Amazon has disbanded the Twitter army it paid to tweet about how great Amazon is

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

According to The Financial Times, Amazon has stopped a controversial influence campaign in which it paid workers to tell their friends about how much they love their job. Employees at the retailer's warehouses were paid to share positive impressions about the company and to deny widely- reported workplace failings, like employees being forced to urinate in bottles in order to meet performance targets.

The scheme was launched in response to criticism of Amazon's safety standards and working conditions. Workers were selected for their great sense of humor, and were told to respond in a polite way to the company.

An employee at Amazon responds to a critic by saying: "I have worked at Amazon filling orders for 2 years now." Do you think I would still be here if I wasn't being paid enough? The benefits package is full. Oh! I like the people I work with. I'm doing fine partner!

The Amazon FC Ambassador name was appended to the end of the employees' names to make them recognizable. The exact number ofambassadors was never clear. An investigation by Bellingcat found at least 53 accounts active on the micro-messaging service, but noted that users tended to use the same language, send the same pictures, and even swap ownership of accounts.

what i love about those Amazon FC Ambassador accounts is how some exec at Amazon thought forcing their employees to tweet about how much they love serving their corporate masters would make Amazon look normal and good, and not at all like an evil corporation in a dystopian novel

— Existential Comics (@existentialcoms) August 16, 2019

This set-up looked too artificial to be taken seriously, and the accounts quickly became a target of criticism and mockery. This wasn't helped by the fact that anyone could call themselves an Amazon FC Ambassador on social media. The operator of one popular parody account told The Verge that it was so odd that Amazon made their employees sit on the clock and be sycophants for the people hiring them. Their strategy was so disorganized that it wasn't even effective.

This reaction seems to have been accepted by Amazon's top brass. The company shut down and removed all traces of the scheme because senior executives were unhappy with it.