Andrew 🌻 Brandt 🐇Dec 15, 2022

Just before the invasion, #Ukraine made a deal with #Amazon #AWS to create a data warehouse for its government information and infrastructure: tax and property records, bank statements, and the like. Things that an invaded and occupied Ukraine might lose if Russia got their hands on the only copies.

They literally snuck Pelican crates full of SSDs into the country and spirited them back offshore after backing up 10 petabytes of important historic and legal records.

This paragraph, second from the end, really put a fine point on why Amazon did this: They were not beholden to, nor being held hostage by, any Russian operations...because they never had any:

Amazon didn’t have to worry about its relationship with Russia on the Snowball project. It doesn’t have one. “We didn’t have anything to turn off there,” Maxwell said. “We had never invested there. It’s a point of principle.”

Truly an amazing story from the #LATimes.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-12-15/amazon-ukraine-war-cloud-data

How Amazon is helping Ukraine in its war against Russia by putting its 'government in a box'

Amazon is helping Ukraine transfer critical government, business and property data into the company's data cloud.

Los Angeles Times
Show threadZacDec 15, 2022

@threatresearch

What does it say about corporate ethics and morals that Amazon is taking the high road?

Show threadAndrew 🌻 Brandt 🐇Dec 15, 2022

@lolzac

I don't know if there's a bigger picture point that can be made. Amazon has had a troubled history.

But this story really seems to make a clear moral and ethical distinction that sets it apart from companies like, for instance, Cloudflare.

Show threadZacDec 15, 2022

@threatresearch

Not arguing that point at all. Its just that Amazon has workers that have to urinate in bottles so if they are that bad and still make a more ethical choice then what does say about the rest?

Show threadKevin Granade has movedDec 16, 2022
@lolzac @threatresearch Amazon has definitely done a lot of shitty things (union-busting cines to mind), but I take a lot of things said about them with some hefty grains of salt because I've seen so many completely baseless hitpieces about Amazon.
Show threadZac

@kevingranade @threatresearch

I'm not aware of any 'baseless hitpieces' about Amazon. Do you have links to two or three?

Dec 16, 2022 at 3:50amWeb
Show threadKevin Granade has movedDec 17, 2022
@lolzac @threatresearch I don't keep a list, but this is the most infamous one https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html
Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace

The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions.

The New York Times
Show threadZacDec 17, 2022

@kevingranade @threatresearch

Is it that article or the original

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html

They edited the article enough that they had to archive the original

Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace

The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions.