Back when Amazon was planning to construct a second headquarters in New York, there was opposition from some local officials — opposition that was duly noted by the behemoth company in a private record.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon employees carefully documented quotes from forces opposed to the new site in the document called “NY Negative Statements.”
The longest entry in the ledger belonged to state Sen. Mike Gianaris (D), whose district included the would-be new headquarters. Statements like “We were not elected to serve as Amazon drones” earned him a whopping 25 entries.
The deal was ultimately scuttled amid widespread opposition to the project.
A vindictive streak in the world’s richest man who has listening devices in
half11% of the country’s homes and shares home camera video with law enforcement.What’s not to like?
Amazon: The New and Improved WalMart. We’re going to destroy commerce as you know it.
Maybe I am missing something here, but this seems neither surprising nor out of the ordinary to me. If you’re trying to do something (potentially) controversial, keeping tabs on who is saying what, especially when it’s negative, seems to be a sensible way to keep a finger on the pulse of public opinion. If you want to fight it, you need to know what’s being said in order to prepare a defense, and you do that by addressing issues brought up by those who are opposed. And you get those issues by keeping track of who said what.
I know we get easily wired up about the giants like Amazon and FB collecting personal info – and rightly so, in many/most instances – but this just doesn’t seem to be a big deal to me…
Exactly. Tracking negative statements is… just basic good practice if one is trying to figure out how to engage with a set of people (whatever set of people they are).
Unless there is some sort of illegal actions against people, this is not either controversial nor even newsworthy.
Not to like, hysteric over-reaction.
There’s nothing in the news report that says anything about vindictive at all.