Amazon FC Ambassador Twitter Accounts

Overview

Amazon FC Ambassador Twitter Accounts refers to a legion of Twitter accounts which have been accused of existing solely to praise Amazon and defend it against criticism on the site. According to Amazon, the accounts were created to "educate" people on the working conditions within their "fulfillment centers," or shipping warehouses. On Twitter, the accounts have been widely mocked for appearing to be robotic representatives of the corporation.

Background

On August 23rd, 2018, Twitter user @bornwithatail_^[1] tweeted his discovery of several Twitter accounts with "Amazon FC Ambassador" in their name. He stated, "So Amaz*n has set up an army of bot accounts, allegedly from workers at various fulfillment centers, whose sole purpose is to jump on tweets critical of their benevolent overlord with the same stale cant about great pay & benefits."

That day, TechCrunch^[2] posted an article about the community, highlighting tweets from these "Ambassadors" that regurgitate similar talking points, such as "Amazon pays fulfillment center employees 30% more than traditional retail stores." TechCrunch received comment from Amazon, who stated:

“FC ambassadors are employees who have experience working in our fulfilment centers. 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 fulfillment center tours we provide.”

Business Insider^[3] also covered the FC Ambassador accounts at this time.

Developments

Recode^[4] covered the FC Ambassador accounts on August 8th, 2019, following Quillette writing a favorable piece about Amazon's working conditions amidst negative coverage of Amazon. Recode noted that the accounts were tweeting denials of rumored poor working conditions at Amazon, writing:

"Among these ambassadors’ many talking points: They’re getting free cupcakes in an actual break room (not working so long they have to pee in bottles). They say Amazon takes safety seriously, even posting cartoons at water fountains reminding them to stay hydrated (presumably that’s in response to the many reports of dangerous conditions leading to injuries at Amazon warehouses). They say it’s easy to get paid time off (others have accused Amazon of pressuring them to work long hours, including six-day workweeks)."

@rulesObeyer Thread

On August 14th, Twitter user @rulesObeyer^[5] tweeted a critical response of Amazon tweeting about how one could tour their "Fulfillment Centers." She wrote, "really like? cause your workers are liars? you’re not going to convince the working class that everything is fine by telling us where to avert our eyes, we already know what it’s really like. why don’t you really treat your workers better, you can afford it" (shown below, left). In response, several FC Ambassador accounts began tweeting defenses of the company at her (shown below, middle and right).

The thread began to go viral on Twitter after user @RespectableLaw^[6] tweeted a link to it. In the ensuing thread, they posted several eye-opening screenshots of other statements the FC Ambassadors had tweeted (examples shown below).

Furthermore, other Twitter users had discovered evidence that the names associated with the accounts were not the names of the people tweeting. For example, the "Rafael Amazon FC Ambassador" account had tweeted that they were named Michelle and were excited to see their grandchildren at the Fulfillment Center.

As the thread began to go viral, other Twitter users made jokes about the Amazon FC Ambassador accounts. For example, user @LLW902^[7] tweeted a parody of an FC Ambassador tweet in an Italian accent, gaining over 70 retweets and 1,000 likes (shown below, left). Twitter user @seth_taylor^[8] created a fake tweet in an FC Ambassador voice saying how grateful he was to urinate in a bottle (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References