Hacker News Reader

Comment by HWR_14 | Hacker News Reader

The whole situation here seems bad because people being cut off from their existing prepurchased smart devices is bad (and going to happen when servers get shut down). Can we separate that from the entirely correct action from Amazon of "if you are going to insult our deliverypeople with racist language, we no longer will send them to your house". Leaving aside any moral judgements of doing business at all with such a person, Amazon would probably face some legal liability for constantly asking their employees to put up with that.

Also, while the US certainly has racism, I don't think it's fair to call that "US-centric". A lot of countries have a lot of racists.

View on HN

No we can not, mainly because there was no due process on that at all. No Corroboration, no investigation before taking action.

One driver, made one accusation, and bam instant termination of the account. I can not support that as being the "correct action". Far too much room for abuse in such a system

in this case the person had to submit evidence of their innocence to amazon by way of other Camera's. what if no evidence had existed to refute the drivers claim? I will never a support a "Guilty until proven innocent" standard for anything

Due process does not apply to corporations and the supreme Court has made it very clear that anyone can discriminate against anyone they want, for any reason, real or imagined and opt to not do business with them. Amazon doesn't need to deliver things to you if they think you're a jerk.

> in this case the person had to submit evidence of their innocence to amazon by way of other Camera's. what if no evidence had existed to refute the drivers claim?

Amazon is not a right. If they couldn't prove it wasn't true, Amazon doesn't owe them anything except possibly a refund on the smart devices (I could see that).

I see you have consused what it legal with what is moral or ethical

Is Amazon legally mandated to give their customers Due process? no and I never claimed they were.

The Comment I was responding to also did not make a legal claim or statement, they did not say "Amazon had the legal right to terminate their account" they claimed "Amazon made the entirely correct action" Which I disagree with, as I believe all companies even if they are not legally required to do so should apply common sense principles in their business dealings one of those being due process, and evidence based approaches before they choose to terminate business relationships

It is sad to live in a society where every action, every interaction, is guided by what is "legal" it is even sadder when people look to legislative bodies for their moral and ethical guidance

Do better.

> Do better.

This kind of condescension really doesn't help your point and in fact leads me to believe you're simply virtue signaling.

I see you are not steeped in internet memeology...

>Can we separate that from the entirely correct action from Amazon of "if you are going to insult our deliverypeople with racist language, we no longer will send them to your house".

What!?!? The description of the incident says " Amazon completely shut down the customer's account, locking him out of his smart home devices."

How is that "we will no longer send them to your house"?

If in order to not send a delivery person to a customer's house Amazon needs to shut down the customer's account it would seem that the one having difficulty separating these things that should be separate is Amazon and not anyone else?

I totally agree that Amazon would have been entirely within their rights to refuse to do business with anyone who abuses their delivery people in any way. But that's not what this issue is about. This is about how we make our homes and other essential parts of our lives dependent on these giant corporations that can't seem to be held accountable for anything they do.

>"if you are going to insult our deliverypeople with racist language, we no longer will send them to your house".

According to the customer, this was all a misunderstanding, and he never actually made any sort of insult.

Yeah, but he would have survived without Amazon for a week. Or forever. If not, then that's a monopoly that definitely needs to be taken down.

The fact that it was a misunderstanding isn't relevant in my opinion. Had it been a real insult, Amazon might be justified in refusing to deliver there, but that's still not a justification to turn of all their devices.

But most importantly: we should stop making ourselves so dependent on these giant corporations that care nothing about us, only about profit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com