At first, it seemed like a bonkers strategy, and I immediately got numerous texts from high level and tough public relations folks in tech, all of whom were also dumbfounded. One savvy P.R. pro at a big tech company wrote to me: “Those Amazon tweets are malpractice. They are letting internal frustrations drive external messaging. Total lack of discipline.”
Indeed, it all felt oddly emotional and risky, which is why it was clear that the decision to launch such attacks could have been made only by someone who never suffers when mistakes are made: Mr. Bezos.
Why would he take such an approach?
I don’t think his intention was to influence the union vote in Alabama. Instead, the goal was to goad progressives into proposing legislation around things like data privacy and a $15 federal minimum wage that Mr. Bezos knows cannot pass without being watered down and, thus, made less dangerous to giants like Amazon.
After gaining immense power in the pandemic and becoming one of the best-liked brands around, the company is now saying to Washington legislators, who have dragged their feet and held endless and largely useless hearings about how to deal with tech: I dare you to regulate us.
For Amazon, weak regulation would certainly be much better than having to talk about the very real human toll that free shipping might have on its workers. It’s an attitude that we will see adopted by a lot more tech leaders who are going to try to use the momentum for regulation in their favor, rather than let it run over them.
In a recent congressional hearing, for example, Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, sheepishly proposed changes to Section 230 of the 1996 Federal Communications Act, which gives platforms broad immunity for content posted on their sites. Many observers felt, though, that Mr. Zuckerberg’s proposals were a smoke screen that would ultimately benefit Big Tech companies like Facebook.
It’s high-risk, but possibly high reward, which has been Mr. Bezos brand for his entire career, even before he was armed with all this power and money.