A key thing this headlines leaves out, and many people seem to be making the wrong assumption about, is that Amazon is the one who requested these accounts be deleted because these fake accounts were not created by Amazon.
Fair enough, but there is a very clear trend that informs the assumptions. This "mess" would only have been the tip of the iceberg of anti-union activities. I would not be surprised if they had been manipulating social media in a more subtle way.
This seems like it should be criminal. Like setting aside the union thing, any company using fake profiles to propagandize something is dishonest and shady to the point of fraud. Paying or requiring employees to do it is only a fraction better.
They shill their product on fake accounts all the time. At least they're not shilling any politics, because that's what they usually do publicly on their real brand accounts. I don't know if it should be illegal, but the public should be definitely more aware of it, as companies are not the only ones doing it and they're frankly the least of my concerns when it comes to this.
> At least they're not shilling any politics, because that's what they usually do publicly on their real brand accounts.
Labour and union rights is as political as it gets.
Union politics shape the politics and policies of pretty much the entire development world, to the point that it frequently is behind revolutions, regime changes and in some cases even civil wars.
Even the US, whose political regime is openly hostile towards workers and labour rights, already has a fair share of historical events related to union and worker's rights that are critical to its history.
In particular, the AmazonFCdarla account at the center of this mess was actually created by a “comedian” who was trying to make Amazon look bad: https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2021/3/31/22359338/ama...