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Comment by andrewnicolalde | Hacker News Reader

I'll never understand why companies think directly involving themselves in the political discourse is a good idea.

It would honestly even be different if Jeff Bezos himself tweeted these things, but to see the Amazon corporate news account try to one-up Elizabeth Warren is so bizarre..

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There's reports (source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/29/jeff-bezo...) that Bezos got mad that the media department wasn't doing enough to combat the "outright lies" spread by the media about Amazon working conditions, which apparently spurred the latest tweets from the AmazonNews account. Seems to be a self inflicted wound from ego.

Edit: Source requested

The article mentions this. And I can understand Bezos getting upset (although the "lies" may be more truthful than he thinks) but the way they chose to respond was worse than doing nothing at all.

You could view it as Bezos or Amazon simply coming to terms with the fact that they are not subject to any rules of decorum, or at any risk from ever failing due to their public actions. That they, as the mega corp, have reached the point of being above society and have no need to be polite or conform to inconvenient social norms anymore.

hell hath no fury like a displeased business tyrant

imagine getting that mad as like the richest person in the goddamned world.

> There's reports that

[citation needed]

https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/3/28/22354604/amazon-twitter...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/29/jeff-bezo... Added

It's also literally in the Intercept article with a link to the story lol:

> According to Recode, the suspicious tweets in fact came at the behest of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who had recently conveyed disappointment to Amazon officials that the company was not pushing back against criticisms that he considered misleading.

Whoops..

ha i meant to reply to the person asking for a citation but also another one you can add into your post.

If you feel that lies are being spread about you and you try to correct the record, how is that a self-inflicted wound from ego? Isn’t that what anyone would do?

If you're a person, sure. If you're a business and you have a good amount of Congress in your pocket, have near infinite wealth, and get away with a myriad of abuses against your employees, why draw the ire of the public with rude comments against sitting Congressmen and Congresswomen? Do you think these comments serve to further Amazon's goals, or have they hurt?

It's clear to me as well that Amazon's replies were outright lies - they are making their employees defecate and urinate into bottles, and they do get away with not paying / underpaying taxes. They're not even correcting the record, they're just lying more.

>why draw the ire of the public Because that ire is powerless and asserting dominance over society is a series of shifts like this.

They're going to tell people what their version of reality is, and people will have to accept it; There will be no comeuppance, and alternate realities and truths are to be forcefully disregarded whenever that's more convenient than ignoring them.

I find it refreshing to see a company openly tweeting what they think and not issuing boring PR statement. It is probably going to cost them a lot in backslash though

I was thinking the same, might be a good example for exercising the average persons ability to not just blindly read slanted article headlines. They can easily see for themselves.

Honestly despite my issues with amazon those tweets are refreshing. Sterile corporate communication is an outmoded boomer concept that appears to be dying with them.

Even more bizarre is some of them make no sense...

Example:

https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1375509172549132289?s=...

Quote: >There’s a big difference between talk and action. @SenSanders has been a powerful politician in Vermont for 30 years and their min wage is still $11.75. Amazon’s is $15, plus great health care from day one. Sanders would rather talk in Alabama than act in Vermont.

Hes the US senator for Vermont. He is charged with being a respresentative for the state of Vermont for the Union of the United States and is responsible for 1/2 of the votes for that state on Federal Laws.

He is no more powerful than any other Vermont citizen in regards to their own state laws such as minimum wage...Its like they gave the keys to the account to some disgruntled intern....

It's called sucking up to the boss. Whoever was responsible for the tweets evidently believed the Bezos would approve of the content. It gives him plausible deniability (after all, he didn't write it) and in many cases may improve the career prospects within the company of the person who did write it.

I don't believe these tweets are aimed at the general public. At the time of these tweets they were in the final days of a union election. Amazon is trying to win over undecided workers from unionizing.

That could only work if the workers didn't read any of the replies. Seems like a bad strategy.

> I'll never understand why companies think directly involving themselves in the political discourse is a good idea.

Because the capacity to ignore politics is inversely proportionate to the danger politics poses to you.

Large incumbent corporations are deeply dependent on preserving the status quo, in order to preserve their business model. Preserving the status quo requires active politicking.

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