?
>and denying vacation times is nothing
I see nothing about vacation time. I saw PTO being denied - which may not be the same. Sometimes PTO and Vacation time is tracked differently, the latter being something guaranteed in your employment agreement, and the former being a perk.
If one needs to terminate someone, and they catch some negative attention on Twitter, blaming Twitter for the termination would be both convenient and fake. The reason wasn’t actually Twitter; that’s just the messaging.
If your target market is American teenage boys and some Qatari old men really, really hate you their feelings are public sentiment too but you shouldn’t care in the slightest. Likewise what journalists think should be irrelevant compared to what customers think.
I think the point is that it isn't a 'public sentiment'. Public sentiment would imply some sort of representative sample. Twitter people engaging in Twitter mob behaviour is not representative. It's like calling the Campus students freakouts when some conservative speaker visit, as 'public sentiment'.
>You have also bought into the framing the company has used to make itself seem like the victim by referring to "mobs" having power,
That's exactly what it was. It wasn't a balanced view on this CEO or company culture. It wasn't even that bad. I remember reading the Verge article, and thinking "Meh". There was one circumstance when the team was asked to work New Years Day in return for getting a month off. Everyone would make that choice. But OK, Korey clear set high expectations and created a culture where working a high number of hours was encouraged - is that bad? "Meh". It's an interesting case study but a investigative report from the The Verge is overkill.
And this is another aspect to this story, this mob behaviour was triggered by 'The Verge', itself a billion-dollar conglomerate owned in part by NBCUniversal, another global media conglomorate. 'Public Sentiment' indeed.
Is this really true? It seems like social media has a relatively limited impact on companies/countries on any scale longer than a week. Most social media outrage seems to just result in an apology by the company and perhaps some weak action, and everybody forgets about it a few days later.
Remember when the whole internet collectively tried to stop the FCC from repealing net neutrality? Or Article 13? Or the constant complaints about demonetization of content on YouTube? Internet mobs never seem to get anything meaningful done.
- 2009 Moldova civil unrest, claiming that the elections, which saw the governing Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) win a majority of seats, were fraudulent
- 2009–2010 Iranian election protests, also known as Green Revolution and Facebook Revolution, following the 2009 Iranian presidential election
- 2010–2011 Tunisian revolution, also known as Jasmine Revolution and Wikileaks Revolution, in which the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ended after 23 years
- Egyptian Revolution of 2011, in which the regime of Hosni Mubarak was ended after 30 years Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine, beginning in November 2013.