I have an active internet
life, starting from this blog.
But I also use Facebook and
Twitter to promote some of my ideas.
And, as I say in the
description of this blog, I use polemic language.
Some time ago Facebook suspended my add.
Then Twitter suspended my account. The explanation was that I was using too many hashtags to attract audience.
The whole superpose of Twitter is attracting audience to spits of your thoughts - otherwise no one would every be on Twitter! And with the limit on the number of characters it is only natural that I want to use all of them. One needs to be an actual idiot not to understand that.
i appealed. My Twitter account was restored.
And now it’s Amazon.
I do not write many reviews,
but sometimes I want to write one.
Recently I found that this option
was removed from me.
Amazon made me voiceless.
I do not care much about
writing reviews, but I got curious – why?
So, I wrote an email.
_____________
WTF??
Any SPECIFIC reason beyond unusual?
Wrong? Offensive?
Anything?
____________
After this email I had some additional email exchange that you all
can read below.
My right to write a review has not been yet restored, and most probably will never be.
But that would be fine if Amazon could PROVE that I did indeed
violate their policy. I believe in punishing the crime. Well, I also believe
that BEFORE issuing any punishment one should be issued a warning (at least if the crime is not too anti-social, like, for example, just some “unusual” behavior). And I
strongly believe that everyone has the right to get a SPECIFIC reason for the punishment.
However, Amazon (and, BTW, all other media) do not bother to gather an
actual proof.
They say, basically, that they found you guilty, because, from their point of view, you were guilty.
Period.
-Judge, why did you send me to a jail?
- You may have violated some of the laws from my book.
- What law?
- Who cares. I say you're guilty.
N.B. Some young and active left-leaning politician (AOC?) should take on this. Or a right-leaning one, I don't care.
In the meantime, please enjoy my communication with Amazon.
You will see that the one of the reasons Amazon people are upset
with me is that I called them idiots.
Well, I said that the were acting like idiots.
And now they take this whole thing personal.
And the main reason for that is that Jeff Bezos … well, I talk
about this at the end of this post.
_________
review-appeals@amazon.com
Hello,
Amazon has noticed some unusual reviewing activity on this account. As a
result, we removed all of this account’s reviews. It is no longer able to
contribute reviews, comments, customer questions and answers, and other
content.
Why is this happening?
Customer reviews are meant to provide unbiased product feedback to help
customers make informed purchase decisions. Our goal is to provide Customer
Reviews to help customers make informed purchase decisions. Any reviews that
could be viewed as advertising, promotional, or biased will not be posted.
This account can no longer contribute any content for one or more of the
following reasons:
-- Elements of the account indicate a relationship to sellers, publishers, or
other reviewers of the products you review.
-- Reviews were posted in exchange for compensation, such as gift cards to
purchase the product, product refunds, review swaps, or free or discounted
products.
-- The account requested free or discounted products in exchange for reviews.
-- The account was created for the primary purpose of writing biased reviews.
-- An unauthorized party may have accessed this account to write reviews.
If you would like to learn more, please see our
Community Guidelines (https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=14279631).
______________
Right after I read this email I wrote my response (some typos were fixed).
Hi,
When you copy and paste a
generic description of “your” opinion (as I just did with yours - see
below)
You have to provide PROOF(!)
or
everything you say is, JUST
your PERSONAL opinion(!).
You pretend that you are the
God who doesn't need to explain your actions to peasants.
But you are not.
Your job is to demonstrate a
SPECIFIC example when my review violated a SPECIFIC rule.
Any idiot can do what you
just did - copied a generic response that was even prepared by someone
else.
What does Jeff Bezos pay you
for?
#IdioutsRuinedUS
www.Cognisity.How
____________________
Two days later I got this (try to find some substantial difference between this letter and the first letter from Amazon):
review-appeals@amazon.com
Hello,
Amazon previously sent an email about some unusual reviewing activity on this
account. As a result, we removed all of this account’s reviews. It is no longer
able to contribute reviews, comments, customer questions and answers, and other
content. Thanks for contacting us. We have reviewed our decision and will not
restore this account’s ability to contribute content.
Why is this happening?
Customer reviews are meant to provide unbiased product feedback to help
customers make informed purchase decisions. Our goal is to provide Customer
Reviews to help customers make informed purchase decisions. Any reviews that
could be viewed as advertising, promotional, or biased will not be posted.
This account’s ability to contribute may have been removed for one or more of
the following reasons:
-- Elements of the account indicate a relationship to sellers, publishers, or
other reviewers of the products you review.
-- Reviews were posted in exchange for compensation, such as gift cards to
purchase the product, product refunds, review swaps, or free or discounted
products.
-- The account requested free or discounted products in exchange for reviews.
-- The account was created for the primary purpose of writing biased reviews.
-- An unauthorized party may have accessed this account to write reviews.
If you would like to learn more, please see our Community Guidelines (https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=14279631).
We cannot share additional information about this decision and may not reply to
future emails.
________________
Of course I could not not to write back (see below, some typos were fixed).
Hi Amazon God-like feeling
moderator.
you just sent me
another email that says, basically, that you have no idea what
specifically you punished me for, but you still insist that I was wrong, and
you were right to do that.
This is the quote from your
email (the fill version is below):
“This
account’s ability to contribute may have been removed for one or more of the
following reasons:”
the grammatical structure of this sentence demonstrates that you may have didn’t
know what was the actual reason for your decision.
In fact, in my
previous email I asked you to provide a SPECIFIC example of one of my
SPECIFIC reviews that violated one of your SPECIFIC rules.
You did not do that.
My assumption is that you do
not have that SPECIFIC information, and your decision was based on a
faulty algorithm.
That means your
decisions are based on intrinsically faulty basis and you have no ability to prove the correctness of your decision.
Any court would agree with
me.
Unless you CAN
provide SPECIFIC proof - your policy is BASELESS.
At the minimum, this whole
conversation goes to my blog.
Thank you for the material.
#IdioutsRuinedUS
www.Cognisity.How
_______________
The law does not require any
media company to prove the correctness of the decision by providing a specific example
of the violation of the policies. So, they can punish anyone for anything and
do not have to bother about keeping the facts. This means that the policy has
to be developed and sustained by the managers of a company. In this case, by
the managers of the Amazon.
In his recent book Jeff Bezoswrites that he does not think anymore about day-to-day operations, he is busy
to model the future, his thoughts are about what will happen three years from
today.
Evidently, on some level in
the Amazon administrative pyramid someone does not do his/her job. But that means
that his/her superior does not do his/her job (hired a wrong person or did not provide the right training). But that means that his/her superior
does not do his/her job (hired a wrong person or did not provide the right training). But that means … – you know where this all leads us to –
to the top person, to Jeff Bezos. That means he does not do his job.
This is not a new situation
in a business world. There have been multiple companies that downsized or even
disappeared because their top management did not do their job (e.g. remember Blockbuster?
Or check the
history of General Electric).
All big-fish top CEOs surround themselves with lots of human filters. And that's natural; they have to limit the influx of information. But the issue is in the quality of those filters, meaning people who operate as information gateways. If those people would be as smart and intuitive and visionary and bold and lucky as their bosses, they themselves would have been bosses, not filters. A smart boss (not the same as a good boss) understands the limits of the people he uses as information filters and does something about that.
Until some politician will
take on the policies of the big internet companies, they will not bother to
change their policies.
There are only two things I can
do about Amazon: 1. Share my experience; 2. Quit Amazon Prime.
This post is finished.
Now, it’s time to make the
next step.
Dr. Valentin Voroshilov
More on American management:
Greed - the American cancer that killed good management.
Ignoring sloppiness: a sign of tolerance or mismanagement?
In Management Thinking Makes All The Difference
A case of a Dumb Decision. How IT Screwed us. Again.
Professional communication: a case study.
Was Mr. Jeff Bezos a visionary, is he still is, and will he remain to be such?
BTW: I have a lot of publications on the matters of management and politics.