Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job | Hacker News Reader

Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

omaha.com

691 pointsShivetya518 comments

The meat of the story is that Omaha man worked for Marriott hotels on customer support. Their support system allows their agents to like tweets.

The man appears to have inadvertently clicked like on a tweet while dealing with a large influx of support messages (due to a promo going on) thanking Marriott for listing Tibet as its own country which was a huge no-no due to Mariott's presence in China. Execs fire him as a part of their "sorry China" grovelling.

My kneejerk is to believe fired man. I've clicked like on things by accident browsing regular Twitter, never mind a support system designed to skim through hundreds of requests. Unfortunately belief isn't going to restore the job, this is another lesson for the pile that companies will axe employees over fixing (heck, explaining) a problem with the system. It's the cheapest option.

If liking a tweet will infuriate the largest (by population) country in the world, maybe $14/hr support agents shouldn't be able to one-click like tweets.

Another question does occur - if it's such a big deal for them, why is/was Tibet listed as its own country in their system that prompted the liked tweet in the first place?

Yea it's weird I feel like liking the tweet should pale in comparison to whoever listed Tibet as its own country. Seems like the mistake was listing tibet as a country on the survey and they fired a guy just because he put attention to it by liking a tweet (and was thus used as a sacrifice).

If I were China, I'd probably demand the firing of someone more consequential than a random minimum wage worker who had little to deal with the insult in the first place.

If you were in China would you really find it insulting that Tibet is considered by some to be its own country? It was invaded, and I can’t really see any other way to characterise what happened.

That depends if you think some Americans would be offended if you claimed Hawaii was its own country. It was also invaded and then forcibly gentrified and colonized. That's not to even mention the entirety of the United States. It's not so much if China has legitimate claims on Tibet so much as it's the pot calling the kettle black. The greatest conquerer on Earth and its modern beneficiaries telling another country to give up territory and sovereignty.

> That depends if you think some Americans would be offended if you claimed Hawaii was its own country

Of course not. They'd just ignore you. Not force you to suspend online sales to your 300 stores in the country. Why is there always someone willing to twist things into a pretzel in search of moral equivalence when it comes to China or Russia? There's no pot. There's no kettle. Using your leverage to force a company to stop doing business for a liked tweet is uncool for any country.

The government of the United States does not demand that mainland China relinquish control of Tibet. Nor does the USA insist on censoring mainland controversies or on punishing foreigners who say inconvenient things. This difference is essential.

You are free to criticize America. People, including politicians, regularly do so. China, despite claiming to be a strong, ascendant power, is remarkably sensitive when it comes to such fictions as there being one China or the historicity of their nine-dash line.

Also, though the USA certainly was a conquerer -- few powers on this violent planet were forged in peace -- it's also the foremost defender of the modern rules-based order. There are Hawaii and the Mexican-American war in its past, but there are also Japan and Micronesia closer to today.

> The greatest conquerer on Earth and its modern beneficiaries

What'd England and the commonwealth do now?

"That depends if you think some Americans would be offended if you claimed Hawaii was its own country."

Do you have an actual example of someone being fired for claiming that Hawai'i was its own country?

Edit: apparently you don't. Your analogy does not hold water.

We have basically the entire state of texas doing that

As well as our most notable internal conflict was trying to split the country in half, and you still have a good chunk of supporters for it in the south. And the only real thing that offends people about that support is the racist underpinnings; and a common joke is that California should split off and form its own country (and take its politics with it).

It's hard for me to imagine that many would care if hawaiians also joined in and started claiming sovereignty.

Perhaps when they actually attempt to split off, but until then

Offended? Maybe. But 1st Amendment means that you are allowed to do that in America, generally speaking.

Case in point: our current President called the last President a Muslim born in Kenya. People take offense, but overall its an understanding that speech is free in the USA.

As an American, I wouldn’t be offended if a Chinese person suggested that all non Native Americans should leave America. I wouldn’t think that would be reasonable, although I would acknowledge that we could do much more to help rectify the situation that still exists today. I would likewise be not offended (but might feel slightly uncomfortable) if someone told me that California, my home state, should be returned to Mexico.

But do you really think it is so unrealistic that many Americans would be offended by such a statement? Let’s not pretend it is somehow surprising that people might be very insulted by being told what they consider part of their country should be returned, especially by foreigners.

I think more generally, and particularly on social media, we need to cease to take people "being offended" seriously. The world is full of professional offendees, taking offense at any small pretext and storming social medias in revenge. The idea that anyone can set an arbitrary line anywhere he wants (and often after the fact), pretending to be offended and demanding apologies or reparation is dangerous and unhealthy. Anyone who entertains these professional offendees is locking himself into a position of perpetual apologies and self-censorship.

The article does mention that twitter is blocked in China, and therefore that the social media storm is most likely not genuine.

"But do you really think it is so unrealistic that many Americans would be offended by such a statement? "

You can't control whether someone is offended.

You can control whether you fire someone because someone else is offended.

There are activists who argue that all of the southwestern US should be returned to Mexico. And indeed, the idea generally isn't that unpopular in Mexico. For what that's worth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program

I bet all the Trump voters would be pissed.

It's not insulting. It's a threat to their sovereignty. It's comparable to if lots of map makers changed the borders of the US to give Texas to Mexico, and it was acknowledged by international companies operating there and it was taught to kids in school. Eventually, by massive popular belief, it would be nearly impossible to retain it under US control because everyone would think it's obviously part of Mexico, including vtoers. Of course there's no risk of that happening in the US so they don't have to police it. For recently taken territories though, the position is weaker and easier to lose, so the new owners have to control the popular belief about whose it is.

So what's your stance on Hawaii and Puerto Rico?

Or for that matter, Florida, Texas, Florida, California, New Mexico, and Arizona?

Or for that matter the whole of the US land where Native American tribes lived.

Texas, after revolting and winning independence from Mexico, chose to join the US after a short jaunt as an independent nation.

The rest, yea, pretty much forcefully taken in one way or another.

The Chinese Communist Party (note: this is not "China") doesn't demand firing of anyone. This is just Marriott's way of sucking up to the Chinese Communist Party and management dissociating themselves from their mistakes

It's purely Marriott's way of being jerks. They could just as easily have said they fired someone and then left it at that, there was no real need to actually fire the guy.

> The Chinese Communist Party (note: this is not "China") doesn't demand firing of anyone.

If you believe the article, that is literally what they did.

Thank you for saying this. I was so confused. Like why is this guy responsible for this? It was someone obviously higher up who added Tibet as its own country...

The mistake was letting people who don't accept that Tibet is its own country send death threats to you and kowtowing to them. It's enabling their bullshit.

I'm from China and I do. The answer is in the culture for over two thousand years that the country is better to be under one ruler so less war between countries fighting each other. Probably still better to have one ruler to fuck up the citizen before any modern democratically system stabilized.

I totally believe "the UI sucks argument" as well. I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally liked something on Instagram because of the stupid double tap a photo = like, not zoom feature.

Instagram is a piece of software millions of people use every day. I've designed software that 5 - 100 people use a day, and I can tell you the UI is going to suck if you have a data architect design the UI for your CRUD application. I'm sure the UI sucked on Mariott's app, I'd bet my life savings on it.

I've actually had this exact problem with Instagram.

  1. My teenage daughter shows me picture of a girl she knows but doesn't like.
  2. I don't have my glasses so I double-tap to try to zoom in a bit.
  3. My daughter screams that the girl now knows that she was looking at her picture.
  4. I quickly double-tap again to un-like the photo.
  5. My daughter glares at me because she knows that the damage is already done.

In fact, I can relate to the guy in the original story. Fortunately, I only earned my daughters short lived wrath and didn't lose my job.

This happens a lot on the reddit mobile app. Sometimes I'm just browsing and out of nowhere I see an orange upvote or a purple downvote that I likely trigger just by scrolling to the comments.

It also happened to me once or twice that I was looking at the Facebook profile of someone and then 2 hours later I got a notification saying that that person accepted my friendship request. Somehow I mistakenly sent those requests.

At least for the latter, I've always thought there should be some impedance to avoid this. Like slide to send request or some other small friction interaction.

It sounds like Marriott wanted to be in a position to say someone had been fired, and he was offered up.

Either way, pretty shitty on Marriott's part.

It should have been the guy that allowed all low level employees access to the official Marriott twitter account.

Or maybe not fire anyone and just ignore silly twitter temper tantrums.

I understand that this was not just a twitter tantrum, but a major disruption of business: inability to book online in China, in fact causing huge losses.

>It should have been the guy that allowed all low level employees access to the official Marriott twitter account

Where in the article did it say that all low-level employees have access to the official Twitter account?

The employee in question had access because it was literally his job to reply to customers on their official Twitter account:

The Marriott customer care manager intended to spend his eight-hour overnight shift doing what he always did: helping hundreds of Marriott customers around the world as they shot complaints, questions and reward-point requests to the hotel chain’s official Twitter accounts

Surely they are using some overlay tool (tweetdeck, etc) instead of direct Twitter access. The tool should have limited or used some approval process for "likes" if that was viewed as risky.

> If liking a tweet will infuriate the largest (by population) country in the world, maybe $14/hr support agents shouldn't be able to one-click like tweets.

I think this is the most pragmatic thing mentioned yet.

Social media accounts are a real-time, globally visible way to communicate with the world. Treat it with respect. If you care about subtle mess-ups then have a review system or something.

I'm guessing the ideal PR person running the account is:

* educated in how that platform works (aka, young and social media savvy)

* experienced in the plethora of ways PR can go wrong (or well for that matter). "I know this looks innocent, but it's best to remain quiet on issues of X", for example.

and I'd guess that's a sweet spot that's probably hard to fill with one person.

>Another question does occur - if it's such a big deal for them, why is/was Tibet listed as its own country in their system that prompted the liked tweet in the first place?

The survey was outsourced to an outside company.

>And even in this specific case, where a low-level Marriott employee in Omaha clicked “like” on a tweet thanking Marriott for a survey designed by a third-party vendor, the hotel chain got in big trouble.

Marriott clearly has zero training on geopolitical issues so the third party vendor didn't have a template to follow, likely they just Googled "list of countries in the world" and copied the list. Marriott needs to be providing a list of countries to all outside vendors.

"Country" is a loose concept anyway. A country isn't necessary a sovereign state, since places like England or Aruba are considered countries. If it wasn't for the whole offending China thing, few people would care if Tibet was classified as a country or as a "historical region", as Wikipedia has it.

I can't help but feel the real problem here is China. Those death threats and angry tweats were likely coming from China employed shills. Such a ticking time bomb the CPC.

> My kneejerk is to believe fired man

I think that frames the issue incorrectly. The question is, whether he clicked it intentionally or not, he should not be fired for saying something the government of China dislikes (much less clicking like on what someone else said). China should not be extending censorship to Omaha.

He didn't even say anything! He showed the tiniest possible amount (1 bit!) of support for his employer's action

Sometimes, your service to the company consists of being thrown under the bus.

The older I get, the more I find the prematurely cynical people I grew up around had it half-right.

And the naively, or ignorantly, or cluefully -- I still don't quite know which -- happy people I grew up around, had the other half of that right: Do your own thing, enjoy it as much as you can, and walk away from the negativity.

Maybe if we could do enough of the latter, places like Marriott would never get the traction to step all over their employees.

As for China, well, I'm a bit older. The people I met who got over here from China, tended not to go back.

Take that as you will.

I don't think it was such a big deal for them until China told them that that it was a big deal and punished them accordingly until they fixed stuff according to China's liking. Everything that happened after (including firing the guy) is just fallout to clean up an issue that they didn't predict, and they're taking steps to do what China wants (like not listing Tibet as a country anymore) in order to keep operating there.

Simplest answer is often the best answer. If the survey had never happened with Tibet as a country, the tweet would never have happened, and then the whole scenario would never have come to light. It's easy to predict this in hindsight. I honestly think people didn't think about this in the past. Whether or not it's right is an entirely different question.

"If liking a tweet will infuriate the largest (by population) country in the world, maybe $14/hr support agents shouldn't be able to one-click like tweets.

Another question does occur - if it's such a big deal for them, why is/was Tibet listed as its own country in their system that prompted the liked tweet in the first place?"

> I really hope this doesn't become the moral of all this.

It's two very rare mistakes in a row. One listing Tibet, which actually got noticed. Another was the misclick, which also got noticed.

But it would be extremely costly if we suddenly had a confirmation dialog on low level employees liking tweets, or if every form drop-down needs to be approved by senior management.

And let this be a lesson to EVERYONE who works in Marriotts.

This is the very definition of "throwing under a bus". This is how fast Marriott (in the US of A) will throw you under the first bus that comes by.

This is how Marriott respects the individuals and has the capacity to handle a sensitive situation.

yeah. and I can't help but think that pretty much any US corporation doing business in China will throw employees and a whole lot more under the bus if they're told to do so in order to retain market access. is this consistent with the meaning of "free and open access"?

> Another question does occur - if it's such a big deal for them, why is/was Tibet listed as its own country in their system that prompted the liked tweet in the first place?

Even worse is that the listing came from a 3rd party survey firm. The employee is paying the price for what was ultimately them fouling up.

Even in a purely profit-driven mindset, as a Marriott executive in a pinch on this decision, I would give a sizeable severance and thats it.

Are we really expecting social media employees to be familiar with and adept at geopolitics?

Not kissing China's feet in this case could have cost Marriot many millions of dollars, so yes.

Welcome to the future of humanity, I guess we'll see if everyone is so casual about this type of thing when it's them who crossed the petulant monster child the West has created.

Well, if it'll cost Marriott so much money that they're concerned about it, perhaps they should be hiring someone with more such knowledge at a higher salary.

The real story is he has no employment rights because he's in America and he's "at will."

They can dismiss him because they don't like his lunch selection that day and he has no rights.

That's at will employment. This type of situation plays out all over the country everyday.

Or the real story is how much businesses kowtow to the Chinese government and enable their human rights abuses. I would be quite happy to see Marriott face blowback in the US and other parts of the world over this as people show their support for a free Tibet. Letting China browbeat businesses into submission for the privilege of operating in that market isn't a good thing and more businesses need to be made to decide between China and the rest of the world. Otherwise, the Chinese government will continue to get away with this.

But it was the Chinese government that blew a single like out of proportion and threatened Marriott with millions of dollars in lost business. Marriott's response to scapegoat and fire the individual to appease China makes complete sense so long as we continue to allow companies to get away with that behavior. It won't stop until we make an example out of one or two companies to show that they at least need to consider the financial ramifications of appeasement too.

Sometimes a story captures lots of little elements of the world we live in all at once.

>Or the real story is how much businesses kowtow to the Chinese government and enable their human rights abuses.

That's part of the story.

It would be the main story if the workers having no rights in the US wasn't much worse for them, and impacted them 100x on their lives, than whatever their businesses do abroad.

No, I disagree. that may be a story, too, but it's not this story. This story is about horrible situation of workers' rights in the US. It's pretty much a house made problem.

> Letting China browbeat businesses into submission for the privilege of operating in that market isn't a good thing

I don't think "letting" is a very accurate word in this case — Marriott could pull out of China (likely at a loss) but the company doesn't want to because it would be financially stupid. In fact, as a public company Marriott is mandated to act in its shareholders' best financial interests.

It gets abused for sure, but more often, businesses get to fire bad employees, and this means they are more likely to give some people a chance who wouldn't get one otherwise.

Hiring in certain countries is very risky, because it is so costly to fire a bad employee.

More often, you assert. But have you got any evidence to say so?

Bullshit. It is 100% advantage for the employee. Another employee and myself got laid off with 2 days notice from my former employer when they decided they were going to try to use less people. This is really annoying since I now am working as a temp for 6mo until I'm hired at another company and have to pay $400/mo out of pocket for insurance. This is in the biotech industry not the tech industry, maybe things are better there.

Which is why many companies don’t hire many people in France

http://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/knowledge/publications/14...

> The real story is he has no employment rights because he's in America and he's "at will."

At-will employment is state level, not nation level, so it's not really a "he's in America" thing. Most states subscribe to some version of at-will employment, but various states have different types of exceptions which make it much less clear to apply as a statement to the entire United States (much less the various other groups "America" could refer to).

Is there another country that has "at will" employment to the extent that the US does?

China.

Pretty much all of them except a few European nations.

Forcing employers to keep employees they don't like, for any reason beyond discrimination, isn't the answer. The better answer is, IMO, better social safety net so people making $14/hr don't end up on the streets just because their job goes away.

But in the USA, we insist that the unemployed suffer to fluff the moral vanity of the wealthy. It is the flip side of "meritocracy" -- wealth is evidence of moral superiority while poverty is evidence of moral inferiority, and more dramatic the comparison the stronger the proof that success is deserved.

"There but for my own prodigious talent and relentless drive to succeed go I."

>>Forcing employers to keep employees they don't like

Many jurisdictions allow firing without cause - they just make the employers pay (significant) severance, often related to the length of service of the employee. I think it's perfectly reasonable to say "I don't want you in my company any longer", I just happen to think it might be reasonable to pay for that privilege.

Denmark is famous for having a social safety net that makes sure laid-off employees have the skills to get a new job. It's a happy medium between excessive employee protections and lack of employee protections.

The Flexi-Security approach to social security. The hard part is making sure companies pay their dues.

And yet all I see on HN is talk about how hiring a single false positive is supposedly so calamitous that it's better to reject (and waste the time of, and insult) tens, hundreds, or even thousands of false negatives.

There's a lot of "natural" toxicity of bad hires, and it does inspire a lot of fear. Additional state-imposed toxicity makes it even worse.

I see this pro-worker sentiment on HN pretty regularly. But I also see the "hire slow, fire fast" mantra.

Are these views held by different people, or by the same people regarding different situations (like working for big companies versus startups)?

different people most likely is my guess

This seems to imply that had Roy not lived at-will state he would have kept his job and completely misses the real bully in the article.

Read the section on the threats Marriott got. China barred Marriot from making online bookings for a week. China would have done everything in their power to make sure someone was going to suffer for Roy’s mishap.

At-will employment would have changed little about Roy’s situation vs a huge international political bully.

> At-will employment would have changed little about Roy’s situation vs a huge international political bully.

That entirely depends on the country. There is no "huge international bully" clause in employment law.

Not to mention that I'm not sure about "the real bully". If you think that underpaid customer care agents have the responsibility for executing your business strategy in China, maybe you should pay them appropriately. Or maybe you should ensure that someone higher up the food chain takes the fall.

In my opinion, there is a bigger problem with at will employment than being able to be fired at any time. If your employer wants to change your contract in almost any fashion, their continued employment of you is considered to be sufficient “consideration” for the change.

They want to put you on call? No extra pay required. Change you to the night shift? You still have a job, that’s sufficient.

It’s an employee rights disaster.

> They want to put you on call? No extra pay required. Change you to the night shift? You still have a job, that’s sufficient.

How is it not? You can always threaten to quit if they don't give you a raise. The only way that doesn't work is if they can easily replace you with someone willing to work harder for less money.

And in that case that's what they're supposed to do. You would only be willing to quit if you had a better option that the person willing to do this job for less money apparently doesn't. So then they should get your job and you should go take the better job.

Yep, once again, the real upsetting thing here is how US companies can just fire employees on the spot. That's just crazy.

It sucks. I'm in a state with At-Will employment - it affects those with very expendable jobs. I've had plenty of friends get fired from restaurant jobs just for (legitimately) calling in sick.

For me (Spain) this is unbelievable... That firing would be totally illegal here and the worker would have to be rehired and compensated.

Man, what a country.

In Europe he’d be fired for failing to do his job and/or tainting company image. No employee rights can save someone who made a mistake.

He might go to court over that and try to claim that it was not his fault or that it’s not such a big mistake. But his chances wouldn’t be good in most countries.

Oh, and he wouldn’t even be offered any kind of severance. It’d be seen as employ-fault firing.

As an "at will" junior software engineer, if I one day get fired for my lunch selection, is there any legal actions I can take, assuming I'm an honest, skilled, competent worker?

They probably won't tell you why you were fired.

And that's why unions are so important.

Anyone can also quit at any time. Doesn't matter if they need you or not.

Mutual consent is very important in interactions.

Buyers and sellers of labor are just like the buyers and sellers of any good or service. Why we've elevated selling labor to a company as something more significant than a barber selling haircuts doesn't make much sense when looked at logically.

If I get my hair cut at a barber every month for years. Do I owe that barber "rights" when I decide I don't want to cut my hair there anymore? I'm buying the labor. I'm hiring that barber to do a job for me. Is it my requirement that I provide that barber with "benefits?" No. I provide that barber with the cash he demands for his services -- then he can choose to buy whatever "benefits" he deems important. If the barber wants to charge me too much, I can find another barber who can do the same quality of job for less money. Perhaps I can't find a replacement, perhaps that barber is the only one with the unique experience to handle my hair -- in which case, he could demand more money since he has a rare combination of skills and experience that I'm willing to pay for. But, if his work is generic, then I can easily find another barber who has lower prices. If that barber wants to strike because he's mad I won't pay him more, then he can strike all he wants -- I'll go somewhere else or just stop getting my hair cut. Not my problem.

The barber's success or failure in the marketplace is due to his ability to control his costs, improve his efficiencies or otherwise differentiate himself within the market. A smart barber will have saved a portion of earnings to mitigate those times when he loses a customer. A even smarter barber will be looking at expanding his skills, increasing innovation and efficiency in order to ensure he's providing a compelling value proposition for his customers.

The not-so-smart barder assumes that past performance is an indicator of future results.

Why we have this backwards notion that the employer, the "customer" of labor has to provide the seller of labor with "protections" is a mystery. To me, it seems like this whole idea is just a Marxist religious belief. Just as fatalism and "the will of God," is a thing in many many Catholic Latin American societies, it seems like this idea of the "worker" as an "exploited" cog in an evil capitalist wheel is equally flawed. This idea that workers need "protecting" serves to infantilize otherwise grown-up adults. Thanks to vestigies of Marxist/Leninist 20th century propaganda, there's an entire school of thought that has workers as victims, children or otherwise incompetent invalids unable to care for themselves. The French Labor Code was built around that very idea.

I've been fired a few times with no-notice. I've also quit a few times with no-notice. I know what it feels like to have the carpet ripped out from under me -- but I don't feel like French style "protections" is the answer because, as quickly as I've been fired, I've been able to find new jobs because when there are fewer restrictions on hiring and firing -- it lowers the cost of hiring and firing. It provides liquidity to the labor market -- which is better for everyone.

Restrictive and highly protectionistic labor markets ALWAYS lead to higher unemployement AND lower wages. Since firing employees is expensive in protected labor markets, that means, necessarily, that companies will be far more conservative in hiring employees in the first place. You aren't going to hire someone quickly. You're going to vet, vet and re-vet potential hires. You're going to discriminate aggressively. You're going to ensure that they have absolutely perfect credentials. You're going to hire people recommended by close friends and trusted associates and those within your existing social circles -- because it would be risky to hire someone with a Algerian last name or from a school you've never heard of or from a country with which you aren't familiar. This is exactly how it works in France. [1]

If you look at Silicon Valley -- while a some level disrimination, it's one of the most diverse places in the world when it comes to national origin. The demand for labor is so high that a transgendered Nigerian midget with a criminal record will get hired if she happened to be an expert in Swift, Java, Go, AI, ML or Ruby. And said migdget could demand (and get) a salary that's 4 times higher that the same midget in Paris, with taxes 50% less and 18% more in after-tax, after-health disposible income. [2] The "problem" with Silicon Valley diversity isn't an unwillingness to hire, it's a relative undersupply of labor from particular groups. There are far fewer women software engineers than men. So it follows that it's going to be harder to hire women software engineers. Now, the reason for that supply problem is another discussion, but the fact is that a qualified anyone can get a job quickly in Silicon Valley -- specifically because there is a highly liquid labor market!

At will employment reduces unemployment and increases market/wage efficiency.

> They can dismiss him because they don't like his lunch selection that day and he has no rights.

Yes, and he has the right to quit if he doesn't like their lunch selection. He isn't a child. Employment is a two-way transaction. I have labor you want, you pay me for it. If either one of us don't like the arrangement, we can walk away. Why is that such a controversial idea? Any transaction where one side or another is forced to act against his or her own interests is wrong. Forcing a company to justify a reason is just as wrong as forcing an employee to justify why they should be allowed to quit.

It's about to be ironic when this post gets the inevitable downvotes -- downvotes from American tech employees and founders that benefit from the very labor liquity that I'm advocating.

[1] http://www.strategie.gouv.fr/english-articles/economic-cost-... [2] http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/France/Unit...

The real story is how web forums are the worst way to converse with real people all across the world.

How can we at least get back to the NNTP type of control we had in the 90's? HN is teetering on failure, and I'd just like to get back to NNTP? :(

Even if it wasn't an accident -- even if he saw the Tweet, and on behalf of Marriott and in full intention of broadcasting such, he clicked "Like" on this tweet, it's completely insane he would be fired for it. The tweet exhibits a positive sentiment. I would not expect most people to know that this sentiment matters to China.

This is another example of China exerting influence on the open web, and it's shameful that we have ceded leadership to China like this.

It is not that hard to imagine being fired by "clicking" likes, let's not oversimplify like this. Official tweeter accounts carry weights. Plus this is not about China at all, what if this is a Nazi tweet? An ISIS tweet? An anti-LGBT tweet? It's either the company's way of dealing with PR problems, or the employee's misconduct, but not about China.

> what if this is a Nazi tweet? An ISIS tweet? An anti-LGBT tweet?

Say "oops" and unlike the tweet. If it keeps happening, maybe you've got a problem.

First, it is about China. In fact, I think an ISIS or Anti-LGBT tweet getting liked would be less likely to get someone fired! Marriott is concerned about the Chinese government shutting down their business for a nation. an ISIS/anti-LGBT tweet getting liked would piss people off, get explained away as an obvious accident (especially if the employee were to explicitly apologize and explain themselves) and we'd move on.

The Gods of Chinese Empire apparently do not tolerate slights.

This behavior of greedy Western corporations playing ball with China is flat-out embarrassing.

> Plus this is not about China at all

Am I misunderstanding you? How can you say this story is not about China?

A dictatorship like China raising the issue over Tibet is the equivalent of (an alternative universe) powerful Nazi Germany getting someone fired in the U.S. over liking a tweet about Jewish rights issue.

That’s a terrible analogy. It’s more like the Nazis getting someone fired for liking a tweet about Austria or Czechoslovakia still being a country.

Surprised this is being downvoted. Example: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/tibetan-tells-of-ch...

WOW that escalates quickly. I thought the Americans liked capitalism.

> I thought the Americans liked capitalism.

Depends from which account they accidently "liked" it.

We're currently having a nationalist/populist period.

American here.

Not often.

Thought experiment: a Russian multinational, Gazprom maybe, likes a campaign tweet for “Free Alaska.” How does it come across in America?

A more appropriate example would be the Crimean annexation, which only a handful of countries recognize.

Also IIRC a lot of these companies are state-owned or owned by Kremlin-friendly oligarchs. Not really a private corporation.

It’s a completely different issue though; there’s already a lot of built up politics regarding Tibet in China.

President Trump tweets "my big red shiny button bigger than Gazprom CEO's shiny bald head!", a thousand verified twitter accounts blast him for bad international relations. Across the American web many different opinions are raised, debated, trolled, and flamewars rage for a couple of days. Someone posts an image edit of President Trump swinging his tiny hands at a caricature of Putin. There are cats. Nobody at Gazprom gets bothered at all by this.

> Nobody at Gazprom gets bothered at all by this.

Ahh, there's the unrealistic part. Unless by "bothered" you specifically mean "bothered by government personnel"?

It’s ignored because Free Alaska is not a thing.

If it became a thing in Russia, would that count?

> The tweet exhibits a positive sentiment

Not if you are the Chinese government... not at all.

> This is another example of China exerting influse on the open web

This has nothing to do with the open web, there is not censorship involved. This was Marriott's business relationship with China.

Employees in social media teams should not be clicking LIKE in anything. It’s too risky to the business, and it conflates your personal preferences with corporate business goals.

You cannot be yourself on social media anymore. You just have to be inactive, a fake, or pretend to be like what the echo chamber asks you to be.

He wasn't being "himself". He was an employee of Marriott Incorporated, doing the job he is paid to: publicize Twitter users who paint Marriott Incorporated in a good light.

Just a quick note that you probably mean "conflates" (combine two or more texts, ideas, etc. into one) rather than "conflagrates" (a conflagration is 'an extensive fire that destroys a great deal of land or property.')

;)

You are right! THANK YOU FOR TEACHING ME something. (Fixed it)

Have a great weekend!

Clicking 'like' on tweets positive toward the brand is a common job for employees in social media teams. Making connections around the brand is the whole job of those employees. (Not saying whether or not he should have liked this particular tweet, or whether it was an accident or whatever—just that it's common and part of the job to like a tweet.)

Lets be real about America's relationship with China. They are our enemies. Both parties seek to dominate the globe even if nobody is anxious to do so bullets and bombs. Both parties have values that can never be reconciled.

How do you reconcile the notion that man ought to be free with a society that believes in lifelong servitude and a mans proper place under each others boots. A society that poisons its people and executes the parties responsible only when it becomes a public embarrassment. That dissembles undesirable portions of its populace for spare body parts for more affluent and desirable portions of its populace. That rolls over its people with tanks when they dare to disagree. Americans may be at many times poor examples of the values we hold dear but our society is at worst working towards living our ideals.

China is nothing but a more tractable, predictable, and sane North Korea and nothing in our lifetimes or our childrens lifetimes is going to change that.

A company that holds itself to be an American company shouldn't bow its neck to terrible people or ask Americans to do so.

I am aware that they are a multinational and may not wish to be seen as American which is just fine by me. I just don't wish our government employees or leadership to patronize them and strongly suggest that those who feel strongly about America also abstain from giving anyone affiliated with Marriott their money.

I don't think the issue is Chinese culture, but it is Chinese leadership--which, admittedly, has encouraged and created a culture of concerning nationalism and subservience to authoritarians with no respect for human rights or rule of law.

If you look back in contemporary Chinese history, there are several episodes where influential groups were openly supporting a more democratic society.

It wasn't Chinese culture that stopped them. It was Mao, the CCP, the tanks in Tienamen Square, and the more recently the ubiquitous propaganda and censorship.

I agree that the CCP is an enemy we should we wary of. But we should be just as wary of writing off any large group of fellow humans as enemies. The enemy is the brainwashers themselves, not their victims.

It wasn't Chinese culture that stopped them. It was Mao, the CCP, the tanks in Tienamen Square, and the more recently the ubiquitous propaganda and censorship (...) the brainwashers (...)

In the last four decades, the poverty rate in China has fallen from over 90% to below 10%.

http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/images/ChinaSpecial...

Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty, most people have seen a radical improvement in their standard of living in the last decades.

Do you really think the main reason why they don't rise against their government is "propaganda" and "brainwash"? How many well-informed and not-brainwashed people would choose to support a revolution (with the associated risk of violence, chaos and deaths) when the statu quo is a fast, steady and practically unrivaled increase in everyday living conditions, even if the government is authoritarian? I don't think many would, regardless of whether their culture were Chinese or Western.

Who said anything about revolution? Mainland Chinese hold unnatural views on many issues that are shared essentially nowhere else in the world and are easily traceable back to the CCP's interests and propaganda.

China's claim to Taiwan is the same claim that the UK has to Australia. Most mainland Chinese still think Falun Gong was a bunch of crazies and are unaware of the government crackdown of them. The details of the Tienamen Square Massacre are not well known. Mao is still a hero in the eyes of hundreds of millions. Mainland Chinese are mostly unaware of the human rights abuses occurring among Tibetans and Uighurs. The continuing extreme mistrust of the Japanese hard to explain in a world where Israel is friendly with German--unless you have an authoritarian power seeking to whip up nationalistic support to maintain its control over society.

These views (literally forced upon them, in a collective sense) result them condoning massive human rights violations, mercantilist trade policies, increased risks of war and conflict with major powers, and other societal negatives.

Those risks are exclusively attributable to the CCP, whereas economic growth in a country like China likely does not exclusively require said rulers.

well said, to the contrary, it appears we -- americans/europeans -- are the brainwashed ones. instead of finding common cause we our fellow human beings we all too easily follow our leadership's narrative that the people of China are our enemies.

We have plenty of common causes say fighting cancer. We can link arms, sing songs, fight cancer then go back to trying to dominate each other globally and establish our mutually incompatible values as the global norm. Playing this off as Americans being brain washed is just naive. They are literally our enemies unless you have conveniently forgotten Korea.

The society that gives birth to the autocrats is complicit and for the most part welcoming of its values. It's a mistake to merely think of them as brainwashed.

They rule their society still because their values and the values of the people are aligned.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2... /why_drivers_in_china_intentionally_kill_the_pedestrians_they_hit_china_s.html

It's a pragmatic society that believes in authoritarian rule because they believe it works and because the morality and ideals always come after pragmatism for them.

They themselves and not the rulers that temporarily maintain control are our irreconcilable enemies.

Harsh. What about postwar Germany?

> I just don't wish our government employees or leadership to patronize them and strongly suggest that those who feel strongly about America also abstain from giving anyone affiliated with Marriott their money.

I feel kinda bad for Marriot: Chinese boycott them for liking the tweet, and now americans are furious that they apologized.

We aren't furious that they apologized, we're furious that they fired someone over a mistake just because China threw a tantrum.

I am neither American nor Chinese, but your oversimplification will be taken more seriously if

(i) US stops borrowing insane amounts of money from China to fund its grand lifestyle (aka beggars cannot be choosers)

(ii) you could spend some time introspecting on the said grand lifestyle which plays a major role in having to deal mainly with first world problems (are we living our ideals?) vs third world ones (how to manage so many poor people without access to a lot of resources?)

(iii) US itself didn't have an extremely hypocritical stance wherever it suits them. I don't see too many Americans talking about the labor rights in oil rich countries

You know, its a complex system. Although I do agree with your thesis (no company should bow to these kind of petty demands), its not because the demand is coming from China. I would say the same thing to those who profit from, say, the lunatic patent system imposed via US on other countries.

I agree with what you said, partly. And I agree that there are serious problems with chinese culture and government (at least, from my perspective). But, why should the US government be any better?

>But, why should the US government be any better?

Its foundational principles are superior.

As an American citizen, I'm pretty ashamed our Constitution has forever enshrined slavery, and it's something that still resonates today. There is a terrible irony of setting a colony free from the UK and then having the heritage of slavery being celebrated in swaths of the United States for hundreds of years, even after abolition, as some sort of worthy heritage.

The US Constitution also includes the means to amend the document, which has been done numerous times, including the 13th Amendment, which corrects Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3. There's of course still room for improvement, we have the means do do so, creating an even more perfect union. While keeping in mind the past (which, as an append-only document, the Constitution makes sure we do) and working for the future (while perhaps chafing at the rate of improvement), I think that's also something to be proud of.

What foundational principle? White supremacy? Genocide and theft of land?

It's nice to know that we are just as brainwashed as the chinese.

I find stories like this very frustrating. It seems pretty clear that:

1) Roy Jones did nothing wrong, but lost his job through no fault of his own.

2) Marriott did something morally wrong because it was easy, and will suffer zero consequences.

3) China doesn't really care about the underlying issue, but is engaging in a cynical power play to exert dominance.

In a better world, Marriott would have refused to buckle, or having done so, would face meaningful consequences. In this world, the only party in this sotry to actually suffer is the only one who is morally blameless. And that's just how it is.

> China doesn't really care about the underlying issue, but is engaging in a cynical power play to exert dominance.

Boy, I wish that was true. China is petulant beyond belief. A thousands years old civilization that rallies their netizens any time anybody dare "insult the feelings of the Chinese people".

That's how illegitimate and insecure powers behave.

This makes me think: How fragile must this power be if a "like" on social media is enough to elicit such a response?

The article clearly mentions that they had to punish someone. Also, China imposed harsh consequences in the form of lost revenue for Marriott due to the liked tweet:

"China forced Marriott to suspend all online booking for a week at its nearly 300 Chinese hotels. A Chinese leader also demanded the company publicly apologize and “seriously deal with the people responsible,” the Journal reported."

> The article clearly mentions that they had to punish someone.

...well, no. They had a choice. They didn't have to fire the guy.

> Also, China imposed harsh consequences in the form of lost revenue for Marriott

True. But no one is imposing any consequences on Marriott for firing the guy, harsh or not. For Marriott, that makes the decision easy I suppose. It does not, however, change what's right.

> China forced Marriott to suspend all online booking for a week at its nearly 300 Chinese hotels. A Chinese leader also demanded the company publicly apologize and “seriously deal with the people responsible,” the Journal reported.

I look forward to the coming years where China continues to grow in influence and power, and the useful things they choose to do with them. /s

The last time I felt like I was seeing a use of government power this idiotic was when Congress decided to investigate cheating in the MLB (or NFL or whatever it was).

I think they've been influenced by seeing all the attention DT gets for throwing shit fits.

Trust me, they were pulling the kinds of stunts over Tibet and Taiwan and the Diaoyu islands and a few other issues loooong before Trump made that fateful ride down the escalator.

And thus the Chinese Communist Party's cold authoritarian censorship extends overseas to strike at the job of a US citizen.

It was just a few months ago that I wrote this here on HN:

> I even feel a personal dampening on what I will say publicly about China on social media, just because of hypothetical tech/travel opportunities, and I don't even live there.

Obviously, those fears were founded. Part of me is happy about the Trump tariffs because it will force more multinational corporations to stand up and show their true selves with regards to what matters more to them: access to the Chinese market, or basic human justice and dignity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16272683

> I even feel a personal dampening on what I will say publicly about China on social media, just because of hypothetical tech/travel opportunities, and I don't even live there.

I feel the same, but not only about China.

It isn't just china. You can be fired for offending european sensibilities. You can be fired for offending saudis/muslims/etc. Of course we already have examples of tech workers being fired for conservative opinions. But the most egregious example is israel, where it is illegal for an american citizen to boycott israel.

I wonder if the CCPs censorship department will one day be as powerful as the RIAA or MPAA?

What's scarier is that in this day and age, anything you say on social media can be a fireable offense. Wasn't there an American teacher that was fired this week because he dissed the military?

Or the numerous professors that are in trouble for complaining about BLM disrupting their class?

Stories like this are how companies end up on my mental boycott list which is fairly indefinite especially when their value-add over competitors is limited or non-existent. I'd be glad to read the other side of this as I usually don't like to draw conclusions from pieces like this, but I suspect it's pretty clear in this case. /me slots Marriott just above Nestle in mental Rolodex. Bet they can't quantify that, I don't have a Twitter account.

I've tried this in the past, but then came to the realization that there aren't really that many ethical companies. And for each item such as this that you hear about, there are millions of incidents from their competitors that go unnoticed.

My father was 'Rookie of the Year' in 1988 for Marriott hotels. He got to take my mother to an actual grand ball at the time for their ceremonies, crystal chandelier and all. He was only a cook at the time but an exceptionally hard worker who really stood out. He worked two jobs at the time. One being at Marriott hotels, and the other cleaning a whole Kroger's floor by himself. 20 something thousand square feet, swept, mopped, buffed, and shined single-handed after a full shift at Marriott. For some reason this story stood out to me. The world these days is sometimes too connected for its own good that it forgets to relate to the individual.

This is an atrocity. The image in the said tweet clearly shows a decently large group of people holding 'thanks Marriot' cards. It's easy to think why the employee liked it. And really how many people know about geopolitically sensitive areas like Tibet...

Honestly, Marriott is a terrible chain with contempt for its own customers. Every time I use a Marriott (not always by choice) I’m insulted by the quality of food for the price they ask. I once got $10 ‘fresh squeezed OJ’ at breakfast before knowing the price and realizing they were pouring it from a Tropicana container. So when I hear this story I’m not even remotely surprised by Marriotts behavior. Upper management has its head so far up its own rear end this is par for the course.

Was it a franchised property, or OandO, or was it just merely managed by Marriott?

Not certain but it’s been a repeat problem that I eventually realized Marriott having their name on it was the common denominator

"Dozens of social media accounts were tweeting angry things, including many death threats, at both Roy and Marriott. This seems especially odd considering Twitter itself is officially banned in China, and thus can be accessed only by residents breaking the law or by bot accounts."

Not sure why they assume that "dozens of social media accounts" of pro-China supporters is not possible. They're making some weird assumption that only people within China could possibly support the Chinese government on the issue. This paragraph makes no sense at all. The issue is actually quite controversial, and in my experience most Chinese overseas support China on the issue, as it's seen as similar to the US/Hawaii situation and an affront to China's sovereignty and management of internal affairs.

> They're making some weird assumption that only people within China could possibly support the Chinese government on the issue.

That's not how I read it. I read it saying it's odd that a platform banned as bad by a government is so readily used by those who support the government. I won't even address the end of your post in detail because it's unrelated to governments punishing businesses for liked tweets.

That still doesn't make sense as censorship of internet and the sovereignty/right of Chinese people to stay in and govern Tibet are wholly unrelated issues.

That's like implying that people who support Chinese control of Tibet must also be government shills, or pro-government, or communist party members.

Supporting the issue of China/Chinese in Tibet != supporting the government or all government policies.

Everyone outside china sees tibet, tiawan as seperate countries half invaded by qn incompetent and opressive china.

That's not true at all.

A lot of expat Chinese are strongly patriotic.

I would also add that a lot of the pro-independence Taiwanese I know actually see Tibet as a part of China too. It's weird, I know.

Furthermore, Twitter may be banned, but the government propaganda office certainly has access if they want it.

Right, not only that but they may also actively employ people to spread pro-China messages on Western sites. Like Russia does.

Have you not heard about China's 50 cent army?

To those that are unfamiliar, the "50 cent army" is China's version of America's "Operation Earnest Voice."

It's basically "an astroturfing campaign by the US government.[1] The aim of the initiative is to use sockpuppets to spread pro-American propaganda on social networking sites based outside of the US. [1]"

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice

Relentless!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16665563

> it's seen as similar to the US/Hawaii situation

I was wondering how someone would find a way, even in this discussion, to apply 'the U.S. does it too' comment. Personally, after reading HN for awhile I can hardly distinguish between the U.S. and China.

It's called "whataboutism".

What's the difference between "whataboutism" and perspective?

It's strange to me how much emphasis they're putting on the tweet. Wasn't the spark that incensed China so much their decision to list Tibet as a country in the survey?

Nobody really knew about that until the yeeet was liked by the Marriott corporate account, so in a sense you’re right but the ‘like’ was the proximate cause of the firestorm.

Well, whoever sent the tweet that was liked seemed to have heard about it.

Listing Tibet & Taiwan as country was discovered by some while filling a survey on Marriott china site. Tweet Like wasn't the cause of the firestorm

Well, I certainly won't be staying at any Marriott hotels any more. That's an abysmal way of handling things.

I think these personal boycotts are important and I also participate in them (Nestle, Facebook, etc).

But it's unfortunate know that we will likely never be able to match the scale of a boycott from China.

edit: However if China keeps doing stunts like this then companies might be able to make the decision not to do business there.

Were we a squeakier, more collective wheel it might be different. I had a similar thought a few months back actually: https://github.com/cretz/software-ideas/issues/66. But I can't be bothered to go run around on Twitter, Yelp, business-shame-site du jour all the time. It's why companies with self-imposed principles instead of purchased ones fare better in the long run, and it can't be quantified.

Re edit: Isn't that what Google's already done? If only other big tech companies would flip Beijing the bird the same way...

Is it? It seems like a very standard way of handling things.

Also, Marriott is definitely one of the better mid-range chains.

> It seems like a very standard way of handling things.

Does that make it not abysmal?

If Marriott were really serious, they should have fired the survey writer instead. They again, maybe that person was fired too.

But as to appeasing China, well... I'm not sympathetic.

You’re putting an awful lot of faith in the amount of work executives will do. Not to disparage all C-level executives. But I’m not surprised at all that “China is mad at this tweet...Fire the person on the other end of it.” Is as far as they were willing to dig. They usually fix symptoms, not problems.

No one to fire - the survey was provided by an outside company.

Marriott needs to compile a "list of countries" to provide to third party vendors in the future.

Sounds like the script of a Black Mirror episode to me.

Came here to say this, and cant even really connect the dots on how a hotel chain recognizing a country or not is not the bigger deal than liking a twitter post. Shoot, if I were in the same position I would think I was promoting the chain by liking posts related to it. Complete insanity.

The problem about Black Mirror is that since at least 2016 it has been leaking into this reality.

Someone with a twitter account should tweet this at Donald Trump.

That will be a real black mirror episode.

the pathos of trump was basically covered in that episode with Waldo that blue bear. fun fact: it predates trump's presidential run by several years.

Fun trivia:

Charlie Brooker talks himself of predicting a Trump-like person becoming president and that Black Mirror "Waldo" episode.

Don't recall the source.

Firing the employee seems counterproductive. It hurts morale, and doesn't actually solve the problem.

I’m not sure Tiebtan independence is a problem that Marriott can solve.

Tho they can't solve it single-handedly, they can refuse to be part of the problem by kowtowing to the Chinese Communist Party.

And in case it isn't clear: the only proper attitude to this kind of bullying from the likes of dictatorial regimes is Eff 'em.

China are only trying to bully everyone into helping propagate a lie. The fact is that they invaded the country of Tibet in living memory and it's leader still lives in exile. It was nothing but a territorial land and water resources grab. And they have been working on cultural genocide ever since, starting with burning monastaries within the first week of the invasion, and continuing with in-migration of Chinese to swamp the traditional culture, and kidnapping Tibet's religious leaders.

We may not be able to force their hand, but every company and person can refuse to participate in their lying charade. (and just to be clear, my beef is with the CCP, not the people of China, who are largely just as subject to the unjust govt)

Well bullies recognize bullies. They even like to hang out with other bullies. Big businesses didn't get to their position by being nice. They bullied their way to the top.

That's why I'm guessing that Marriott actually views China's reactions as reasonable.

But I do agree that China's handling of the Tibet situation is poor. They should take a look at how America was able to pacify the natives. Set aside some land for the Tibetans, let them have their own casinos or temples or whatever they want. Then in 100 years or so, the public image of it will change.

I would think that's part of the reason he shouldn't be fired. What difference should it make to anyone mature enough to do business with?

The problem is that a low level employee can single handedly (and even inadvertently) cause such damage to a company. This is obviously a management and process problem, not a some-hourly-guy-in-Omaha problem.

I doubt that is the problem the parent was referring to.

Oh good, then China has nothing to worry about and can leave everything as was is.

The real story here is not the at-will status of American employees, but the extraterritorial application of law. A Chinese worker is familiar with Chinese censorship and policy and know that Tibet is a third rail issue. You cannot possibly expect a low-level employee in Nebraska would know this. So when a country (like the U.S., like China) tries to impose its laws (like the U.S. did in New Zealand to Kim Dotcom) you have unexpected consequences. As countries seek to criminalize webhosting (FOSTA), the Internet will be increasingly siloed. If you want to know what the Internet will look like in twenty years, look at North Korea. Connections outside extremely limited. Ony North Korean laws apply. That is the direction we're headed.

A company will always err on the side of firing an employee when threatened with a lawsuit or government action. The principle behind this behavior is very simple: make sure the finger is pointed at the party least capable of fighting for its own rights.

It's anecdote time using this throwaway account.

I used to work as a software engineer at a major hedge fund, where most of the computer systems were run by an outside vendor. One of these systems was a Flash-based data tool, an archaic piece of work that was poorly implemented, entirely undocumented, and thoroughly hated by everyone at the firm. I was part of a three-person team who, along with the CTO, were hired to replace this website. We were told to use whatever means were necessary to figure out a way to build better systems for the hedge fund.

On a fine summer afternoon not so long ago, my teammate was trying to figure out how the existing Flash-based website worked. This person downloaded a popular Flash decompilation tool in order to peek at the UI source code. Neither him nor me were aware that the same vendor who ran this Flash-based website had also installed surveillance software that pulled web browsing history from every computer at the firm.

It turned out that the firm's contract with this vendor included explicit verbiage that prohibited any kind of reverse engineering of the Flash-based website, and specifically called out Flash decompilation as a forbidden activity. Obviously, none of the employees were ever notified of this clause in the contract, and were unaware of the forbidden nature of this activity.

A few days later, the entire department - the "offending" colleague and two other engineers including myself, as well as the CTO - were all summarily fired for violating a contract clause that none knew about.

This man's story is sad and regrettable, yet it does not surprise me in the least. The firm screwed up, and chose to take a course of action that limited its own responsibility at the expense of four livelihoods.

Sic transit gloria mundi, while American greed continues on its own vicious course.

This is the exact wrong approach to incident management. A business intending not to make this kind of mistakes again would hold a post mortem and fix the system failures encountered. Marriott just needed a scapegoat.

I feel bad for guy. Everyone has had some mind numbing task that causes you to space out. But! Here is a half baked app idea that might prevent, or at least reduce, this unfortunate situation. Make it like the nuclear launch systems in movies (probably set in rural Nebraska deep down 300 feet below a corn field). There are multiple people getting the same social media feeds. They react independently, but actual responses are delayed. If all the people noticed an event (tweet etc) it goes into a further consideration pool, the rest are dropped. In the further consideration pool, event reaction only get out and leave the system (become real) if the majority are in agreement. In the binary situations it’s a simple vote majority. In free form text, use ML to characterize the content into a few buckets (affirmation, lukewarm, negative and joke (or whatever)). You should call the app “social kaboom averted.”

Personally, I want to live in a society where all three of the voters vote for Tibet over bastard commies. Eff Marriot, or no, wait. Eff Mary-rot!

The system could also work on a delay. So the same person has to double check their own tweets (and hacker news comments) after x hours. That app is called “sleep on it.”

tl;rd Marriot employee dealing with 1000s of tweets liked:

>Friends of Tibet congratulate global hotel chain #Marriott International for listing #Tibet as a country along with #HongKong and #Taiwan. pic.twitter.com/SXKWb20v3e

China freaked out and

>forced Marriott to suspend all online booking for a week at its nearly 300 Chinese hotels. A Chinese leader also demanded the company publicly apologize and “seriously deal with the people responsible,”

Maybe Marriott could quietly hire him back.

The Chinese are a bit touchy over what I think is the largest military invasion and land grab of the last century by area.

If I remember correctly, China didn't "freak out."

A bunch of Chinese patriots freaked out and started to tweet/weibo it and brought it to the attention of the Chinese government.

At that point, the government had to act, otherwise, they would be seen as soft on separatism.

They should just rehire him quietly. I hardly think China is going to keep tabs on his employment status.

We will let them know.

There is only one person to blame for this and it is the executive in charge. What a fucking chicken shit and horrible leader to throw his subordinate under the bus for what is a process and institutional problem.

I️ wont be using the Marriot again (not that I️ wouldve).

I think some blame belongs with Western leadership who've created this monster. Without companies falling over themselves to set up shop in China, and Western governments not stopping to think about the geopolitical ramifications, China never would have amassed this much power in so little time, obviously with a lack of corresponding wisdom.

Unfortunately, there's now no going back, lest we cause a recession! China will be the de facto leader of the world very soon, and when that happens the Marriots or any of us won't have the option of refusing their requests - you will do it, or else.

Yes, total dick move. And who knows how high up the blame lies. The bottom-rung exec is likely just as clueless. Clearly they need to outsource the social media stuff. This is going to become more and more important for big corps to get on top of, and having a few click-monkeys do it is just obviously not going to work.

A data bill of rights might be the issue of our time.

No matter if you are in a free country or anywhere in the world, people should be able to have opinion that is represented in their digital form.

The US could lead on this and we would be smart to push for it.

Also, maybe with our surveillance society there is some path to forgiveness if people makes mistakes. Everything now is too much of a permanent record which was always feared and not fair for the human condition where people make mistakes and change.

It is unfortunate that the US seems to not be serious about rights not already in the Constitution. In international agreements, it seems to sign but not ratify them.

(1) https://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2013/10/why-us-so... (2) https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/10/e... (3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_treaties_unsigned_or_u...

In addition, the current political climate seems to want to remove some protections already in the constitution and I would think other countries would be hesitant to enter agreements such as these with the US, considering things like backing out of trade agreements and the Paris climate agreement.

They just fired the one guy who they would have been able to rely on 100% to never, ever make that mistake again.

Mariott just lost my family, and companies business. I hope china was worth it. No integrity, means no support from me.

Glad to see that the cowards at Marriott are willing to stand up to insane Chinese bullying. I’m switching to Hilton.

You don't think Hilton routinely fires people for unfair, chickenshit reasons too, taking advantage of the immense power differential a giant corporation has over low-skilled labor? Isn't that the real problem here?

Someone needs to hire this guy. It was an honest mistake.

It was an honest mistake.

The only mistake he made was accepting a job at a company that turned out to be run by spineless bootlickers.

Sic transit gloria mundi, while American greed continues on its own vicious course.

a) It can't be a dream job if you get fired for liking a tweet. The dream job only existed in your head and getting fired hit you with the truth that your fantasy ad reality don't match.

b) Midnight on-call support is not a dream job. Have you ever worked in anything that is close to customers? These jobs are a pain in the a and mostly underpaid. Also you can always, always find another job like that.

c) He didn't get fired for a like. He got fired because his actions resulted in losing millions of dollars. In such a situation someone needs to get fired. It doesn't matter if anybody is at fault or not. It must have consequences. And as the lowest level employee in the chain it's easy to fire you first. Sh*t happens.

For a) Sure, that changed the "dream job"... but come on, it seems he didn't think that a simple mistake could raise such a stir. And it seems a misguided like would generally be something reprimanded instead of it losing your job. This situation was weirdly blown out of proportion for numerous reasons, which weren't his fault. As far as we know, everything leading up to that moment could have seemed reasonable enough to the man.

for b: That's nearly twice the minimum wage. It isn't manual labour, you aren't doing collections, and they likely offer decent health insurance for call center employees on top of a couple weeks vacation and a little bit of flexibility. Sure, there are going to be stressful nights, but others will be full of other sorts of people. Who is to say that can't be someone's dream job?

A LOT of manual labor jobs are shittier (you can use bad words here BTW) than working in an air-conditioned office chatting on Twitter all day.

a,b) A dream job can be a dream job solely for paying $14/hr when every other job you could get paid $9.

I'm a Marriott rewards platinum member, with over a year in house, and staying in a Marriott hotel right now, and I find this behavior disgraceful - and while I'm likely to complain to Marriott about it (and did previously), I'm unlikely to change my stay preferences.

Most Marriott employees I know of (not who work for franchises), speak highly of the work environment and culture that I know its a good place to work/be - but behavior like this is still at best foolish - I mean this guy just learned a multi-million dollar lesson, isnt he the one you'd want to keep on?

Why does Twitter make likes public? There isn't even a way to hide them, afaik. I don't use Twitter but if I did, I certainly wouldn't want everyone knowing everything I like.

The rational and nice thing to do for Marriott is to fire the guy, give him a nice severance and a wink-wink apology, and hook him up with a gig at Starwood Hotel & Resorts.

Seems like they could have saved themselves a good deal of money and headache by offering this guy a severance package ahead of his firing being made public.

It may not look like it, but this is equivalent to accidentally pressing a missle button and it hit the country on the other side.

Yeah, Americans seem pretty indifferent on such issues, probably because they oppress others too well and don't get to hear such things themselves.

What if a major French company lists the Falklands under Argentina? What if open street map deletes Israel? What if Airbus "likes" a tweet from a middle eastern man that calls for the complete removal of US forces from Iraq? Things like that matter, and really piss off the involved parties, especially when they're at least technically correct (as in the case of Tibet being autonomous, but de-facto part of China).

What if a major French company lists the Falklands under Argentina?

You'd get a reddit "BritishProblems" grumpy post about it?

https://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/comments/2emlt0/i_w...

https://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/search?q=country+li...

totally agree. All that hypocrisy caused by ignorance. They just don't understand how sensitive such matters are before they even try. Sad!

>>It may not look like it, but this is equivalent to accidentally pressing a missle button and it hit the country on the other side.

TBH I expected somebody to Godwin this whole thing, but the quality of people commenting on HN is just too damn high.

Guess your comment is as close as we gonna get.

Never thought the like button of one tweet can have such devastating consequences.

...or accidentally sending a missile warning to Hawaii.

For those saying something along the lines of "should we expect a massive reaction every time a few people get upset?" - just look at the UK and the Nazi pug story [1]. It seems as though a mass of outraged people on social media can have very real life consequences as there's no evidence for it stopping anytime soon.

Personally I think this is more towards a vigilante mob culture and in most cases it's counterproductive to throw people under the bus. The real failure here was Marriott failing to envision somebody one day accidentally pressing a button in "error" (at least to cause negative PR). They've set a dangerous standard for themselves that large negative PR should result in job losses.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/09/nazi-pug-man-arr...

Great idea! Immediately made me think of this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjAcyTXRunY

Hopefully no birds like this in the area.

China is a bully. Bullys are a serious problem when they are bigger and stronger than most everyone around and also the community does not band together to stop them.

Maybe we need to rethink unions and employment at will laws.

Aside from other questions, in what way does this mid-level management position wherein one is constantly surveiled a "dream job"? Ah, because the employers only hire people who claim it's their dream job? Because mostly a simple unfair firing situation wouldn't get the outrage it deserved unless the situation would flogged someone losing their dream job?

None of the rhetoric inflation involved is the fault of this unfairly fired guy but it is an unfortunate sign of today.

Because it was his dream job. Are you so out of touch with people on a less ambitious path than yourself to not be able to see how that's possible?

Based on what the article says who knows, that job might have been the first thing he did that his parents were proud of:

"Roy Jones freely admits he’s far from saintly. He spent time in Boys Town as a teenager. He developed drug and alcohol dependency issues before graduating from high school, and eventually got three DUIs as a young adult. He bounced aimlessly from job to job.

But the Marriott job was different, he said. In his 18 months there, he had been promoted once, then given a raise, as superiors rewarded his skill and hard work.

His mother was proud to tell her friends that her son worked for a big hotel chain."

A) this was not a midlevel management position.

B) Your life is made more convenient daily by people who do jobs that you don't want to. This guy has the nerve to _like_ his job and that bothers you?

The article states that the guy had a rocky background and then the job had quickly brought him newfound accomplishment—but even if he was the heir to a major bank and a Mensa member, why can't he enjoy what he's chosen to do?

In light of Mr. Jones' history and considering what he accomplished during his 18 months employment at Marriott, he may be on a more ambitious path than some of those more advantageously situated.

I wish him well, and I hope someone who wants a good employee notices his availability.

tl;dr: He liked this tweet from an official Marriott account, upsetting Chinese officials ...

> Friends of Tibet congratulate global hotel chain #Marriott International for listing #Tibet as a country along with #HongKong and #Taiwan.

I feel sorry for the guy because it really seems like he needs better dreams.

That's the first time I've been hit with a survey-wall. Warning that the content is not free. The title is click bait anyway, so I'm not sure what I was expecting.

Yeah. A little surreal getting asked for opinions in order to read an article about someone getting fired for showing an opinion.

Getting asked for opinions in order to read an article about someone getting fired for showing an opinion about people showing an opinion about a form asking for an opinion.

Creating an account on HN to show an opinion on someone getting asked for opinions in order to read an article about someone getting fired for showing an opinion about people showing an opinion about a form asking for an opinion.

Use outline.com

There's no survey-wall.

You have to "answer" a question to get access to the content.

There was for me on mobile, not on desktop.

On desktop there's just auto-playing video with obnoxiously loud commercials; reminded me I need the Mute Sites By Default [1] extension installed on this computer.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mute-sites-by...

this comment is being down-voted, which is not characteristic of my comments. I'd appreciate some kind of insight into why that is happening, from those who are down-voting.

Surprised no one asks the obvious question: why doesn’t Twitter (“can’t make any money”) charge for running a tweet competition and fix their bot problem.

Because they don’t want to fix their bots; it boosts their. numbers

That’s easy to say, but one look at their recent investment call transcripts shows that’s a pretty naive view.

To make it clear, number of users is great, but revenue growth is much much better.

I think Marriott's response was heavy handed and excessive. I'm not staying at any Marriott hotels.

Welcome to 2018

"Answer a survey to continue reading this content."

No.

Up next, all atheists and homosexuals get fired from any company that deals with Saudi Arabia.

We can't let backwards dictatorships have any say in how a democracy is ran.

Marion should be made an example of in the US. Say a wink wink nudge nudge major tax audit of every single Marion hotel.

> We can't let backwards dictatorships have any say in how a democracy is ran.

Unfortunately we can, we do, and we will continue to, unless we make it more expensive for companies to submit to than to oppose such forces.

Given the role money plays in our legislative process, I think we will be seeing more of this.

Not only can we, but now with the CLOUD Act passed as a rider to the budget bill those countries have even more options since the law will,

>Enable foreign police to collect and wiretap people's communications from U.S. companies, without obtaining a U.S. warrant.

>Allow foreign nations to demand personal data stored in the United States, without prior review by a judge.

>Allow the U.S. president to enter "executive agreements" that empower police in foreign nations that have weaker privacy laws than the United States to seize data in the United States while ignoring U.S. privacy laws.

>Allow foreign police to collect someone's data without notifying them about it.

This isn't an example of anyone having a say in how the government is run.

Any kind of extra-legal and arbitrary "making an example" of a company domestically would be disastrous to confidence in the market.

The better implementation of your objective would be to create a policy (enshrined in rules) first, then go after anyone who violates it.

>Any kind of extra-legal and arbitrary "making an example" of a company domestically would be disastrous to confidence in the market.

The market is in place to serve the country, not the other way around. Corporate charters are given by government and can be revoked. Colluding with a foreign country that we have a strained relationship with should be grounds for at least looking at the company much more closely.

It's unfortunate that countries do increasingly exist to serve markets. In my opinion that's a real inversion, although subtle, that's been taking place.

Which leads us to a bought political system, at the moment at least.

Marriot, and almost all companies, are not demmocraces.

> We can't let backwards dictatorships have any say in how a democracy is ran.

So in your opinion both Gulf Wars had nothing to do with the strong influence Saudi Arabia has over the USA and in specific, the Bush family?

It's amusing how much dread is inspired inside when I try to make a comment here. Can't say anything without marking myself against one of the many parties here. What a drama!

If you don't speak up for yourself, somebody else will and you may not like what the say.

TL;DR: Marriott puts out a survey, someone compliments them on the content of the survey via a tweet, an employee likes the tweet, and gets fired because China gets triggered.

I've come to appreciate when I make posts that get downvoted sometimes, because it means I'm not bending to the will of peer pressure.

Usually when an issue like this gets up to the CEO, there really isn't any other choice but to fire whoever is responsible. I don't necessarily agree with it, but the reality is: China >> Mariott.

Sure. The CEO should fire himself, since he is the responsible party for this irreparable harm to CHina.

Or fire whoever stamped the paperwork for Mariott to become a corporation!

What a crappy website. Autoplay video and whenever I click on the text below the image, the image comes up and covers what I was reading.

I visited it with a ton of blocking/privacy plugins including NoScript, it was all broken site. I clicked Firefox's "reader" feature and read the article. It was a clear, effective read.

>>Roy sure didn’t mean to get fired from his $14-an-hour online customer service job, a job the 49-year-old says was his best ever.

$14 an hour and a "Marriott customer care manager" ? Just wow.

Something about this story seems off to me. I think it's the fact that the employee was so insistent that he mistakenly liked the tweet, implying that he never would have liked such a tweet on purpose. Seems far more likely he thought it was innocuous and clicked it, which would be totally understandable. The story comes off as a but disingenuous. Moreover, the lack of comment from Marriott makes this a very one sided story.

Pure speculation, but I wonder if he was asked to apologize publicly and refused?

If you suggested Nebraska was independent, nobody would flip out, because it's nonsense. Unfortunately large industrial empires need space and resources and so it's necessary to expand beyond what might be the "real" border of your country. But who's to complain? Everyone likes the Dali Lama, but capitalism doesn't allow you to choose karma over cash.

I'm going to guess it's far more complex than that.

I wouldn't feel whole if Quebec wasn't a part of Canada, but I can also appreciate the separatists' position on the matter.

Western China is a combination of agriculture, and completely barren, unused land.

They have plenty, without Tibet and Taiwan.

There's another reason, here.

> Tibet has huge reserves of copper, lithium, gold and silver. Most of it has never been touched, because the Tibetans didn't mine the land: it's against their religious practices to disturb the ground. But China has begun mining on an enormous scale.

from https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-11-24/new-book-documents-ch...

My understanding is that the bigger issue is that Tibet is bordered on the West by a geographical barrier in the Himalayas, whereas the Eastern border with China is relatively unprotected. Given the tensions between India and China, it makes sense that China would want to exert influence over the geographical region of Tibet.

> There's another reason, here.

The traditional explanation, AFAIK, is that China seeks a buffer around the 'Han core' (maybe the SE 2/3 of China). That buffer is Manchuria in the north, Xinjiang in the NW, Tibet in the SW, and now they seek control of the South China Sea in the south and the various seas and islands to the east. If you look at the last imperial dynasty, the Qing (~1644-1911), you can see the same map and geographical strategy. (The Communists follow the imperial dynasties in other ways too, including now a head of state for life. Will his kids follow him?)

That also follows traditional, pre-democratic great power strategy of creating a buffer region. For example, Russia is trying to do it now with Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia (and with eyes on the Baltics), and did it in the past with the USSR and the Warsaw Pact states. Contrast that with democratic nations such as the US and those in the EU, and their relations with their neighbors.

Chinese citizen here. A few points that I want to make after reading some comments:

1. I would be personally offended if anyone or any organization lists Tibet as a country.

2. Lots of Chinese people would be offended too by this.

Reasons for 1 and 2:

- It is a piece of wrong information

- The wrong information directly contradicts what is considered basic knowledge in China

- That basic knowledge happens to be on the topic of sovereignty

- Chinese people care a lot of sovereignty (see https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo/issues/6006)

Why do Chinese people care so much about sovereignty? Culture and history.

It is the same question as:

- Why do Americans care so much about freedom of speech, democracy and race equality?

- Why do Japanese people care so much about respect and etiquette?

Now addressing the obvious issue, that some people support the idea of Tibet becoming independent and they should be free to express their ideas. Yes, they are free to say so, but there are two things to keep in mind:

- Opinions are not facts, you can support whatever you want, but don't say it as a fact like "Tibet is a country as of 24 March, 2018." That is not the right thing to do.

- If you choose to freely express your opinions or spread false information, you will face consequences for them. For example, a PR firm would likely tell you that expressing such opinions would results in negative brand image and boycott in China. In addition, saying something like that in China would result in more serious consequences. You might not like it, but that is beyond your control and you should be aware of that.

Quite obviously everyone here knows it's not literally about pedantry of whether Tibet is part of China's defacto legal territory.

And none of us care one bit if you're offended.

Your offense to a sense of nationalism, no matter how historical or ingrained, does not excuse the past and continued injustice of what has been forced on the Tibetan people.

Edit: downvotes to this post were literally instantaneous. This topic is most likely being botted.

Could you explain what is your view on the acquisition of the Tibetan territory by China?

From what I know about the issue, the transfer of the territory was forced, wasn't it?

What justification do you have for invading and annexation of a previously independent country? Is it that it never was independent in the first place? Do you have any sources to support this?

I come from a country which was occupied in its entirety for over a hundred years - it's arguably worse than what happened to China in the same time-frame. I can understand sovereignty being of prime concern to you. On the other hand, precisely because of a history like that, I can't help but see the Tibetans sovereignty over themselves being denied.

In other words, I'd like to understand: what makes you believe you have a right to take a sovereignty from others as you pursue your own? Is asserting your sovereignty over dead bodies of another nation worth it? (or are Tibetans considered to be 100% Chinese? if so, how come they seem to disagree?)

I generally disagree with the approach of annexing or colonizing other independent countries. China in particular has suffered much from colonization so that's something we don't like to see happening to other countries.

With that being said, we cannot control what happened in the past, as in the conflicts and sovereignty transfers due to wars that long happened before modern China was born. If you look at the history of China and Tibet, China has exerted sovereignty claims on Tibet since Qing dynasty and Republic of China:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet_under_Qing_rule

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet_(1912%E2%80%931951)

And it is the Britain that invaded Tibet during the Chinese rule of Tibet in 1903:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_expedition_to_Tibet

The reason for the period of de facto independence afterwards is partly due to British invasion leaving a power vacuum and partly due to China busy fighting WW2 and internal civil war between Kuomintang and Communist Party. So I think it is reasonable and legitimate to claim sovereignty properly after WW2 adn the Chinese civil war is over.

It's ironic that you are being so severely downvoted in this thread just for stating an honest opinion.

For an American perspective, I've thought about this a lot while talking to Chinese friends, and I wonder if the closest thing to this in American culture (while not being at all equivalent, just analogous) would be claiming that Puerto Rico is the 51st state.

Factually, it is not.

Emotionally, some people may want it to be and may very well have valid arguments for it.

People across the US and Puerto Rico would have strong opinions on either side of the argument.

Anecdotally, I'm an American and that statement would get barely a chuckle out of me. I really wouldn't care and most people I know wouldn't either.

So I don't know if it's the best analogy.

I think a more appropriate analogy would depend on how the person leans.

It would be like telling a conservative that they stole America from the Natives and should give reparations.

Or it would be like telling a liberal that it was the colonists that made America what it is today, so they don't owe the Natives anything.

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