Jackson soon discovered that Amazon suspended his account because a Black delivery driver who’d come to his house the previous day had reported hearing racist remarks from his video doorbell. In a brief email sent to Jackson at 3 a.m., the company explained how it unilaterally placed all of his linked devices and services on hold as it commenced an internal investigation.

The accusations baffled Jackson. He and his family are Black. When he reviewed the doorbell’s footage, he saw that nobody was home at the time of the delivery. At a loss for what could have prompted the accusation of racism, he suspected the driver had misinterpreted the doorbell’s automated response: “Excuse me, can I help you?”

  • unoriginalsin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    19
    ·
    1 year ago

    As it turned out, he wasn’t. But when they stopped servicing him, they had every reason to believe that he was.

    Do you continue to service a customer whose behavior is otherwise unacceptable until you’re absolutely sure he’s a bigot? Or do you abide by your legal obligation to protect your workers from such behavior?

    I don’t know if Amazon did the worst thing here, but I don’t know that the best thing is far off from what they did.

    • ansik@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 year ago

      Who at Amazon would be hurt by a bigot using their Echo or doorbell? Stopping deliveries sure but this is a couple of steps further.

      • unoriginalsin@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        Who at Amazon would be hurt by a bigot using their Echo or doorbell?

        That’s a great question and I don’t know what kind of exposure Amazon employees have to audio logs from those devices but I’m certain there’s some sure to required troubleshooting and debugging.

        Stopping deliveries sure but this is a couple of steps further.

        I also don’t know how integrated the various aspects of a user’s account are and whether it would even be possible for Amazon to have taken a smaller step.