Amazon keeps trying to troll US Congress members in perplexing new PR strategy | Hacker News Reader

Amazon keeps trying to troll US Congress members in perplexing new PR strategy

theverge.com

49 pointsdanaris22 comments

>This is extraordinary and revealing. One of the most powerful politicians in the United States just said she’s going to break up an American company so that they can’t criticize her anymore

This reply is among the most depressing examples of PR I have ever encountered. I really hope it's seen for the cheap distraction that it is.

This entire new line of tactic from Amazon feels especially slimy, even for them.

From the minor "Naming their PR account 'Amazon News'", through the intentionally misleading post you caked it, to the outright gas-lighting / lying about drivers having to urinate and defecate in bags and bottles in their cars in order to meet their monitored times.

This is an bad direction they are looking to take us down. It's staring to smell like the 1800s.

> “You make the tax laws @SenWarren; we just follow them. If you don’t like the laws you’ve created, by all means, change them. Here are the facts: Amazon has paid billions of dollars in corporate taxes over the past few years alone,” the account tweeted Thursday in response to a critique from Warren that Amazon exploits “loopholes and tax havens to pay close to nothing in taxes.” There’s a growing mountain of evidence pointing out how Amazon pays very little in taxes compared to its annual sales and profits.

I'll have to agree with Amazon on this one.

Legislators whine about corporations not paying taxes while making it legal for them to do so... Why not simply write laws that forces them to pay? It's not like it's their job to write the laws...

They just follow the laws... but also spend massive amounts of money to bend policymakers in a direction they like. For every "why not just fix xyz?" there is a ton of pressure to keep xyz broken.

> but also spend massive amounts of money to bend policymakers in a direction they like.

Which is, again, made legal by the legislators.

But Warren certainly isn't going to to against her fellow lawmakers and remind the public that letting corporation lobby their ways is a legislative choice. Instead she chose to go after the easy target where she can whine... while still effectively doing nothing!

>while still effectively doing nothing!

So you're saying that to get something done, she should publicly berate the people she will need cooperation from? After all, they are the ones who believed the bullshit the lobby spent millions concocting, they're the ones truly at fault.

Why is this downvoted? It's true, she has the power to fix everything she is complaining about, even the lobbying to keep things broken.

What specifically can she do single-handedly to fix everything she complains about?

>she has the power

she is exactly one elected representative facing opposition from countless of people who literally have their political campaigns bankrolled by the very powers she is supposed to stand up against.

Is Warren empress of the United States and can just wish legislation into reality or am I missing something?

Yes. /s

Bezos is the richest person in the world, and it's obvious the lobbyists he pays to copypasta the text of laws and get politicians doing his bidding by ensuring "$upport" motivate them to benefit the rich like him.

Americans have a "minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy" compared to the rich.

Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

So her time would be better spent calling out specific legislators (wouldn't that be whining as well)? She already does that all the time. I'm not sure getting more people to think "donors have too much influence" is effective at all since that's already an extremely popular opinion (bipartisan even!).

> So her time would be better spent calling out specific legislators

Depends on her goals. If it's to make sure Amazon pays more taxes, yes. If it's to score Twitter Points with her base, then no.

I really don't understand what Amazon is trying to do here, but this was so baffling that some employees thought the account was hacked and they cut tickets to the security team.

> Amazon’s PR team, which continues to wage these battles anonymously and without attaching an executive’s name to any of its childish internet taunts and misdirection.

This article uses really charged language. How many corporate Twitter accounts use real people’s names? Seems odd to call this out since they’re just doing routine stuff.

Also, this doesn’t seem like “trolling” and just a way of responding to direct call outs from Sen Warren, etc.

>Also, this doesn’t seem like “trolling” and just a way of responding to direct call outs from Sen Warren, etc.

I'd call responding by claiming she's trying to silence them trolling. Same with accusing your employees of making shit up about factual occurrences.

Got locked out of Amazon account weeks ago, requires a phone call to fix. That tiny bit of friction has gotten me off my last few Amazon purchases and I’m grateful for it.

What does that unclear language mean? You didn't pay for them or didn't make them?

It sounds like it means "there were a few things that I still used Amazon for, but now that my account is locked I don't even do that". They've stopped buying from Amazon altogether.

Correct, apologies for being cryptic.

unrelated: the cookie notice om theverge can’t possibly be legal. it only offer I Agree and if you want opt out then they explain how to disable cookies in the browser

I have recently started writing down a (private) list, provisionally called "cookie assholes" ("monsters" would be too cute), for those of-special-note entries like this, with dark patterns and similar crap, potentially with eventual intent of reporting the offenders to the GDPR enforcing bodies.

Maybe a community-driven auto-block/auto-reject/auto-hide rules - 'cause I'm sick and tired of being expected to sit down and manually off-toggle the 300-600 toggle switches without "Reject all" option (of course, I "cheat"); and to fish around for "hidden" sections, with different-but-functionally-the-same controls; and to avoid their "legitimate uses" (yeah, right).

In short, I'm adding them on the list.

In any case, anyone else aware of similar initiatives, block lists, addons, or similar solutions?

  provisionally called "cookie assholes" ("monsters" would be too cute)

I guess "crookies" is off the table then.

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