Google shuts down Amazon unionization website

https://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2016/02/05/23534490/google-shuts-down-amazon-unionization-website

by ftfb • 10 years ago

195 64 10 years ago

graeme2• 10 years ago

It wasn't very clear to me how google could "shut down" a site. So I checked the archive of the site in the wayback machine, linked in the article. Here's the url:

https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/

So they were running on Google site's. The site violated that TOS. While I don't know the particulars, this seems like less of a story than if Google had somehow wiped an ordinary domain from search results.

amadeusw• 10 years ago

None of the blog post links work, though. Does anyone have a working link to a sample story?

greglindahl2• 10 years ago

Over at Team Wayback, we recommend that bloggers use "save page now" on individual posts, or use blog software that does this for them.

In this case, there wasn't any save-page-now involved. We got the front page of the site on Dec 22, but didn't try to crawl the subpages (the actual posts) until Feb 6, which is after the site was disabled. This lag between front page and interior pages is pretty typical behavior for our Heretrix crawl queues, alas.

powertower• 10 years ago

What part of the TOS did they violate?

chillingeffect• 10 years ago

There's this from [1]:

"Google may also stop providing Services to you, or add or create new limits to our Services at any time."

https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/

tamana• 10 years ago

Perhaps someone thought that the site was impersonating Amazon Corporate.

gozur883• 10 years ago

Don't these kinds of services usually have a bandwidth limit? Maybe they went over.

qntmfred• 10 years ago

I had the same initial reaction. I wonder why they used google sites as a hosting platform to begin with. there's a dozen better, more visible alternatives.

bluejekyll• 10 years ago

For any non-technical folk, it's a very simple to setup and use service. Not the best option by any means.

foota• 10 years ago

Yeah, like AWS

Animats3• 10 years ago

The union group may have good cause to sue Google for defamation. Google has the right to terminate their use of Google services. But for Google to say that unionization information violates their terms of service [1] may be defamatory. Nothing in the terms of service prohibits this.

On top of that, Google's action may violate the National Labor Relations Act.[2] This could be construed as collusion between employers to violate the rights of workers to organize. Google has a record of colluding with other employers to violate labor law, from the famous "anti-poaching agreement".[3] So Google could have a hard time in court over this, since a pattern of illegal anti-labor activity has already been established.

[1] https://www.google.com/intl/en/sites/help/program_policy.htm... [2] https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/national-labor-relations-act [3] http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/

brbsix• 10 years ago

With perhaps the rare exception for specific kinds of discrimination, can't Google pretty much terminate use of it's services to anyone, for any reason? Assuming they aren't paid customers, it's not like Google has a contractual obligation with said group. Of course these sorts of douche moves reflect poorly on a company and people may choose to boycott or campaign against in response, but that's about it.

kuschku2• 10 years ago

Assuming they aren't paid customers, it's not like Google has a contractual obligation with said group.

If you hold a monopoly, or near monopoly, you automatically get that obligation.

Animats3• 10 years ago

This is a specific kind of discrimination. Labor organizing is one of the specific kinds of activity protected by law.

azernik• 10 years ago

Hence defamation. "We did it because we can" is very different from "we did it because you broke the rules."

1ris• 10 years ago

Definitively not for any reason. I can't terminate it because somebody is black, for example.

delinka• 10 years ago

"...for any reason?" No, they cannot. However, they can indeed terminate use of their services to anyone for no reason. Had they not given a reason, I venture to say they'd have a better defense should this ever go to court. EDIT: grammatical

DannyBee3• 10 years ago

" But for Google to say that unionization information violates their terms of service [1] may be defamatory"

No, it isn't. Because that would require google having said that. Google in fact, has said or written nothing as far as anyone can tell.

"On top of that, Google's action may violate the National Labor Relations Act.[2]"

No, again, it almost certainly doesn't. This is a pretty ridiculous claim, backed up by roughly no case law. It's pretty easy to see it would swallow pretty much all law if it was read the way you are :)

"So Google could have a hard time in court over this, since a pattern of illegal anti-labor activity has already been established."

This would pretty much be inadmissible in court to show anything, as evidence of "bad character" is not permissible to show someone did something in a different case.

DannyBee3• 10 years ago

In particular, on the last part, see FRE rule 404:

"(a) Character Evidence.

(1) Prohibited Uses. Evidence of a person’s character or character trait is not admissible to prove that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character or trait.

... (b) Crimes, Wrongs, or Other Acts.

(1) Prohibited Uses. Evidence of a crime, wrong, or other act is not admissible to prove a person’s character in order to show that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character."

(Note the above is basic federal evidence law :P, if you wanted to sue over the NLR act. Most state evidence rules are similar in the civil realm, and differ a bit in the criminal realm)

strathmeyer• 10 years ago

No, it isn't. Because that would require google having said that. Google in fact, has said or written nothing as far as anyone can tell.

When you tried going to the site Google would give you a page saying it had been removed for violating the TOS.

anon12345690• 10 years ago

Why speculate so much about law when you're not a lawyer? I dont think it helps to spread misinformation when you're not an authority...

paulddraper2• 10 years ago

You know Animats, his education, and his professional history better than I do, apparently.

kafkaesq3• 10 years ago

Definitely a very heavy-handed move on Google's part. They could at least have told these people why their site was being shut down. The fact that they didn't says a lot about how Google actually views its customers.

I would love to be able to donate to the site's owners to keep their site running on another hosting service.

pinewurst2• 10 years ago

I saw the original posting while it was still alive and found it really helpful. Yet more similar stories to the ones I occasionally hear (I'm in Seattle). The immediacy of those stories tends to slip away and I find myself applying for interesting AWS jobs. Reminders like this make me press their "Withdraw from All Jobs" button. Better me pressing it now, than it being pressed for me later.

MrTonyD• 10 years ago

You know, multi-level boards have a long history in the United States and the world. I would like to see other representatives on boards. I know that Denmark has required employees on boards for years, but I think that system can be improved. I would like to see something more like "corporativism" - where interest groups can be represented on boards in order to force corporations to consider society as a whole, and not just their own obscene profits.

jedisct1• 10 years ago

And you can tell whether one is a chemist by the way they pronounce "unionization".

cperciva• 10 years ago

"unionized" is a bit better for this purpose. It's rare for chemists to talk about the process of ceasing to be ionized.

Another shibboleth is "coax": One syllable or two?

sanoli• 10 years ago

Unless it's something like this: http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/chem...

jimrandomh• 10 years ago

Here is the site that was disabled, as it was on Jan. 18 on archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20160118052937/http://sites.goog...

"Amazon has a management abuse problem. This was made clear in the August article by the New York Times. Even worse is that Amazon is in denial about this problem and claims that all employees should report their management problems to HR or to Jeff Bezos himself. This site documents all of the cases where Amazon managers have mistreated their employees and escalating only made it worse and never helped the employees deal with their bad managers.

Amazon is a great company for its customers. It's about time that it became a great company for its really hard working employees as well.

To add your story to this site, email theFACEofAmazon @ gmail.com or anonymously leave a voicemail at (425) 310-2347. We will never disclose your personal information, so please include as many details as you are comfortable sharing."

marvel_boy• 10 years ago

This is blatant violation of the terms of service of Google. Time to sue Google.

NotSammyHagar• 10 years ago

They brought the website back. So what does that mean? Someone made a mistake, problem undone.

protomyth• 10 years ago

It means that a lot more people will read the articles on the site than before.

yuhong2• 10 years ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20151222211210/https://sites.goog...

I am particularly interested in the "FIRED FOR CONTACTING JEFF" story.

alanh• 10 years ago

The site’s back up, so your wish has been granted: https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired-for...

yuhong2• 10 years ago

Doesn't go into much detail either unfortunately.

dgacmu• 10 years ago

This article seems stale - the site is working again: https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/ .The link in the article is a bit deceptive: It's not to the site, it's directly to an error message.

Did someone here verify that the site ever actually down, or was this a cool publicity stunt?

aarestad• 10 years ago

The site was definitely down a few hours go with a terse message about it breaking "terms of service".

graeme2• 10 years ago

I would guess that the site is back up because the article was posted to Hacker News. I expect someone high enough to matter at Google saw it, and reversed the shutdown.

thisisnotatest• 10 years ago

From the article: UPDATE (2/7/2016, 4:33 p.m.): Google tells us that the website was flagged by another user as spam. After Google manually reviewed the site and found this was not the case, they put it back online.

Google shuts down Amazon unionization website

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