The word "literally" has long meant both "literally" and "figuratively" to the point that the latter meaning is in some dictionaries at this point, and is reasonably used in this context to imply indirect responsibility. If the person above literally meant literally in its original meaning, then I agree it was misused for dramatic effect. if the person above meant to use it in the sense of figuratively, then it was merely ambiguously written.

I prefer to promote the term "veritable" as well as "virtually" which are good actual substitutes for what someone means when they mix up "literally".

See also, nerds favorite superhero: https://youtu.be/9jh4Mpgbi4A

A trolley is hurtling down a track towards your employees, who are working on the tracks at your direction. You have time to warn them but do nothing. An employee gets hit and dies. Did you "kill" them?

We're descending into semantics. But I think many justice systems would classify the above as some type of homicide.

It seems that the legal term is corporate manslaughter, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_manslaughter

Nowadays "literally" is often used as "figuratively" in a somewhat ironic way to emphasize a point. In this case, the point being that Amazon's actions directly led to the deaths of workers.

Amazon is not a person, and cannot kill someone by raising its hand and stabbing them in the spleen. So, what evidence exactly are you asking for?

Are you implying that this word game ("Ha! Amazon didn't literally kill him by a physical attack!") somehow changes anything in terms of blame? Or are you just arguing semantics for the fuck of it?

> this is just a case of mis-using the word "literally" for dramatic effect

No, this is you not understanding that words have different meanings in different contexts. Amazon has literally killed them, as in, performed a manslaughter. The fact that it is not a person only changes the mechanism - instead of stabbing them, they performed gross negligence. Why you consider that a "literal manslaughter" must have an element of physical assault is beyond me, but in the end, it's just your own definition of the word.

>Amazon is not a person, and cannot kill someone by raising its hand and stabbing them in the spleen. So, what evidence exactly are you asking for?

From a legal point of view, yes Amazon is a person, and that’s the ground on which it can be sued, unlike "Nature" that generated the tornado — though lately things started to move a bit on that side all around the world.[2,3,4,6,7,8,9]

But even that is missing the forest for the tree I think. It seems to me that the point raised by moring is more like can these words be honestly stated as accurate as when The Mail & Guardian titles "The Nigerian government is killing its citizens — again[1]". Although it can be argued that this geopolitical entity is a pure human fiction, there are actual humans that are willingly planning to kill other people.

As awful as the resulting situation might be, I doubt that within Amazon case they were plans and orders to deliberately kill annoying employees. It doesn’t mean Amazon behavior is acceptable, nor is the fact that some government have let Amazon build this situation.

[1] https://mg.co.za/africa/2020-10-21-the-nigerian-government-i...

[2] https://theselfless.org/mother-nature-a-legal-person/

[3] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/transnational-enviro...

[4] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/nature-legal-personho...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_of_nature_in_Ecuador

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_of_nature#Related_initi...

[7] https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31102022/celebrating-vict...

[8] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-46523-0_...

[9] https://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publicati...

> It seems to me that the point raised by moring is more like (...)

Yes, that was what I meant. It was admittedly fueled by the confusion when I started from "did I miss some major news", as well as a lack of knowledge of what "literally" means, as indicated by the other responses.

Sorry for the attitude, for what it's worth. I could've phrased things a little less aggressive.

Had a rough couple of weeks and it seems it's getting the best of me.

> I doubt that within Amazon case they were plans and orders to deliberately kill annoying employees.

I don't see anyone here say Amazon murdered (deliberately killed) people, but arguing they killed people. Kill can mean murder, which implies intent/doing so deliberately, but can also mean manslaughter, which does not require it to be deliberate.

Sorry as I’m not an English native, that level of languages nuances might be above what I will ever master.

To my mind, "kill" wasn’t something you might inadvertedly do, except maybe for bugs and thus small entities.

Anyway, once again, in no way I mean to play Amazon attorney here.

>I never asked whose fault it is, and actually asserted from the beginning that I think it is Amazon's fault

followed by

>What I did ask for is evidence that "Amazon literally killed their employee"

employees died, you agreed it was Amazon's fault, if it is Amazon's fault that an employee died then Amazon literally killed that employee. Notice it was never said Amazon is legally culpable for the deaths of employees which has a different meaning in English than 'literally killed'.

>this is just a case of mis-using the word "literally" for dramatic effect.

I must admit I find the grammatical high-horseplay evinced by the last bit rather weird, for the reasons I have outlined.

I think you're taking the word "literally" too literally.