They pretty beautifully baited Sen. Elizabeth Warren into running her mouth today. She wrote -
"I'll fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets."
If she brings an anti-trust suit against them, it will be so easy for Amazon's lawyers to argue that she is only doing so to violate their first amendment rights, which she full out admitted to today.
> the fact that Amazon warehouse / delivery employees have to urinate in bottles to meet deadlines?
Amazon does not want its employees to piss into bottles. But sometimes employees (predominantly male I hope) do piss into bottles, because they did not plan correctly, or just had to go while on the road. If caught, these employees (and their managers) are then reprimanded. If they get a chance to defend themselves, of course they claim it was due to the deadline, not poor planning or bladder control or uncommon hygiene ethics.
Amazon factually states: Hey, if we required our employees to pee into bottles to meet deadlines, do you seriously think people would work for us, and not 100s of other low-paid jobs which don't have that medieval requirement?
Politicians: Hey, this you?! I have lots of pictures of bottles with piss! Where is your snotty reply now? You say that your employees do not have to piss into bottles, so how come I have those pictures?! Huh?!
It is embarrassing to both sides. Especially for official government employees (who also don't have to pee into bottles to meet deadlines, but I am sure you can turn up at least some pictures: if not, find any traces of cocaine use in the Capitol, then posit that the US congress have their senators use cocaine in the toilet to meet deadlines. Or, you know, bi-partisan plan to have low-skilled employees share in the American dream made possible by Amazon, but I guess that does not fit inside a tweet).
The warehouse/delivery worker abuse at amazon runs deep, and it goes far beyond employees peeing in bottles. Checkout the Frontline documentary, Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos [1]
No, but solid rhetorics. This is the part you give proof of the fact that Amazon have their workers pee in bottles to meet deadlines. Not point to something else entirely that goes far beyond the things you pose as facts, which are not. Don't look at that! Look at this documentary that goes far far beyond it. Well played! And solid one for PBS for exposing the worker abuse that Amazon is now in court for! We need the free press to save worker laws.
Deadlines are calculated from the average worker speeds. Perhaps some Amazon employees really are below average, or do not give it their best at all, so they are forced to piss in bottles and poop into the delivery car before returning it to station to meet these devilish average-worker deadlines.
I would agree that is a terrible problem. Perhaps Amazon should focus more attention on catching such employees early and letting them go (or offering them potty training with quarterly evaluations)? But then where does the average go? Deadlines get even tighter! Or you could make your wage relative to your worker speed: the fastest people earn the most. Only if you think you still earn enough for shitty work will you then be forced to keep doing that job. Or should Amazon be more kind to these employees who can't seem to manage their personal hygiene or fall way below average worker speeds? Treat and pay them the same as the 99% employees who don't shit and deliver? That would lead to an equal outcome for sure.
Amazon doesn’t come out of this looking good either, but it’s pretty bad for a Senator to go around telling people that she’ll break up your company if you “heckle” her with “snotty tweets”.
Warren has been campaigning to break up large tech companies.
What is so unprofessional about that?
Clearly if she was to try and get them fined or broken up it would be through these laws.
She isn't silencing them. She's saying that there'll be consequences.
And Amazon's PR isn't a small company. They can take the heat.
I don't agree with you. A company that forces employees to piss in bottles and lies about it should have their lies face consequences.
Warren isn't removing their tweets. How are they being silenced?
Here is the quotes:
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After she posted the video on Twitter, saying that companies like Amazon "pay close to nothing in taxes," the tech giant quickly fired back.
"You make the tax laws @SenWarren; we just follow them," it tweeted from its official news account.
"If you don't like the laws you've created, by all means, change them," it added.
Amazon said that it had paid "billions of dollars" in corporate taxes over the past few years alone.
Warren hit back, saying: "I didn't write the loopholes you exploit, @amazon – your armies of lawyers and lobbyists did.
"But you bet I'll fight to make you pay your fair share," she added. "And fight your union-busting. And fight to break up Big Tech so you're not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets."
```
You're being obtuse. You know as well as anyone that it doesn't matter if the homeless man in the park heckles Senators. That's the difference; Amazon has real power behind their words.
The problem is not that Amazon is criticising politicians. The problem is that Amazon doesn't need to care; it'll get loads of money anyway. I need to care about what I say, because if I upset people, they'll stop interacting with me.
If Amazon started running adverts about a giant space monkey that wanted to eat the moon, what would happen?
If Warren tweeted that she was going to break up amazon because they were harming consumers and mistreating workers, etc, that would be one thing.
Instead, she is going after amazon as a personal vendetta because she feels 'heckled'. She is explicitly attacking first amendment rights. It's a textbook case of corruption / abuse of power.
Instead of “Politicans should not express views I don't like on social media” how about “Politicans should not express the view that ‘people shouldn’t be powerful enough to be snotty to/heckle me’ on any platform.”
It’s the “so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets” part that’s bad. Regardless of how you feel about her campaign to break up big tech, this is an appalling thing for a government official to say. I hate Twitter and Twitter culture as much as anyone, but “you shouldn’t be powerful enough to be snotty to a senator” is dystopian in my book.
But in this case the Amazon Twitter account is in the wrong while Warren is in the right. Amazon Twitter straight up lied. Warren is actively doing the job she was elected to do of motivating change to make laws and rules that will change the underlying foundation of the business landscape in ways that she and those who voted for her perceive as positive.
I presume the people that voted for Warren are on her side in this argument so she's being an advocate for their views.
Just because you think Amazon's employees being forced to piss in bottles isn't bad to you doesn't mean that others sees it as an injustice that makes people angry.
>Why is this only bad when Trump or a Republican does it?
Maybe treat each event on a case by case basis rather than a blanket rule?
Breaking up Big Tech isn’t an idle threat from Warren. It was an explicit part of her platform when running for president. She has always believed that some companies run afoul of anti-trust laws.
This far predates a spat with an Amazon twitter handle
But they can engage in virtue signaling like the rest of us.
But in all seriousness, it would be optimal for a society that values liberty and freedom to move away from platforms to standards. No need to breakup FANGS if NIST or something similar defines qualitative API standards for social networks, or more broadly societal network services. And this will also be a huge boon for the startup space and true non-predatory innovation in the virtual services space.
But the things they say about the laws aren’t very useful if you’re suing to get the law overturned. (Related, you can’t use defenses like attorney-client privilege if Congress asks you to submit documents, you just do it.)
> "I'll fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets."
I thought I liked her policies but this sounds authoritarian. I'd prefer politicians stay tf off twotter unless they got the stomach for it. They're speaking about "authenticity" and the problem of people hiding behind handles whenever given the chance. But they are themselves only interested in "engineering consent" for those who bankrolled their move into office. The consensus should be that they have to be able to put up with a very wide variety of opinions (and most certainly the "snooty" kind).
"I'll fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets."
If she brings an anti-trust suit against them, it will be so easy for Amazon's lawyers to argue that she is only doing so to violate their first amendment rights, which she full out admitted to today.