Just a casual reminder that a portion of Amazon workers are on a strike during the Prime Days.
Support them by not visiting any Amazon property for the next two days. No Amazon purchases, no Audible, no Goodreads, no Twitch. AWS is kinda unavoidable, but the rest is not. We can do without them for two days, and show our support for the workers that are protesting inhumane conditions.
Heads up, the union organizing behind the UK strike doesn't want a boycott.
> Still, the GMB isn’t calling on customers to boycott the online retailer during Prime Day. “We’re not calling for economic damage for Amazon,” Mick Rix, a union officer told the BBC. “What we’re asking for is for people to be aware. Leave feedback on Amazon.”
It's unavoidable in the short term. Way too many websites use AWS for a consumer to boycott them, and if you're using it within a company, you can't switch away easily on a short notice.
But I agree, if you work for a company that relies on AWS, now is the perfect time to re-examine that decision. They were the first ones to fulfill a niche, but there's a bunch of competition now.
Someone could create an ad-blocking list for AWS IP ranges, for the purpose of such a boycott. (It is actually easier than boycotting most other commodity suppliers.)
Sure but good luck not visiting anyone else's website who uses it (and then pays Amazon for serving that to you).
Prime-day wise I saw other sites suggesting that you shouldn't avoid shopping there - a warehouse strike can't make its point of orders piling up and not shipping on time if there aren't orders to pile up.
I thing op meant that you as a internet traveler can't really avoid websites calling aws (unless you block them with something like pi-hole or no script).
> unless you block them with something like pi-hole or no script
Even that wouldn't work if anyone is using custom domain names (which the vast majority of published endpoints will be). The best you can do is black list Amazon owned IPs. But you should expect half the web (figure made up) to break and potentially in unexpected ways). Not to mention plenty of other internet based infra like IoT devices, smart TVs, etc
Theres only any point in withdrawing labour, if that labour was required. Surely it would be better to concentrate your purchases so that the labour loss will be keenly felt, then not buy the week before or after.
Or you could just not use Amazon at all until you feel that they're in line with what you expect of a company.
Consumer activism is a difficult set of choices. If you stop supporting by purchasing from a company, you run the risk of that company failing/struggling and things getting worse. If you do support them, you run the risk of allowing their behavior to get worse.
There's no objectively moral choice in a vacuum and points to be made for both actions. Be as informed a consumer as you can be and purchase mindfully. Speak with others about the issues you feel are important and try to improve things. That's really the best you can do.
There's precisely two ways of increasing the profit: 1) raise the prices, or 2) reduce the costs.
Amazon took the second route. They still can't automate everything. If they could, they'd do so already. Workers are what keeps Amazon alive today, even if that might not be the case in the future.
5) Financial engineering (e.g., open a finance / lending business)
6) Acquire competitors / complementary businesses that are also profitable.
7) Make leveraged investments using stakeholder capital (e.g., take on low interest debt, and invest in things with a higher expected return)
8) Regulatory capture (eliminate taxes, regulations, competitors — the latter two can boost the stock even if they have no actual impact on the business)
I’m probably missing countless other ways businesses can increase shareholder earnings.
I think it is a step forward to pay users for data. Of course, amazon still collects everything it can anyway, for free. But in principle, this is good.
But two things.
1. What is the correct price? Amazon is doing this to better discriminate customers on offerings, price and quality. It's essentially the sophisticated version of what econ 101 calls "siphoning off the consumer surplus by price discrimination". At this stage, it is highly doubtful that the fixed 10 bucks actually represents the true value that the consumer's data.
2. Externalities. Especially considering that amazon can classify you by other means, people that are like you getting these 10 bucks means that amazon increases its discriminatory power toward you - whether you have gotten the money or not. This is a negative externality - one that the market simply can not solve because we fundamentally lack information and this behavior essentially induces a prisoners dilemma among consumers. Amazon is going to know everything anyway, so I might as well take the 10 bucks.
I don't find it a step forward at all. It's a move toward pricing out the privacy-conscious. Right now, auto insurers in Canada will give you a premium reduction if you let them spy on you as you drive. But what happens when that becomes the norm? People end up paying a premium to not be spied on. Eventually privacy becomes unaffordable.
It won't become unaffordable, it'll just be like cable tv did to commercials. Once they started airing them, they didn't go away, and now you can't get cable without commercials.
Privacy becomes worth what the market will bear. If that's unaffordable, that's just because it's valuable.
There's all sorts of other premiums on the exercise of your rights in a private context. It's very hard to get a job in information sectors that lets you retain copyright of your creative work, or in general a job that lets you exercise your freedom of speech without potentially risking your job. If you have physical handicaps, it's more expensive to get a house and a car that are accessible (because there are fewer opinions on the market), you can't necessarily use public transit, and your choice of jobs is also quite limited. Medication and treatment for chronic conditions, whether physical or mental, often exceeds what your insurance will pay. Having a child is quite expensive. If someone has wronged you, depending on the issue, getting a lawyer may be very pricy.
If we think that the market should not set a price for certain desirable basic things, it seems like the fault is on society for allowing and encouraging the market to do so in general, not on the market participants for taking rational advantage of it in particular cases. Personally, I'm of the opinion that everyone should get privacy for free, but I'm also of the opinion that everyone should get health care for free.
In societies which enforce human rights, privacy is upheld through laws, not left to the market.
Leaving it to the market leads to horror scenarios like the one we have to live through right now: the USA's banana republic privacy laws are hurting all of us.
> Privacy becomes worth what the market will bear. If that's unaffordable, that's just because it's valuable.
You could substitute workday length or child labor or any other undesirable attribute of a society into that sentence. There are some things better not left up to "the market".
> it seems like the fault is on society for allowing and encouraging the market to do so in general
I agree, but there's no underlying constant that humans act rationally or in their own best interest. I don't think the market can protect rights, period. And putting a price on them marginalizes the poor even more.
> If we think that the market should not set a price for certain desirable basic things, it seems like the fault is on society for allowing and encouraging the market to do so in general, not on the market participants for taking rational advantage of it in particular cases.
I would say this is only tangentially related to the real issue, which is how collected data is used.
There is a huge difference between the scenario you describe, where a company is using your data in an attempt to help you improve your life (save money). vs. A company who takes your data and uses it for profit-generating endeavors that you did not willfully consent to.
In a capitalist society, something being a right has no bearing on whether you need to pay for it. You have the right to life, but if you get sick, you need to figure out how to pay for it, and if you can't, you might not be able to exercise that right. You have the right to liberty, but if someone infringes your liberty, nobody is going to give you a lawyer for free and you have slim chances of succeeding without representation. (If you are accused, you have the right to an overworked public defender who has little incentive to fight for you, or you can pay for your own lawyer; if you're the accuser there aren't public prosecutors.) You have the right to property, but only what you can afford. You have the right to pursue happiness, but if your happiness requires a college education, let's hope you were born to parents who could afford it.
You have the right to marry whoever you like, regardless of gender - as long as you write a check for $30 or so to the appropriate local government office.
I think very few Americans would agree with you (maybe the far left?). But I lived in the South for awhile and I don't know a single person there than believes certain rights should be inalienable. Even the most hard core libertarians believe in inalienable rights. You should hear what they believe with guns. I'm not trying to get into a capitalism vs socialism debate, but just like there's no "true" socialist there's really no "true" capitalism. In fact I'd doubt the Scottish exist at all. It's always the middle area. But because we live in the middle area, just like with democracy, it is us who decide where we are in that. Not the system itself. The system is what we make of it and how we use or abuse it. I guarantee you that if you talk to almost any American they will agree with you that the system is broken and needs fixing. But as long as we quibble about who's a real Scotsman we can't work together to fix it.
TLDR: don't blame the Scottish, they don't even exist.
This is correct and one of the best high-level descriptions I've read recently of why American-style capitalism's ultimate conclusion is pernicious social rot.
> In a capitalist society, something being a right has no bearing on whether you need to pay for it.
Right, which is why there are no purely capitalist societies in the world. Every "capitalist" society in the world regulates "free" enterprise in some way to protect that society from the consequences of unbridled capitalism.
Edit: Am I wrong? FDA doesn't just say "let the free market decide what risk is acceptable for a drug", or "you can just pay more for food that doesn't have a high chance of making you violent ill". The FAA doesn't just say "oh consumers can decide whether they want to fly on an unproven jet". They recognize that the damage will probably be done long before the free market reacts to it. I don't see how protecting privacy is logically different.
I think this is just a perceived prisoners dilemma where you don’t actually win if you cooperate.
What people probably think: If I install the plugin, Amazon can always beat the target and walmart price for me.
The reality: this lets Amazon increase their prices on cheaper goods to within a tiny fraction of what walmart and target offer, and also build a psychological model of the consumer to charge a bit more depending on their state of mind (Tired? Rushed? Pissed off at Trump today, and therefore red-state-headquartered Walmart?), etc, etc.
Most people that install this will only see the first order effect though — $10 and more convenient comparison shopping.
Of course there is another category: People that understand the game, and think they can beat the house. They should install it too (and then go try to make money playing slots at a casino).
This is honestly frustrating to see whenever massive corporations are responsible for creating a deal in which users will be given away data in order to receive a small compensation. Data, especially personal data should not be a means in which anyone can make any sort of financial compensation from. personal data is stolen every day and used against individuals - and by creating a means in which more people will give you their data, the larger target you have from individuals who are seeking to steal others data.
It's almost like a perfect storm. I feel like many of these issues are worsened by economic conditions in America or poor education. You have people hurting for money who don't realize what they're giving away. Due to this they are vulnerable to being exploited by powerful entities like Amazon.
I think this also contributes to a lot of what we see on the web or on mobile. You have multitudes of free apps that suck and sell your data and blast you with ads but they're free. You have multitudes of free online "news" sources that are basically billionaire backed propaganda but they're free. Good sources usually cost money- better to get your news from Facebook.
Free wins almost every time. I don't care if people are opting into this, Amazon knows exactly what they're doing. They're benefiting hugely from the uneducated and poor. The thing is I'm not sure there is anything that can be done. It's a symptom of poor education and economic factors.
I am A-OK with this. I don't want random companies using my data for whatever nefarious purpose they want, silently, without my consent. However, given a price, a user (of the data), and a choice, works for me.
On the other hand you could sell them pretty useless data for $10. You only need to make one purchase to get the money.
In some ways this seems like an error on Amazons part. They are telling people this data is worth $10, when most people think its worthless. How long before enough people cotton on and these companies start having to pay rates that reflect the actual value of the data.
Yeah, I thought this was a popular idea around here: ”We should have to explicitly opt-in to data collection, and when we do we should be compensated for our data!” Then Amazon actually does it and people are angry?
If anything, this is a great move in the right direction for both privacy and fair compensation: It’s opt-in (you’re opted out by default), AND you get monetary compensation!
What more could you want? More money? Yeah, but that could actually start to happen if a competitive market of such things grew (though I doubt that will happen so long as it’s legal to collect data without compensation or permission; for that we probably need regulation).
Regardless, $10 is far better than the $0 from others who take (and sell) your data without even asking first.
IMO the creepy and dangerous privacy violations come from the always-on tracking systems pervasive throughout the web from Google, Facebook, and others. With those, not only are they on by default without your permission, but you can’t opt out, and you receive no compensation!
Google actually does allow significant opting out, including for Google Analytics.
I do have problems with their defaults in many of these areas (in my main Google account I have disabled much of the tracking) and also with how certain features (e.g. Google Assistant) tie more of the functionality than necessary to extra permissions with dark pattern nags to grant them all. But the opt-outs are generally there.
(Disclosure: I used to work for Google, but I haven't in over 4 years, and I'm not speaking for them here.)
You may be right that Google and others technically offer some tracking opt-out capability (mostly because they were required to by GDPR), but it doesn’t seem to work, because I still regularly receive targeted ads (relating to recent web activity):
... Despite having painstakingly turned off every available tracking switch from every service I’ve ever signed up to.
... Despite no longer using any services from Google, Facebook, and many others (except when I must via a link from someone else).
... Despite using privacy oriented browsers with all privacy features turned on.
There are so many problems with the current “opt out” model:
1. They do not make it easy to find all these switches. (And it seems intentional, though I can’t prove it.) In addition to there being no global “off” switch, they nest countless switches behind deep hierarchical navigation graphs, where it is extremely difficult for a human to reach every node without missing some.
2. Even when you find the switch, it’s not always clear which choice is the “most off” position, and some switches do not have a “fully off” position.
3. Many switches use extortion to convince you to keep them on: For example, sometimes you’ll be shut entirely out of a service for turning off a tracking switch with dubious explanations as to why they can’t operate the service without it.
4. Many switches will automatically and silently turn back on if you so much as visit the wrong link to their service. Sometimes this happens silently, and sometimes it happens via confusing “dark pattern” prompts.
5. Google isn’t the only one. You have to repeat this whole process for every other service you use (if they even have the switches available).
6. Despite all this, you’ll still be tracked by trackers that don’t need or want you to have an account with them.
The last item can perhaps be summed up by the fact that I still get very targeted ads for things I’ve been searching for on DuckDuckGo even despite all these efforts. Clearly trackers are still embedded into various endpoint web pages and are figuring out what I’m doing despite it all.
It’s an interesting experiment to try yourself: try to actually not be tracked via a regular or even fairly privacy oriented browser.
As far as I can tell, aside from getting into something like Tor, it really can’t be done: If companies can track you, they will. And they can. So they do.
I'd only support what Amazon is doing if the converse were true: by choosing not to be paid, I'm guaranteed that I won't be tracked. That does not seem to be the case here:
"Amazon is also fine paying nothing for the data: New customers only get the $10 credit if they install the assistant from a particular landing page ..."
Let me clarify - I think massive companies should not have the ability to sell data, i think data has already taken such a massive role on our lives that it is bound to lead to some major incident.
Thanks for this clarification. My original read on your comment was "an individual should not be able to sell their data" which is clearly well within their rights. I wouldn't do it for $10, but if someone offered me enough to retire on they could probably have it. :)
I still question the idea that "peoples data" is very valuable. I think Amazon is paying $10 for the opportunity to pop up "Hey, buy this on Amazon instead!" ads when you browse other sites.
What are the parameters around this? Can you install the assistant make your purchase and then uninstall it, or does it have to stay installed for some specified period of time?
> The deal is for new installations of the Amazon Assistant, a comparison-shopping tool that customers can add to their web browsers. It fetches Amazon’s price for products that users see on Walmart.com, Target.com and elsewhere.
Shoptimate extension has been doing that for 9 years without selling your data.
> fetches Amazon’s price for products that users see on Walmart.com, Target.com and elsewhere.
To me that reads: "we will turn your computer to a node in our scraping botnet". I would guess the internal documents they have will refer to this as market research, but the fact remains that this sounds like a botnet under construction.
It doesn't sound like scraping. What they do is they fetch the prices for their own products when the users browses a competitor. The prices of their competitors' products are already in the open, they won't need them. What they need is the browsing history of their customers in order for whaterver they want to better understand about the shopping process.
Since this is causing such an uproar over privacy, instead I'd like to pose some ethical questions:
- Would you be willing to receive a basic living wage for sharing your information?
- Do you think some people's information is valued at more or less than your own and why?
- Would you be willing to receive payment for sharing your information that is valued at what the market dictates? Why?
- Based on the previous question, does your opinion change if the payment was enough to be a living wage (though still varying based on market demands)?
What is missing, compared to other platforms, is that there is no revocable consent to prevent and deter third parties from using the collected data in this transaction, no dynamic market based pricing of your data, and no immutable record of the revoked consent or violation on the revoked consent
Sounds like a deal for me "he visits us, reddit - where he uses his real name, hacker news -where he uses his real name and YouTube where he uses his real name, he's incredibly boring"
prime-day-boycott: the day all tech companies realized amazon had them in their pockets with AWS
the day everyone woke up and realize the lies of multi-cloud. Everyone's architecture is naked, and tied to one particular provider.
if you can't flip a button and serve from other provider for the strike, you will also not be able to change when aws crashes, get slow or too expensive. Or what is more likely, slow unless you pay the aws-prime subscription ;)
Support them by not visiting any Amazon property for the next two days. No Amazon purchases, no Audible, no Goodreads, no Twitch. AWS is kinda unavoidable, but the rest is not. We can do without them for two days, and show our support for the workers that are protesting inhumane conditions.