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Comment by qualeed | Hacker News Reader

>So no, it wasn’t PR-driven in the reactive sense.

At my small business, we proactively monitor blogs and forums for mentions of our company name so that we can head off problems before they become big. I'm extremely confident that is what happened here.

It was PR-driven in the proactive sense. Which is still PR-driven. (which, by the way, I have no problem with! the problem is the shitty support when it isn't PR-driven)

Regardless, I 100% feel your pain with dealing with support agents that won't break script, and I am legitimately happy that you both got to reach someone that was high enough up the ladder to act human and that they were able to restore your data.

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Thank you for your concern, and I appreciate the nuance in your take.

Yes, it is totally possible that AWS monitors blogs and forums for early damage control, like your company does.

But we shouldn’t paint it like I was bailed out by some algorithmic PR radar and nothing else.

Let’s not fall into the “Fuk the police” style of thinking where every action is assumed to be manipulation. Tarus didn’t reach out like a Scientology agent demanding I take the post down or warning me of consequences.

He came with empathy, internal leverage, and actually made things move.

When before i read Tarus email, i wrote in Slack to Nate Berkopec (puma maintainer): `Hi. AWS destroyed me, i'm going to take a big break .`

Then his email reset my cortisol levels to acceptable level.

Most importantly, this incident triggered a CoE (Correction of Error) process inside AWS.

That means internal systems and defaults are being reviewed, and that’s more than I expected. We’re getting a real update, that will affect cases like mine in the future.

So yeah, it may have started in the visibility layer, but what matters is that someone human got involved, and actual change is now happening.

>But we shouldn’t paint it like I was bailed out by some algorithmic PR radar and nothing else.

>[...] assumed to be manipulation

I think you're reading way more negativity into "PR" than I'm intending (which is no negativity).

It's very clear Tarus is a caring person who really did empathize with your situation and did their best to rectify the situation. It's not a bad thing that your issue may (most likely) have been brought to his attention because of "PR radar" or whatever.

The bad part, on Amazon and other similar companies, is how they typically respond when a potential PR hit isn't on the line. Which, as I'm sure you know because you experienced it prior to posting your blog, is often a brick wall.

The overwhelming issue is that you often require some sort of threat of damage to their PR to be assisted. That doesn't make the PR itself a bad thing. And that fact implies nothing about the individuals like Tarus who care. Often the lowly tier 1 support empathizes, they just aren't allowed to do anything or say anything.

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