Will Amazon Ban “Ethics”? | The Business Ethics Blog

A new report from The Intercept suggests that a new in-house messaging app for Amazon employees could ban a prolonged string of phrases, which include “ethics.” Most of the words on the record are kinds that a disgruntled worker would use — terms like “union” and “compensation” and “pay raise.” According to a leaked document reviewed by The Intercept, just one characteristic of the messaging application (nevertheless in improvement) would be “An automatic phrase monitor would also block a wide variety of phrases that could depict prospective critiques of Amazon’s performing disorders.” Amazon, of training course, is not particularly a lover of unions, and has spent (yet again, for each the Intercept) a ton of revenue on “anti-union consultants.”

So, what to say about this naughty listing?

On a single hand, it is effortless to see why a enterprise would want not to present workers with a software that would support them do a thing not in the company’s interest. I imply, if you want to arrange — or even simply complain — making use of your Gmail account or Sign or Telegram, which is 1 issue. But if you want to realize that intention by working with an app that the organization gives for inside company reasons, the organization probably has a teensy bit of a genuine grievance.

On the other hand, this is evidently a terrible search for Amazon — it is unseemly, if not unethical, to be literally banning workers from using text that (possibly?) indicate they’re performing one thing the organization doesn’t like, or that it’s possible just suggest that the company’s work benchmarks aren’t up to snuff.

But really, what strikes me most about this plan is how ham-fisted it is. I suggest, keywords? Severely? Don’t we by now know — and if we all know, then definitely Amazon is familiar with — that social media platforms make feasible much, considerably a lot more sophisticated ways of influencing people’s behaviour? We’ve already observed the use of Fb to manipulate elections, and even our feelings. Compared to that, this supposed list of naughty terms would seem like Dr Evil seeking to outfit sharks with laser-beams. What unions should seriously be nervous about is employer-furnished platforms that don’t explicitly ban text, but that subtly form person knowledge dependent on their use of those terms. If Cambridge Analytica could plausibly endeavor to affect a countrywide election that way, could not an employer really believably intention at shaping a unionization vote in very similar fasion?

As for banning the word “ethics,” I can only shake my head. The ability to communicate openly about ethics — about values, about ideas, about what your company stands for, is regarded by most scholars and consultants in the realm of business enterprise ethics as rather essential. If you just cannot converse about it, how probably are you to be to be in a position to do it?

(Many thanks to MB for pointing me to this tale.)