MIKE ELK, mike.elk@gmail.com,
Elk is the senior labor reporter at Payday Report. On Thursday, he wrote the piece “Twitter Worked With Amazon to Block Payday, Labeling Payday & Other Labor Reporters as ‘Suspicious Content.'” Elk wrote: “Earlier today, several readers of Payday Report’s Twitter feed informed us that Twitter was blocking labor reporting content shared by us from being viewed.
“I direct messaged my friends a tweet of a screenshot showing a link to an American Prospect story by retired New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse that described psychological warfare being performed by Amazon on its workers.
“After I sent the tweet, several of my friends told me they were given a warning when they tried to access the content: ‘Message hidden due to suspicious content.’
“Twitter’s feeds are powered through Amazon Web Services who also help run Twitter’s program that identifies ‘fake news.’ They often work closely with the company to block ‘flagged’ news links from going viral.
“Now, multiple reporters from various left outlets including Payday Report, franknews, The American Prospect, and More Perfect Union, have reported that they have all had their content blocked and pegged as ‘suspicious.’
“More Perfect Union, a new labor reporting organization founded by former Bernie Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir, made a viral video supporting the Amazon union workers. The video went viral and garnered over a million views before Amazon suddenly removed it for nearly a day.
“’We never got any explanation for why they removed it,’ said RWDSU [Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union] organizer Josh Brewer, who has been helping lead the battle against the e-commerce giant.
“In response to the negative publicity, Amazon has hired teams of rapid response PR agents who are scouring the web searching for viral tweets that make Amazon look bad. Thus, many on the left believe that Amazon is working closely with Twitter to prevent negative Amazon content from going viral.”
