Amazon workers are being paid to defend the company on Twitter

More than a dozen Amazon workers are defending their employer on Twitter after a string of reports detailing bad working conditions at the company’s fulfillment centers.

But they’re not just tweeting out of loyalty to the company, although they say that’s a part of it. Amazon is paying them to do it.

TechCrunch first noticed the accounts after Twitter user @bornwithatail_ discovered some of the workers’ tweets. There are currently 15 known accounts, all bearing similar attributes. For example, each account uses the Amazon smile logo as its Twitter background, all have “FC Ambassador” and a little brown box emoji in their Twitter name, and every one of the accounts link to Amazon’s fulfillment center tour website.

The accounts mostly post replies to other Twitter users, likely in response to searches for comments criticizing Amazon worker conditions. The FC Ambassadors jump into the conversation with those users, replying to the critical tweet with what they say is their first-person account of working for the company.

One of the most frequent conversation topics that Amazon’s FC Ambassadors seem to pop up in are the recent reports of Amazon workers who claim they have to pee in bottles and other non-traditional workplace lavatories. The workers say that due to Amazon’s strict packaging targets and break micromanagement, they simply don’t have the time to trek to bathrooms — which can be few and far between in Amazon’s huge warehouses. FC Ambassadors obviously refute this claim.

Over on Twitter, some are calling the whole thing downright creepy. Many seem to point to the overly earnest, way-too-positive attitudes the FC Ambassadors spout, often sounding more like they’re spouting corporate PR talk than like an employee giving their employer an honest assessment.

Amazon confirmed to Mashable that actual employees with experience working in the company’s fulfillment centers run the accounts, but they’ve chosen to be FC ambassadors full time. So these aren’t bots, and it clearly isn’t astroturfing — the practice of hiring several people to create fake accounts to push a marketing goal (often positive reviews) — but its overall effect is similar. 

In a statement to Mashable, an Amazon spokesperson said: 

FC ambassadors are employees who have experience working in our fulfilment centers. The most important thing is that they’ve been here long enough to honestly share the facts based on personal experience. It’s important that we do a good job of educating people about the actual environment inside our fulfillment centers, and the FC ambassador program is a big part of that along with the fulfilment center tours we provide. Those tours enable thousands of customers every year to come and see for themselves what it’s like to work inside one of our fulfilment centers.

Hopefully, the company also addresses the concerns and criticisms of Amazon warehouse workers who have not had such pleasant personal experiences.