Amazon bans its drivers from moving their own lips too much at work

I had a discussion with someone recently about how tech is enabling enforcement of laws/policies/etc at a scale never before possible and how that is a bad thing. The problem is that people can't conform perfectly and the tighter we force people to conform the more likely they are to 'break' and disconnect from society. Basically, if 'acceptable' is so narrowly defined that you can't achieve it 100% of the time, why try even a little to conform? In companies there is somewhat of an off-ramp, quit (which isn't always a realistic option obviously), but these enforcement abilities are invading areas that we can't avoid and that is a real problem.

This is just a rehash of what their source <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.freightwaves.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;should-truckers-be-allowed-to-sing-along-with-the-radio" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.freightwaves.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;should-truckers-be-allowed...</a> reports which is, itself, almost entirely a rehash of social media commentary on the sourced Reddit post <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;AmazonDSPDrivers&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1f2y2cp&#x2F;try_to_tell_me_when_i_can_move_my_own_mouth_im_out&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;AmazonDSPDrivers&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1f2y2cp&#x2F;t...</a><p>Just reading the original quoted mid article without the extra commentary it&#x27;s clear the story is unrelated to listening to the radio in itself and to do with the camera mechanism monitoring for other forms of distracted driving not being able to tell the difference:<p>&gt; we were told that &quot;a lot of mouth movement will set off the camera&quot; and that we &quot;needed to keep mouth movement to a minimum&quot;.<p>Still a shitty system by all counts... but a lot easier to talk about it directly than via rehashes.

I&#x27;m reminded that:<p>&gt; The life of the American worker is inherently undignified [0]<p>Also, if you Google &quot;Hacker News Undignified&quot; you will find a bunch of posts related to work, even though there is nothing in the query that is inherently related to work.<p>I don&#x27;t know the first thing about making documentaries, but a documentary simply titled &quot;Undignified&quot; that covers the bullshit workers have to go through would hit hard I think. Just give voice and documentation to the extra burdens so many workers have to endure; can you go to the bathroom when you need to? If you have a stationary job, can you sit? Or do you have to stand for 8 hours straight? Can you sing to the radio, or will a computer algorithm punish you for it? Etc. All of these burdens are optional, our society could accomplish its work without these hardships, but we choose not to. The delivery driver can both deliver packages and use a restroom, and a grocery store checker can scan items while sitting on a stool.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36264363">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36264363</a> and <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dirt.fyi&#x2F;article&#x2F;2023&#x2F;06&#x2F;bad-waitress" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dirt.fyi&#x2F;article&#x2F;2023&#x2F;06&#x2F;bad-waitress</a>

Seriously, this is why people need unions. People need to be represented so that they don&#x27;t get fired when trying to fight stupid things. If the camera&#x27;s backend detection system is so bad wit distracted driving alerts, then they will just have to manually view all videos that are alerted.<p>If everyone banded together tomorrow and didn&#x27;t show up for work for 1 day, these problems would be solved. But, again, you can&#x27;t even attempt such things as you&#x27;d be fired on the spot.

I would assume they&#x27;re really just trying to &quot;catch&quot; people talking on cell phones, and people singing are causing &quot;too many&quot; false positives of the detection system?

&gt; No matter how badly Amazon treats its workers, we all keep shopping there<p>This doesn’t have to be true. I cancelled prime and haven’t shopped at Amazon in years.

I&#x27;m sure there are piss-poor drivers that don&#x27;t sing along and really good drivers that do.<p>They should drop all the restrictions on &#x27;distracting&#x27; activity and just fire poor drivers rather than trying to make poor drivers into good ones.

I really dislike Amazon and already don&#x27;t shop there, but am I the only one who can at least consider the idea that this isn&#x27;t necessarily unreasonable?<p>Driving is dangerous, period. I don&#x27;t think we&#x27;d object as much to Amazon trying to make sure that drivers don&#x27;t text and drive. Talking and driving isn&#x27;t <i>as</i> distracting, but it is at least somewhat distracting. I&#x27;ve definitely seen cab drivers chatting away, driving aggressive, and missing little cues that could have easily led to an accident.<p>Amazon is pretty understandably trying to limit liability and disruption here. The drivers are not on personal time in personal vehicles. They&#x27;re on company time in company vehicles, and employers almost universally regulate employee behavior to some degree or another.<p>Now, maybe this isn&#x27;t effective, or a step too far, and they should certainly improve their talking detection, but I wouldn&#x27;t personally dismiss the intent and approach out-of-hand. It could realistically actually save a life.<p>edit, to clarify the question I have here: What behavior is reasonable for Amazon to monitor and regulate for drivers? Any? Something just less than this?

A workers union would never allow this. For example the ALPA in the United States where I live has strict rules about when the cockpit voice recorder can even be accessed and by whom. Even after an accident it’s virtually never released - only the radio traffic.

Stop working for and stop buying from this company<p>unionize, boycott, strike

Amazon can somehow successfully (1) control a driver&#x27;s working conditions to the extent that they dictate how much they are allowed to move their lips and (2) argue that they aren&#x27;t employees but independent contractors. What a world.

I notice when I get a taxi often the drivers seem to be constantly talking to someone on the phone, like they have long running low intensity conversations going for long periods of time.

The fact that amazon has cameras pointing at the drivers all day long is creepy enough. They force their workers to piss in bottles and then they film&#x2F;watch them doing it?

Do they think that having to carefully monitor the movement of your mouth might also distract someone who is trying to drive?<p>Or did they not think about that at all because this is somewhere between lip service (heh) to driver safety and an abuse tactic?

It&#x27;s time to advertise ventriloquism lessons to Amazon drivers.<p>Or the drivers could protest by wearing masks over their mouths.

Is this about singing or being on the phone (even while on headset?)?<p>And the singing merely gives false positives?<p>I&#x27;ve been in Ubers where the driver was constantly on the phone. While they do it handsfree, actually calling on the phone, whether handheld or handsfree, massively increases the risk of an accident.<p>(I&#x27;ve always wondered why handsfree calling is considered safer than handheld calling when you drive an automatic).

Jesus this is some horrible panopticon shit. I hope everyone involved in building the system to <i>do</i> this feels horrible about it being used this way.<p>Really gotta remember to check back in this thread and see if there’s any new accounts claiming to be someone involved in this and talking about how they got to the point where this feels like a sensible business decision.

&gt; According to Reddit users that Freight Waves cited, Amazon has begun monitoring mouth movements on its drivers through a camera in the cab of its delivery fans.<p>This kind of allegation really calls for a better source than &quot;Reddit users are saying&quot;. I&#x27;m not saying it <i>can&#x27;t</i> be true, but there&#x27;s any number of ways that an anonymous commenter&#x27;s report of what an unspecified person said in their morning briefing could give a false or misleading impression of Amazon policies.

I would rate myself as an extremely good parallel park-er, switch vehicles? no problem. However, I must shut the music off. not sure what that says about my brain.

They want robots. And while we wait for ai the humans just have to pretend to be ones.<p>Artificial robots if you will

&quot;No matter how badly Amazon treats its workers, we all keep shopping there&quot;<p>Who is &quot;we&quot;?<p>Not me.

And this is why you need GDPR or similar privacy laws.<p>GDPR is a bit more than just cookie notices. I&#x27;m pretty sure that this would be a textbook case and if a company tried to continue such a program after being told to stop it, they&#x27;d have a good chance of paying the 4% of global revenue max fine for it.<p>Labor laws in many countries would also have an opinion on such a system.

<p><pre><code> Well, if you want to sing out, sing out And if you want to be free, be free &#x27;Cause there&#x27;s a million things to be You know that there are</code></pre>

It’s probably not for singing but for talking on the phone. Even blue tooth talking definitely distracts.

How dystopian.

Just wear a mask and talk

Amazon needs slaves or robots whichever is cheaper.

Wear a facemask. For safety. Problem solved.

There can be no joy, only the efficient allocation of capital.

We all love data-driven decision making… until we don&#x27;t.

I can only imagine how this started at Amazon.<p>Self aggrandizing midwit (middle or upper middle management): “I need a project to demonstrate “leaders are right a lot and invent &amp; simplify” principle come feedback time.”<p>Self aggrandizing midwit to their team: “Remember we have cameras in delivery vans go figure out what else we can do with them”<p>Shaking in the boots middle manager or IC: “Hey remember the drivers occasionally hit the curbs because they don’t have time to pee, we should look at their faces use our awesome Rekognition stack to bang this out”<p>Midwit: Great I will write a PRFAQ !<p>IC: Here it it boss, i banged out the PoC without going to the bathroom all day!<p>Midwit: I am glad WE ALL WORKED TO GET THIS OUT.

This isn&#x27;t about singing. This is about foreigners talking on the phone while driving. It&#x27;s uncanny but nearly every foreigner I&#x27;ve seen doing gig work has their phone to their ear talking in their home tongue.<p>Nothing wrong with that unless they&#x27;re driving.<p>1. It&#x27;s distracting, truly distracting. 2. It&#x27;s a possible means of working while at work.<p>It&#x27;s actually good that Amazon didn&#x27;t just record the convos and reprimand people based on an AI oversight of whether it breaks the above rules.

&gt; No matter how badly Amazon treats its workers, we all keep shopping there.<p>Because they keep working there. So the workers think the conditions are worth it in exchange for their paycheck. If I disagree and shop elsewhere I&#x27;m effectively disagreeing with the workers and telling them I think they are making a bad deal and I don&#x27;t want to contribute to their livelihood. But I don&#x27;t actually know that they can make a better deal elsewhere.<p>Before I move my purchase to Newegg or whatever should I first make sure that their working conditions are better? Or just judge by how often I see each company mentioned in the media?<p>I think that the voluntary nature of employment is a sufficient circuit breaker. If it gets bad enough we can and do leave for better opportunities elsewhere. It wouldn&#x27;t be the first, second or third time for me, and that includes minimum wage jobs. So I don&#x27;t feel the duty to investigate the working conditions of each business I deal with.