Amazon’s Program to Spy on Workers’ Private Facebook Groups

vice.com

23 points·erubin··6 comments

Or, a highly unpopular translation/spin: Company uses public platform to collect metrics on user satisfaction in order to improve platform and services.

This goes way back to Henry Ford and Walter Reuther. None of this is new.

Yeah if one reads the report it is mostly about feedback... little creepy but it's not super nefarious imo

It mentioned that the groups were closed. It also showed how the documents were labeled as internal sensitive information.

Sure the data no doubt had more than one purpose, but if all they were concerned about were bugs in the platform they could easily have a bug reporting box like thousands of other software platforms. It’s not as if a company like Amazon can’t figure out how to improve a service without religiously monitoring a closed fb group.

Combined with the job posting for analysts to stop labor organizing/protests I think their ultimate motivation is pretty clear.

Did you read my last line? Henry Ford used to send company men to the houses of his staff to inspect them. Read up on Walter Reuther to see how far that went in history. There were people killed by the company to protect its interests.

Is your claim that this is a good thing for Amazon to do because Henry Ford also did it?

Only if you think I would advocate to shop at the company store, have my hose inspected by strangers then have a private security company threaten my life. The point is that Amazon is doing the same things we have seen large companies do in the past, its not a surprise to me. My lack of surprise however should not be seen as any endorsement.

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