Amazon employs people to tweet positively about warehouse conditions

Amazon has employed
workers from its “fulfilment centres” to tweet positively about
working conditions.
Getty/Rick T.
Wilking

• A small army of Amazon employees are tweeting nice
  things about the working conditions in the company’s
  warehouses.
• The Twitter accounts have a standardised format, all
  bearing the Amazon smile logo as their background.
• Amazon says these employees are called “FC Ambassadors”
  who have experience working in the fulfilment centres.
• It follows a series of horror stories about working
  conditions, including staff having to pee in bottles because of
  their targets.

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A small army of accounts have popped up on Twitter to tweet
positive things about Amazon’s warehouse working conditions.

TechCrunch discovered 15 accounts all following a
standardised format after Twitter users Flamboyant Shoes Guy drew
attention to them.

TechCrunch found that all the accounts bore the Amazon smile logo
as backgrounds, and had identical structures to their bios and
the title “FC Ambassador” in their name, followed by a cardboard
box emoji.

The accounts engage with people about the working conditions in
Amazon’s fulfilment centres, weighing in when people tweet
negatively about the company to praise its working conditions.

But while Flamboyant Shoes Guy thought these accounts were bots
posing as Amazon workers, the company has confirmed that the FC
ambassadors are real people, being paid to spread the firm’s
message.

“FC ambassadors are employees who have experience working in our
fulfilment centers. The most important thing is that they’ve been
here long enough to honestly share the facts based on personal
experience,” an Amazon spokesman told Business Insider.

“It’s important that we do a good job of educating people about
the actual environment inside our fulfillment centers, and the FC
ambassador program is a big part of that along with the
fulfilment center tours we provide.”

Looking through the ambassador accounts, Business Insider found
they had all joined in August. Business Insider has contacted
Amazon to ask just how recently this position was created, how
many ambassadors it employs, and what criteria a warehouse worker
has to fill to qualify for the role.

Amazon has frequently come under fire for the working conditions
in its fulfilment centres this year.
An undercover journalist in the UK said that staff “peed in
bottles” for fear that walking to the bathroom would cause
them to miss targets. Business Insider’s Shona Ghosh
heard one story of a urine smell wafting from a trash can for
similar reasons, while constant surveillance and health
issues at work were also highlighted.

But Amazon’s new propaganda push against its warehouse image
seems to have unnerved some Twitter users: