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

A new report from The Intercept indicates that a new in-home messaging application for Amazon personnel could ban a extensive string of phrases, together with “ethics.” Most of the words on the record are kinds that a disgruntled worker would use — conditions like “union” and “compensation” and “pay raise.” In accordance to a leaked document reviewed by The Intercept, a single characteristic of the messaging app (nonetheless in enhancement) would be “An automatic term monitor would also block a wide variety of phrases that could symbolize probable critiques of Amazon’s functioning circumstances.” Amazon, of training course, is not precisely a fan of unions, and has used (again, for each the Intercept) a large amount of cash on “anti-union consultants.”

So, what to say about this naughty listing?

On one particular hand, it’s simple to see why a firm would want not to offer employees with a resource that would help them do anything not in the company’s curiosity. I imply, if you want to manage — or even just complain — utilizing your Gmail account or Signal or Telegram, that is a single thing. But if you want to obtain that intention by employing an application that the firm supplies for internal enterprise functions, the business it’s possible has a teensy little bit of a authentic criticism.

On the other hand, this is obviously a bad look for Amazon — it is unseemly, if not unethical, to be virtually banning workforce from working with phrases that (possibly?) reveal they’re performing something the enterprise does not like, or that perhaps just suggest that the company’s employment requirements aren’t up to snuff.

But genuinely, what strikes me most about this approach is how ham-fisted it is. I necessarily mean, search phrases? Seriously? Don’t we currently know — and if we all know, then unquestionably Amazon knows — that social media platforms make attainable substantially, a lot much more refined means of influencing people’s conduct? We have by now seen the use of Facebook to manipulate elections, and even our feelings. In comparison to that, this intended listing of naughty text looks like Dr Evil striving to outfit sharks with laser-beams. What unions must genuinely be anxious about is employer-delivered platforms that really do not explicitly ban terms, but that subtly condition consumer working experience based mostly on their use of these phrases. If Cambridge Analytica could plausibly attempt to impact a national election that way, couldn’t an employer fairly believably goal at shaping a unionization vote in very similar fasion?

As for banning the word “ethics,” I can only shake my head. The capability to discuss openly about ethics — about values, about rules, about what your enterprise stands for, is regarded by most students and consultants in the realm of organization ethics as quite elementary. If you can’t chat about it, how very likely are you to be to be equipped to do it?

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(Thanks to MB for pointing me to this tale.)