A real reason to avoid Amazon is fake merchandise. I'd been buying a vitamin supplement from them for years. Then they sent me a notice that it was being recalled as a fake.[1] (Archive [2]) They paid a refund for the last purchase. But that's all. Amazon won't respond to questions about what was in it or who the real seller is.
I no longer buy anything from Amazon that could be faked.
Myself I can't stand the media blitz that tries to talk up Prime Day every year.
I like hunting for bargains as much as anybody, I love checking out the used games at Gamestop or items on clearance at Best Buy, not least the reuse center at Ithaca where I might find a cassette or Video CD deck with karaoke features or a minidisc player.
Prime Day seems to be just a waste of time. I don't see any attractive prices on anything I want to buy. So many web sites scour Amazon for good deals and can't find any. It's a snoozer.
Regardless of what one thinks about Amazon, one's actions have approximately zero effect on it.
Even if one controlled, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 people and commanded them to not use Amazon, it would have little effect.
If someone opts to stay away from Amazon, they should at least do it with clear eyes: they are doing it to feel something and will not actually affect the company.
I do it not for the feelings but just to avoid hypocrisy.
Many of the things the author accuses Amazon of doing are troubling, but the logic the author used in the Chris Brown music buying example to tie it all together shows of a lack of distinction between types of cooperation with evil.
When an act has both a potentially good and bad effect Philosophers like to distinguish the morality of this act of "cooperating with evil" by analyzing the degrees to which your cooperation is:
- formal or material (do you want the bad thing to happen and that's why you're buying from Amazon?)
- immediate or mediate (are you supplying a critical component such that without your specific instance of cooperation the evil could not occur?)
- proximate or remote (Do you work for Amazon?)
To learn more about this principle of double effect:
https://thinkingthoughtout.com/2021/01/24/cooperation-with-e...
I understand hyperbole is a useful rhetorical device, but it's very hard for me to take anyone who uses it seriously or trust anything they say at all.
And it really doesn't help develop trust when the citations used to support one's points directly contradicts them (like that bit about Amazon providing real-time surveillance from Ring doorbells to police without owners' knowledge - the one and only thing I decided to read the source for which said quite the opposite).
It's a shame too since I'm sure the author had some good points, but I have neither the time nor energy to research every single claim made to see which ones aren't bullshit.
It’s right there in the second paragraph of the WaPo(!) story that Ring owners opt in and can decline to share data.
Does Rekognition perform poorly? Maybe it does, but it’s a best effort service, not a police officer in a box. That AWS was shamed into not selling it to law enforcement doesn’t mean law enforcement won’t have access to facial recognition, only that the vendor they choose isn’t capable of being embarrassed by bad PR.
Yes. That made me scratch my head. It also says explicitly that no real-time feeds were available. It appears the program just let police contact owners to request video. Never mind that program was discontinued last year.
I can only assume the author didn't think anyone would read the links they provided.
Would you consider Target or Walmart more ethical? Or better at policing counterfeits?
Strangely enough, yes to both (at least for in store purchases). And I find neither company particularly ethical.
They have a tighter control on their supply chain and don't have a truly open "market" where anyone can sell crap (or stolen crap).
A lot of this comes down to limited stocking and shelf space. Amazon effectively has unlimited storage space. Hence their ability to show off 6000 drop shipping products which are actually the same product.
Walmart and Target, on the other hand, have to be somewhat judicious because shelf space is limited. They can't have a row of the same products under different labels. And if what they choose to sell has quality problems they get hit harder for it. They take the loss for the unsold counterfeit goods. Amazon, by their nature, sees minimal hits when products are determined to be counterfeit. That usually just means they blacklist a seller. They are hardly impacted.
This honestly may as well have been a paid ad by Amazon. It served as a reminder for me that Prime Day is coming up. That reminder was followed up with several extremely weak arguments that Amazon is the pinnacle of evil. Also felt like it was written largely by AI
I guess, but Amazon gets me stuff tomorrow or the next day, reliably, week in and week out. Yeah, I could find this stuff elsewhere on the internet. But not for Tuesday delivery. And not without opening another account. Also, right now, often only by paying a tariff-adjacent fee to cover the import costs of the vendors that didn't have the foresight to pre-stock imports like Amazon did.
People who want to write stuff like this really need to reckon with the fact that Amazon is and remains the superior product, and by a very significant degree.
They're not winning because they "hate democracy" or are "full-stop evil" or whatever. They're winning because they're the best.
And that's kind of an issue. Amazon effectively has a monopoly in this space, and competing at a similar level just is not possible anymore. And Amazon is so big that, even when you have a better product and service, it can buy you off¹.
This is the reality.
I have moved anything I don’t need quickly off Amazon as much as reasonably possible, and I do avoid some things from Amazon as well, but for too many things they’re the cheapest and fastest option, or the 2nd cheapest and fastest option.
Also if I think there is a reasonably high chance I’ll return an item, I also go through Amazon, because they haven’t once in 20 years I’ve been using them giving me an issue, charged a restocking fee etc.
Other online shops simply don’t match enough of these Amazon value prop to sway me over
My take is that Walmart.com comes pretty close. When I was driving through Pennsylvania two weeks back I saw a huge Walmart.com warehouse right next to an Amazon warehouse. The last mile delivery service of the two seems close to identical (though Walmart+ disingenuously offers "free" delivery from my local store that expect you to tip the driver. [1])
Amazon often costs 5 cents less and you might find that all the issues of Bocci the Rock are at Amazon and one is missing from Walmart, but Walmart is taking the fight to them.
For photography stuff in particular, I buy from B&H, Adorama or direct from vendors such as Red River Paper. Often the prices are better than Amazon and the service is much better (e.g. the owner of the later has schooled me on details of papers and printing that most people couldn't imagine)
[1] Not against giving the tip, just against saying I don't like the comparison against free shipping from other vendors.
This statement is not an attack on your character or being just a broad generalization.
The biggest addiction of the modern era is convenience. Once people have it, it is very difficult to give up. We are all addicted to this, we aren't running this site via the letters column in a newspaper, because of convenience. But it also means we tend to ignore the negatives of said services.
Your point of them winning because they're the best, that can also be true. But because of that and the convenience addiction they provide, we let them get away with all the other stuff.
I'm not saying this is an excuse to use Amazon, I have never used it. I am just saying it is a hard hurdle for some to overcome.
Canceling my Prime account mainly meant I bought less stuff overall. A win for my wallet and the planet in the end. I need zero friction in my life for healthy eating and exercise, not for buying crap from a Chinese brand of the week (Glorf, Qerdu, Plund or whatever).
> Canceling my Prime account mainly meant I bought less stuff overall.
Which sounds like an agreement with my point, no? Buying stuff without Amazon was in aggregate "more expensive" for you in the broader sense of value that includes effort/experience/whatever. So you didn't.
And, bravo? I'm all for efficiency and reasonable asceticism, and likely agree with you about the general consumerist bent of our society.
All I'm saying is that constitutes an argument in FAVOR of Amazon as a retailer product, and not an indictment.
Humans survived up until about 20 years ago without free 2-day shipping. You'll be fine.
Or you could compromise your morals for convenience, I guess.
I feel like the author is undermining their own complaint in regards to Rekognition. Anyone can just sign up for an AWS account and start using the service, pretty much the same as anything else AWS sells. Then in response to specific bad behavior by US police departments Amazon cut off their access, a practice they've kept up to this day.
Amazon could have quietly (or loudly in 2025) lifted the ban at any point in the last five years to much nothing in the terms of pushback.
And also because their logo is shaped like a penis.
Trains are shaped like penis, bus is shape like penis, skyscraper is shape like penis, rocket is shape like penis, now Amazon logo is shape like penis? Why are all Americans always looking everywhere for shape like penis. Every time.
"Hello, American, look at this pencil"
"Pencil?! Shaped like penis!"
"Hello, American, look at your hands"
"Oh my god! That is five penises a hand!"
Constantly searching for penis everywhere. Is there reason for this? It is not as common elsewhere, but American is always constantly searching for penis. If not provided, American will construct it out of household objects. Desperate for penis, American will find it even in intangible objects like logo.
I guess people want what they can't have, and Americans are shielded from body parts since birth.
If not penises... https://velvetshark.com/ai-company-logos-that-look-like-butt...
Good rule of thumb is that if it goes on or in your body do not buy it from Amazon.
Or if it's electronic. Fire risk.
I know it's not a very popular cause these days, but "Democracy" seems like a real reason too.
I’m having trouble finding alternatives. Do I really have to go to four or five different websites to buy my supplements.
have you tried a physical pharmacy
How do you know what cannot be faked? Is shipped and sold by Amazon enough?
It is, people are being ridiculous. The third party stuff is where the fraud is.
No, that is not correct or at least it has not been. Amazon was said to intermingle the inventory in the warehouses, mixing third party products with those shipped and sold by Amazon. So that gave you zero protection.
I read that they made internal changes to tag shippings properly to reduce the risk of that behaviour, but am not sure it is true or has been effective.
I understood fake as physically harmful.