the unstoppable local-biz-swallowing pseudo-monopoly that is AMAZON

Which city will prostitute itself successfully and land HQ #2?

https://splinternews.com/greatest-city-on-earth-humiliates-self-1819657291

The city of Cleveland is talking about trying to wrap their mouths around Amazon's dick. They've yet to meet a billionaire they won't do anything for. Although "robust public transportation" and "cycling infrastructure" seem to be dealbreakers for Amazon, and Cleveland is way too far behind on those to even make it remotely feasible.

Last month the local rag offered up this wet fart of an op-ed suggesting we tear down the regional airport on the lakefront (which we should) to give the site to Amazon (which we shouldn't). http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/09/note_to_cleveland_team_seeking.html

why the "pseudo"

well they haven't yet reached monopolistic perfection

Just wait for AMAZON 2049

in a sweet bit of schizo governance yesterday, Mayor de Blasio blasted their effect of the local economy in a community meeting, as almost simultaneously NYC released its "plan" to lure them here.

First, there was the Sears & Roebuck mail order catalog in every outhouse across the continent. Then came a Woolworth's on every main street everywhere. Later on, Walmart was the reigning monarch of retail, killing main streets everywhere. Now, it is Amazon.com. The great conveyor belt of consumer items has no loyalty and no conscience, but it delivers the goods.

Walmart has a better climate change/GHG footprint policy afaik

full disclosure I have never set foot inside a Walmart. I did just order a mandolin through Amazon. Does Walmart sell mandolins? I think the only things I buy through amazon are gift-related.

do you mean the food slicer or the instrument?

the instrument. unaware of any other product with that name.

oh i guess it's a mandoline my bad.

and walmart sells both!

I assume that's a mandoline reference.

xpost

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/2a/aa/c0/2aaac05eb4ccc60be53306c529ab6ddc--bruce-hornsby-rock-concert.jpg

ICYMI Chicago officials, to lure Amazon, want to literally legalize .32 billion in wage theft https://t.co/GX0lWEjTbD

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) November 27, 2017

in a healthy society the 300 or so mayors would ban together with all other mayors and the federal govt and make the use of "incentives" to lure companies like Amazons–and the lobbying of corporations to and by city officials–illegal.

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) November 27, 2017

The income tax thing is truly brazen, even for Amazon.

“Our elaborate HQ2 PR exercise has reached some new, arbitrary round; continue to humiliate yourself so we can extract as much public resources out of your desperate city as possible” https://t.co/8QpvpIAwY5

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) January 18, 2018

this was unsurprising but has some dispiriting details: https://newrepublic.com/article/146540/amazon-thriving-thanks-taxpayer-dollars

New Amazon brick and mortar store intriguing/disturbing/promising/alarming:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/21/technology/inside-amazon-go-a-store-of-the-future.html

You can't get in without the app on your phone, and once in there you basically shop at will, and (unless you are buying alcohol) it automatically charges you on the way out. No personal interactions at all. Definitely convenient. If you need to just run in and buy something you can literally run in and run out. I assume (if they don't do it already) that they will eventually start targeting specific ads and coupons based on your purchase history.

Does not portend good things for entry level jobs. I can also see Amazon licensing the technology out to other stores and basically profit off of the competition.

Anyway: intriguing/disturbing/promising/alarming.

They've opened some brick-and-mortar bookstores already. I've heard that they're totally uninviting, like airport bookstores.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01//img16/books/bookstore/landing-page/1000638_books_landing-page_bookstore-photo-01.jpg

that personal touch

PICKS FROM OUR ALGORITHM

the store in the NYT piece is a grocery store, and I can see it taking off for sure, definitely more likely to succeed than a bookstore.

The disturbing/alarming part here is very little different from what I find disturbing/alarming about online Amazon and phone apps in general, which is the degree to which they track you and compile data about you. These days I wouldn't be surprised if customer photos got appended to their files, too, since both mobile phones and many computers are equipped with cameras capable of doing that and app developers have zero scruples about your privacy. Every corporation you deal with is thirsty for data on you. Amazon is more sinister than the rest only because they are so powerful and control so many data streams.

not to mention the fact that so many things run on Amazon servers.

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2018/01/whole_foods_food_shortages_empty_shelves.html

fwiw there are claims that this is due to use of an ordering system that was implemented before Amazon took over, but it seems a little too coincidental that problems with it only came after Amazon took over.

They've opened some brick-and-mortar bookstores already. I've heard that they're totally uninviting, like airport bookstores.

Just to get back to it, the hook of the story I posted is that the Seattle grocery store is fully automated and virtually *staffless*.

Eventually, the remaining skeleton staff at retail stores will live in the bowels of the building, below ground level, only emerging at night, like ghosts to shuffle the aisles, restocking shelves under the eerie glow of dim fluorescent bulbs.

retail work is one of the most mind numbing, alienating, life-killing roles you can find yourself in so it's hard for me to see the downside in it being automated. no more jerk customers ruining your day, no more bosses telling you you aren't doing enough to push the super size cola. just program the robots to do that, let the teenagers stay at home and vape.

The disturbing/alarming part here is very little different from what I find disturbing/alarming about online Amazon and phone apps in general, which is the degree to which they track you and compile data about you. These days I wouldn't be surprised if customer photos got appended to their files, too, since both mobile phones and many computers are equipped with cameras capable of doing that and app developers have zero scruples about your privacy.

If I'm reading the NYT piece right, the only way this technology can work is if the cameras in the store use facial recognition to match customers with their apps/database while they grab stuff off the shelves. Since the article states there isn't a chip on each item, it has to be the cameras that track what you, individually, pick up. Maybe I'm missing something and I'm not an expert, but I don't see how else cameras + software but no product IDs could work

not quite sure I buy that for this case, because one of Amazon's "innovations" has been not eliminating menial jobs but moving them out of eyesight of its customers.

"just program the robots to do that, let the teenagers stay at home and vape do menial piecework on mechanical turks."

Automating drudgery is good! Proceeds flowing exclusively to the capitalist class is bad! Fully automated luxury communism is the solution.

I bet there must be some way that identical twins, dressed identically, could mess that system up.

If I'm reading the NYT piece right, the only way this technology can work is if the cameras in the store use facial recognition to match customers with their apps/database while they grab stuff off the shelves. Since the article states there isn't a chip on each item, it has to be the cameras that track what you, individually, pick up. Maybe I'm missing something and I'm not an expert, but I don't see how else cameras + software but no product IDs could work

I mentor at a startup accelerator and a couple of years ago we had a startup proposing exactly this. Tracking people through the store (not usin facial recognition in this case) seeing when people rallied over certain items, working out whether people did or didn’t purchase and then throwing up pictures of items people didn’t purchase on digital ads as the people walked past screens.

Their safety and security appplications were less creepy and they eventually went down that route with the tech but is only a matter of time before yesterday you walk out of a clothing store and have the pants you didnt buy follow you den the street.

Haven't twins tried (unsuccessfully?) to fool Apple's face recognition?

They've tried successfully too, though only a small fraction of them, and only it they try to look just like each other. (google "twins fool iphone x")

why can't they detect your phone? i can jump on a bus and watch myself be driven down a road on GPS. if im playing Pokemon Go at a stoplight and the car starts, the app immediately warns me about playing while driving. people even pay for stuff these days using their phone. they don't need to be super creepy, they can just detect phones.

not buying the "no product IDs" line. if that were true you could just steal all that shit and they would have no way of knowing

they do detect your phone--I don't think you can get in the store without waving it at something. And sure maybe they're lying about the product IDs but then why else would they have hundreds of cameras watching everything? The push to make your face your most important form of ID has already started with the new iphone, unlocking yr Facebook account with a selfie, etc.

i don't think you should be able to unlock your phone until you've made a competent photogravure of a body part (doesn't matter whose)

Q: has there been a Black Mirror episode about this yet, and if so can anyone tell me how this particular innovation is predicted to destroy humanity in the near future, thx.

There was section in the article I linked to with the guy wrapping a product in a bag then trying to carry it out under his arm without getting billed, but he was billed. So it's got to be more than just cameras.

Q: has there been a Black Mirror episode about this yet, and if so can anyone tell me how this particular innovation is predicted to destroy humanity in the near future, thx.

Clearly a scenario where the computers won't let you leave until you've bought something, and those too poor to buy their way out get stuck in some warehouse doing menial indentured servant work until they can amass enough to get out. But they never can!

PICKS FROM OUR ALGORITHM

― IF (Terrorist) Yes, Explain (man alive), Sunday, January 21, 2018 6:32 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Legit lols, it can't take long for actual bookstores to come up with this

xp
I'm not sure I get why this is so hard to believe. The camera registers you picking up the item and not putting it back, so you get charged. I mean just imagine a person followed you around the store and observed everything you did--concealing the product in a bag wouldn't do anything. Machine vision is pretty advanced

ALEXA HAS DETERMINED THAT YOU WILL ENJOY
*boop bleep bloop blop*

"The World Market for Rubber Sheath Contraceptives (Condoms): A 2007 Global Trade Perspective"

I've noticed lately that Amazon has adopted Google's obnoxious 'we'll just go ahead and assume that you were actually searching for this other thing because the explicit search string you entered couldn't possibly be correct' thing. No, I can actually spell, thanks.

You scan your phone on the way in. So they know who's there shopping, and presumably the system follows you and observes your shopping behavior. You pick something up. The cameras detect that it has left the shelf. If it goes back onto the shelf, it assumes you were just looking at it. If it goes into your bag, it's yours now.

What is interesting about that is that the cameras aren't there just to make sure you don't steal things (that would be much easier to do with RFID). They're there to observe and analyze people's shopping behavior - information that is pretty much golden in retail-world. And because Amazon ALSO knows what records, books, and sexual lubricants you like, they can cross-reference to get ever-more granular market segmentation information.

I know many people find that creepy, but it's much less about embarrassing/exposing YOU particularly (haha, as if they give a shit about you specifically). More about detecting ways to make people in general spend money.

Did more suburban white female knitting enthusiasts aged 35-54 look at the carrots that were at waist height? Or the carrots that were at eye level? Do they have different carrot preferences if they are also into Christian dating sites?

And what about the frozen lasagna? Are 90s grunge fans more likely to buy frozen lasagna that is on an end cap, or on a longer aisle? Do people who buy organic toothpaste buy fair-trade coffee? Do people who like gluten-free beer also buy unscented fabric softener?

What's the optimal number of paper-towel rolls for a 42-year-old man whose last record purchase was Chicago XII and who plays golf?

One thing I find fascinating about this is that, like everything in capitalism, it has to eventually reach a point of diminishing returns -- like at some point marketing will be so perfectly granular that you will only receive ads that are for products you will wind up wanting to buy, but you will still not have more money to spend.

a friend likes to joke about starting a marketing consultancy offering pico-targeting (this prob already exists)

man alive otm. The Wanamaker principle still applies (half of the money you spend on advertising is wasted, but you don't know which half).

We probably haven't reached that point yet. I think saturation is under-studied - in fact I'm sure of it, because of how many ads I see for things I already have, or for things that are functionally identical to something I just bought. Someone somewhere is working on that, but they're not there yet.

also the idea is to move your advertising dollars out of places that can't offer fine-grained data, as in the move from advertising with publishers to advertising with Facebook and Google

My one experience of pico-targeting was almost 20 years ago in pharma-world. Someone in my professional orbit got hold of DMV height/weight data and sent direct mail about a diabetes clinical trial to specific people based on their BMI. Intrusive? Yes. Possibly beneficial, even life-saving? Maybe, it's impossible to know at this remove.

Personally I don't give a shit if somebody at Amazon knows that I like carrots. Is that information going to influence me to buy more or fewer carrots, or different carrots? Maybe, but it's so inconsequential that I just can't get up in arms about.

We're not far off from a robot scanning the urine stream from my household sewer pipe. Let's say it determines that someone here has moderately high blood sugar, and someone else really likes weed? Not so comforting.

A middle case: Google notices that I'm shopping for a coffeemaker and starts aiming ads for different coffeemakers at me. Now, at some point in this process, I will have made my choice and executed it. At that point it's a waste of time to keep showing me different coffeemakers. I'm not going to buy another one for a few years. At that point, it should be showing me ads for coffee, filters, cups, etc. But we're not there yet.

ok ive got an idea.

we automate retail, but rather than robots or AI, we use cam-driven drones.

we make youtube stars, celebrities, and tv personality perform live cams for 8 hours a day, serving people food, entertaining them, etc. this is their job after all.

it is part of an internet nationalization act that also grants free public wifi in every major city.

a massive federal info infrastructure project makes this possible, funded in large part by the media personalities that benefit from the coverage these systems have provided in the past. also by having Facebook/Twitter/Google/etc all heavily taxed.

really hoping they don't go with Boston/Somerville but it feels like one of the most likely outcomes rn

http://www.grubstreet.com/2018/01/shoplifting-amazon-go-grocery-store.html

final image is v depressing

You can't get in without the app on your phone

Between this and MoviePass, I'm psyched to see myself already barred from IRL retail activity bcz I refuse to getr a cellphone. I know I'll live to see restrictions on my life as a citizen as well. #TryAndMakeMe

did anybody link to this yet? i just listened today. it MUST have come from this thread right?? well.. anyway

https://www.wnyc.org/story/amazon-antitrust-monopoly/

kind of mindblowing that amazon can crunch the traffic data from AWS to see which startups are doing good business, and then Amazon's venture capital arm invests in them or buys them outright

fucking hell

time to break up and/or nationalise amazon obv

Missed this from a couple weeks back: Jeff Bezos is the richest person in history

Like, I knew he was the richest person in the world but I hadn't quite made the cognitive leap that this likely meant the richest in the world ever.

yeah that is stupefying tbrr

pretty impressive for the owner of a company that has yet to actually make any significant profit iirc

time to start sharpening the guillotines

did this ever get posted here? (too large to embed, sorry): http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/56abe654c08a80431d8bb4ef-1200-900/20160129_amazon_bi.png

too big to fail

what if amazon crashing is what does in the economy

amazon subprime morelike amirite

trademark that now imo

I was talking to my FIL recently about that, how Amazon's business model is very deliberately to not make a profit but rather to spend everything on eating the entire market for everything. Not sure if that means that there's some hypothetical point 20 years in the future where they actually do have monopoly power and start earning profits?

they will distribute 1/3 of america's food, clothing and leisure goods and employ a fifth of the workforce, leading to a semi-hostile government takeover
#illuminatiisreal

Ordered stuff from amazon there it's good

power washer?

Alas

ffs

(haha, as if they give a shit about you specifically).

oh, but they do. because you have specific money and they want it. and the more they know about you specifically, the greater their chances of acquiring that money which is in your specific pocket and not someone else's. but I agree that they don't give a shit beyond that very specific point. if you broke your neck, they'd only try to sell you a hospital bed.

Amazon is such a weird bloated machine now. Some items have become difficult to shop for just because there are so many different options, the sorting systems are so bad/broken, and the reviews are not reliable. E.g. you look for a certain kind of electronic item or light bulb and there are 30 different unknown chinese manufacturers and you're always taking a chance that you'll pick the one that's absolute shit.

Just last night on Amazon, I discovered a) a professionally-packaged bootleg DVD set of a TV show that has not been officially released on DVD, and b) a PS3 peripheral (explicitly advertised as compatible with the PS3) which features one-star reviews going back several years from people who unanimously confirm that said peripheral does not work with a PS3.

It's like a global flea market

if there's anything that links all the disparate "tech" companies now it's enabling brave new forms of con artistry

lol I should unbookmark this thread before I fall any deeper into the trench

you can get anything on there

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31UTUWZTFML._AC_US436_QL65_.jpg

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51Yyy8DAoXL._SL1097_.jpg

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51-6ECDPNBL._SL1097_.jpg

thisisfine.jpg

https://i.redd.it/pc6tbns245c01.png

Yes but it doesn't just eliminate them for one day so that's why it adds up to 2.8bn I mean this is simple stuff folks

billions of dollars and he still has no hair

fp'd for baldphobia

bald-exclusionary radical feminist

at least jeff bezos and i have one thing in common

which is to say i too am a billionaire

i fucking love capitalism

https://i.imgur.com/MUuZ9sr.jpg

that's a hell of a triple header headline alright

feel sick now thanks

I know that for all intents and purposes holding stock in Amazon is "wealth" but some part of me sees the number that counts all of his stock as personal net worth and thinks "fake money"

now if he had all those billions in hundos under a really big mattress, now we're talking

By that definition probably almost any billionaire has a lot of his wealth in "fake money." Maybe more diversified fake money.

all money is fake money

I guess the "fake" aspect is that Bezos couldn't just like liquidate his Amazon stake and suddenly have $113 billion in cash. But that's an almost meaninglessly large amount of cash anyway -- I don't even know what you could do with it other than buy another huge corporation.

the NYT probably has a section for that now

sad lol

Imagine the luxury you could live in while trying to work out what to do with 113 billion

hey, it's not that much; a couple billion for food safaris, a couple billion for illuminati school, all of a sudden you're stretching just to pay for next week's jet service to the ponce de leon institute for a long overdue blood transfusion...

a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money

I would buy the Steelers and the Patriots and then make all the players kiss each other

i can’t help feeling it’s plans like that which will prevent you from becoming a billionaire in the first place

Save the billions and the trillions will look after themselves

eh I'll just change my name to "Tony Blockchain" or something and wait for the checks to show up at my door

Jeff Bezos should give out $100 bonuses to every single American.

this is all heading for one of those futures where people cower and whisper in the corner of the space station about whether the corporation is going to jettison them from an airlock for not having enough to cover their oxygen credits for the month

"can you FLY bobby"

HamNo:

This is all fucked. Companies like Amazon build new headquarters and other facilities because they have a business need to do so. If a business has a business need to build a business facility, you do not need to pay the business money to do so. The fact that it has a business need means that ultimately it will make money by doing so. There is no charity involved here. The only thing that every damn city in America is bidding on here is the right to have a business facility located in a certain place. You do not have to be a genius to see that, in aggregate, from a national perspective, this is a losing game for the public. If we did not give private corporations any free public money, they would still build their business facilities, because doing so is a necessary part of doing business, which is what businesses do. Furthermore, taxes are what we charge for public services. By giving Amazon tax breaks, you excuse them from paying (a lot) for public services. As a result, either public services will suffer, or the rest of us will pay more to make up the difference. This is charity money being spent to enrich the richest man in the world. It is the worst possible use of public funds.

https://splinternews.com/make-this-amazon-charade-illegal-1822511600

good lord hamilton is such a basic bitch and also his name is hamilton. by his same stupid 100% tautological argument about 'business sense' if a city determines there is a municipal need to incentivize a giant company to headquarter there then ultimately it will benefit the municipality to do so. is he even saying anything at all, here or in any of his writings? yes, i know bezos/amazon is already rich.. because they fucking generate lots of money. spending some money to make lots more money is not the "worst possible use of public funds"

I thought his arguments made perfect sense.

Amazon depresses local wages and erodes labor norms generally, they do not help workers or citizens generally over time

xp thought experiment: why do both of y'all live in NYC instead of, say, sioux falls south dakota? completely gorgeous cities with no money are much less appealing to 90% of the population than filthy cities with tons of money.

municipalities might well "determine" that it will benefit the city but that don't make it so and it has not turned out to be the case basically anywhere AFAIK beyond the initial influx of jobs xp

I live in a big city because there are jobs in my field and for basically no other reason.

right, jobs are good for cities. companies offer jobs. my point. thank you. thanks.

sleepingbag sounds like the kind of citizen sports owners like to pay for their stadia.

As to why I live here, I plead guilty to being a voluntary inmate (as described in My Dinner with Andre) who should've left in 2002. (Also, in line with Simon, I am probably unemployable above a subsistence level nearly everywhere else. And soon, here.)

one more time for sleepingbag:

Amazon depresses local wages and erodes labor norms generally, they do not help workers or citizens generally over time

more on this from those pesky lefties at The Economist

https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21735020-worlds-largest-online-retailer-underpaying-its-employees-what-amazon-does-wages

to say nothing of the strikes in Italy and Germany

Well, GOOD jobs are good for cities. Idk if just saying "all jobs" is an accurate statement. Low-paying jobs, exploitative jobs, jobs that lead employees into a high rate of use of civic and social services, in a situation in which the employer under-contributes to their fairly assessed share of the expenses of those services, don't seem like a good deal for cities.

The company said the ideal city would have at least 1 million people, an international airport, and a "stable and business-friendly environment."

Ie an anti-union regional culture.

I'm terrified it'll come to toronto

there's an entire term and area of study about rent-seeking behavior, which is exactly what's going on here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

Amazon has at least two specific cases where they're doing this: warehouse/manual labor and their HQ, which is largely white-collar jobs with the exception of maintenance staff and building overhead, which is work done by contract.

The first is an ongoing streamlining of labor and wage suppression in the Wal-Mart model. Like Simon mentioned, it depresses wages. The latter, which is what the HQ is all about, is an inversion of affordability. From what I gather, the cost of living anywhere near Amazon's existing HQ has skyrocketed not just due to demand, but the relatively high-wage environment they've created. So at this point, hiring more than a certain threshold of new employees in that area makes no sense because the cost of living portion of salary is so off-kilter compared to other areas.

Ideally urban planning would catch up and force mixed-income neighborhood plans, but city planners, 99% of the time, see "shoring up the budget and attracting business" as a priority far above "make sure everyone (not just amazon white collar employees) can afford to live here." But all of the needs of the white collar people don't go away, you just end up with people working retail, providing labor services, living on less with longer commutes and fewer resources.

sb's mention that it will "benefit the municipality" is doing a lot of work in that phrase because, outside of funding the occasional study on economic impact, most city governments are stacked with people who came from business backgrounds who might know real estate but economic planning eludes them. There are some notable outstanding exceptions, but they're too few. The main "benefit to the municipality" is that poor people have to move to a neighboring community and commute

It's hard to argue with "jobs are good for cities." The problem is that what makes sense in the individual case creates terrible effects in aggregate -- a "race to the bottom" effect. Amazon is going to build its headquarters somewhere regardless, thus the fact that cities are made to "compete" for that headquarters is actually a net loss. "Economics 101" guys always seem to miss that what we're talking about *is* economics 101.

we are talking about actual decent paying jobs, hq being much different than a warehouse. amazon has warehouses everywhere, i don't think cities were falling all over themselves to compete for those. & sure, bad jobs could maybe pay better, but the alternative to bad jobs in some of these places is....??? maybe if some of these lower tier cities put more resources into luring in good jobs then bad jobs wouldn't be the only option? maybe some cities SHOULD be spending MUCH more to incentivize good jobs into relocating there?

i mean, don't get me wrong, i don't think there are easy answers to some of these questions, and i live in an hq2 candidate and don't really want them to come here myself. but just pointing out that many jobs at big companies don't pay well doesn't really point toward a solution in and of itself. and the jobs that do pay well seem to be able to buoy entire metro regions for decades. i get that the leftist ideal is that there are no huge unruly corporations to begin with, but get rid of amazon and then NOBODY has the ability to offer 50,000 jobs at $100,000....

i live in an hq2 candidate and don't really want them to come here myself

lmao

I can't even imagine how much more fucked the TO housing market would be if it opened here

you could argue it's 100% a city problem and that regulation, housing reform, and legislation could fix a lot of it but people see the same thing as sleepingbag with JOBS and with the HQ it's WELL PAYING JOBS which yeah, more jobs is overall a decent thing, but companies like Amazon are completely operating in their self-interest and systems that should force the human factors (affordable homes, decent commutes regardless of salary, public transportation, etc) are messed up

the warehouse worker stuff is completely fucked on the other end of the spectrum

xp i don't want them here bc my city doesn't need it. other cities do. and again, you're acting as if the alternative to corporations is some utopia and not detroit

Is anyone trying to "get rid of" Amazon? I just want them not to be above regulation, and for cities not to crawl to Amazon to propose deals that are good for developers and business tycoons but not urban planners and the majority of the current residents who'll be displaced when rent triples.

also, $100k near an Amazon HQ doesn't go nearly as far as you'd think, even if it's pretty damn good

the last time I did a comparison to see what my (midwestern mid-sized city, tech job) salary would have to be for me to have the same spending capability in say, Seattle or SF, it came out to a lot more than $100k, when I definitely don't make that

they just can't justify relocating to a place that size because they're leeching off of the rep/resources of a larger metropolis and would have to build up their own infrastructure if they located somewhere smaller

at some point we should probably have a thread on the unstoppable mid-sized datacenter swallowing monster that is Amazon Web Services

the current tech company grift is, imo, even worse in that realm because they pull the rent-seeking behavior off, and the number of people actually employed full time on-site is in the double digits once everything's built. it's like a warehouse with zero workers, just machine and building maintenance

Is anyone trying to "get rid of" Amazon?

Nationalize, ideally.

oh hell no

I think the ideal thing would be Amazon choosing several cities, giving an influx of workers/construction/capital to multiple areas that could use that, and not setting up the problem where their workforce is dictating housing costs but idk that would be a good thing for someone to study

also, pay warehouse workers more and let them unionize

like the problem isn't necessarily Amazon eating everything, it's that they're doing so by wrecking the low end of the pay scale in warehouses AND the upper middle class end of the pay scale by concentrating those jobs

"let them unionize" - sure, let's ask them nicely to support workers' right to organize, they'll love that

the tech giants cannot/will not be reformed

Is anyone trying to "get rid of" Amazon?

― Conic section rebellion 44 (in orbit)

seattle

I think the ideal thing would be Amazon choosing several cities, giving an influx of workers/construction/capital to multiple areas that could use that, and not setting up the problem where their workforce is dictating housing costs but idk that would be a good thing for someone to study

also, pay warehouse workers more and let them unionize

― mh

yes, this will work wonderfully when amazon replaces them all with robots in ten years

well then you make them pay to retain the workforce in robot repair

JUST IN: Amazon is partnering with Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, the nation's largest bank, to explore getting into the health insurance business https://t.co/pCM00ICALo pic.twitter.com/ZA04vC1kui

— CNN (@CNN) January 30, 2018

okay time to break up amazon pls

Customers who've undergone this medical procedure also underwent:

can't wait to have a conversation with alexa about my cancer treatment

It's a real pisser because they just recommend u different versions of the operation you just had ffs

not completely odd, it'll be weird if they decide to somehow market it at large

I had John Deere Healthcare as my insurance provider for a few years because they started a company for insuring their employees and eventually offered the plan to other businesses in the area.

also, I am a tractor

best thing about america imo is that no matter how utterly alien parts of it seem to me, they can and do still regularly get weirder

john deere health insurance ffs

Your Amazon.com order of

"A Kidney"

has shipped!

Click here to track your package

then you have to file a complaint cuz the delivery guy kicked it all the way up your driveway and left it bleeding on the porch and the customer service drone gives you an extra month on your prime subscription as compensation

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/12/22/someone-stole-a-childs-parcel-off-his-porch-it-contained-his-kidney-transplant-medication/

www.washingtonpost.com

#irony

Amazon knows a lot about cost effective healthcare because they station ambulances outside their warehouses to treat employees with heatstroke because it's cheaper than proper air conditioning. https://t.co/Otqf5SrIJf

— Jame singular (@FunnyLikeAClown) January 30, 2018

Uh, Mr. Bezos could have just let them die from heat stroke. You're welcome, Amazon employees.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114045132
pretty good history on the basic start of american healthcare insurance

basically organizations strongly pushing medical care as a for-profit service (chamber of commerce, american medical association) opposed a national plan, and worker organizations forced it as a condition of employment, so most insurance plans started as a single employer or group of employers pooling funds and partnering with specific hospitals. so a company that's strongly unionized and large enough would definitely come up with its own plan
(the aforementioned farming machine company is organized under the United Auto Workers iirc)

the idea an intensely un-unionized company like Amazon would decide to set up their own insurer, in 2018, is pretty much an indicator the insurance system is totally fucked as far as effectiveness goes

What @amazon does for—and does to—poor cities https://t.co/uQUC1IYV3B pic.twitter.com/UvqrUcGZOe

— Andy Kroll (@AndyKroll) February 1, 2018

seems like a cool place to work

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20180201/news02/180209990/call-an-amazon-truce-top-economists-tell-cities-vying-for-hq2

lmao I was sure this latest bump would be for this

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/1/16958918/amazon-patents-trackable-wristband-warehouse-employees

...or this...

https://gizmodo.com/whole-foods-is-datafying-its-employees-to-death-1822636920

I'm sure openly-weeping Amazon employees are nothing new, it's just that those employees never been customer-facing before.

from Jan 2016: keep yer web services like a secret

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/amazon-web-services-data-center/423147/

Wow that got pretty florid by the end :)

And maybe my desire to submerge myself in that sediment, to weave The Cloud into the timelines of railroad robber-barons and military R&D, emerges from the same anxiety that makes me go try to find these buildings in the first place: that maybe we have mistaken The Cloud's fiction of infinite storage capacity for history itself. It is a misunderstanding that hinges on a weird, sad, very human hope that history might actually end, or at least reach some kind of perfect equipoise in which nothing terrible could ever happen again. As though if we could only collate and collect and process and store enough data points, the world’s infinite vaporware of real-time data dashboards would align into some kind of ultimate sand mandala of total world knowledge, a proprietary data nirvana without terror or heartbreak or bankruptcy or death, heretofore only gestured towards in terrifying wall-to-wall Accenture and IBM advertisements at airports.

But databases alone are not archives any more than data centers are libraries, and the rhetorical promise of The Cloud is as fragile as the strands of fiber-optic cable upon which its physical infrastructure rests. The Internet is a beautiful, terrible, fraught project of human civilization. While I make light of language like “pilgrim” to describe this cross-country journey, at the end of the day it has been an affirmation of a kind of faith: faith in the humanity of that beautiful, terrible, fraught project, and in the possibility of being able to see ourselves in all that beautiful, terrible, fraught truth.

"florid" is a nice way to put it

BTF projects for BTF truths man

ateotd count: 1

CAPITALISM: NOT EVEN ONCE

From a decades-long strategy of exploiting state sales tax loopholes to its ongoing “HQ2” sweepstakes, Amazon’s leaders have rarely turned down a chance to use the tax system as the source of their competitive advantage.

The online retail giant has built its business model on tax avoidance, and its latest financial filing makes it clear that Amazon continues to be insulated from the nation’s tax system. In 2017, Amazon reported $5.6 billion of U.S. profits and didn’t pay a dime of federal income taxes on it. The company’s financial statement suggests that various tax credits and tax breaks for executive stock options are responsible for zeroing out the company’s tax this year.

The company’s zero percent rate in 2017 reflects a longer term trend. During the previous five years, Amazon reported U.S. profits of $8.2 billion and paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 11.4 percent. This means the company was able to shelter more than two-thirds of its profits from tax during that five year period.

Incredibly, Amazon’s corporate tax goose egg for 2017 doesn’t include the effect of a second big tax disclosure: the $789 million one-time tax break the company projects it will receive due to the new tax law. While the Trump Administration’s corporate tax cuts generally took effect on January 1st, the law includes a grandfather clause for companies that (like Amazon) have managed to defer or postpone tax liability from prior years.

Instead of paying these deferred taxes at the previous 35 percent rate, Amazon now gets an extra reward for postponing the taxation of this income: a 40 percent discount from 35 to 21 percent. This is the source of Amazon’s $789 million windfall.

This is quite interesting:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/02/money-laundering-via-author-impersonation-on-amazon/

But that didn’t stop someone from publishing a “novel” under his name. That word is in quotations because the publication appears to be little more than computer-generated text, almost like the gibberish one might find in a spam email.

Ian Duncan Smith is available!

I'm expecting a flurry of drug dealers closing their sandwich shops, car-washes etc and suddenly taking the world of e-book publishing by storm.

I can't remember which thread this piece was posted on, but it's quite good:

https://medium.com/s/story/the-singular-pursuit-of-comrade-bezos-3e280baa045c

Well, humanity. We had a good run. pic.twitter.com/BrrlCvaf2D

— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) March 7, 2018

What in the absolute hell

The smartest thing Amazon did was build these things without arms and legs. Good luck with the uprising, stumpy.

lol

just a li'l device that sits in your house, listens to everything you say at the behest of the world's richest man, and giggles to itself from time to time, nbd

picturing an Echo jammed in the toilet, burbling laughter endlessly, in an abandoned neighborhood

wot if etc etc

Amazon's latest workplace innovation

At the beating heart of Amazon’s unstoppable ecommerce expansion is a very basic promise: jobs.

When a Fulfillment Center opens, the expectation is that anywhere from 1,000 to 2,200 positions will become available overnight, each providing 40 hours of work week at a minimum. In reality, the labor hours Amazon needs to power its brutally efficient supply chain appear to be far fewer. To reduce overhead but continue to sop up performance-based incentives from the local governments it operates in, Amazon has become increasingly reliant on a work scheduling scheme that often coerces workers into leaving their shifts early or turns them away at the door without notice.

I spoke to 13 of the company’s current and former warehouse workers based in nearly as many states, all of whom were granted anonymity for fear of retaliation. According to their testimonies, the sign that Amazon’s expanding empire may not have the labor needs to support the employment numbers it dangles in front of local politicians is an innocuous sounding acronym: VTO.

https://gizmodo.com/on-amazon-s-time-1826570882

Hamilton Nolan has some thoughts on how to celebrate #PrimeDay:

Fill your WolfWarriorX Military Tactical Assault Backpack with Military Surplus MREs and Purified Drinking Water. Now you’re ready to march. These KARKEIN Military Tactical Boots Army Combat Jungle Boots are suitable for both men and women. Lace em up, gather all your union friends, and march your ass down to Washington, DC. Your destination is Jeff Bezos’ house, at 2320 and 2330 S Street NW. You can’t miss it—it’s the biggest fucking house in town.

Who would Amazon’s boss be more thrilled to see on #PrimeDay than a cadre of his own employees? Probably nobody. When you’re sure he’s home, use this Neiko 02845A Electric Demolition Jack Hammer to systematically tear the pavement around his house into large, jagged chunks. Pile the concrete chunks into a barrier encircling his entire block, interspersed with crude checkpoints made by wrapping Hitachi 115445 Folding Sawhorses with ample amounts of Fence America Razor Wire. Stud barrier with LEPOWER Solar Flood Lights and Kaya Bamboo Torches. Then put up your Coleman Instant Cabin tent and get some shut eye! While playing The Internationale on repeat through several dozen evenly spaced Pyle 1600W Heavy Duty Speakers.

https://splinternews.com/the-only-amazon-prime-day-guide-you-need-1827624247

had to laugh when I saw they were funding mike leigh's peterloo film

give this a watch later (note to self)

https://gizmodo.com/amazons-aggressive-anti-union-tactics-revealed-in-leake-1829305201

Can't watch it, just read the article. As they say: "Gizmodo has opted to not publish the video itself in order to maintain source anonymity."

fun

Despite an uprising of Amazon employees over the use of the company's AI facial recognition program ("Rekognition") in law enforcement, the company is actively courting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the hopes that it will use the wildly inaccurate technology.

Thanks to work by McKinsney, ICE and Amazon's sales team met over the summer to discuss how Amazon's facial recognition could help the agency, which has cemented its reputation for performative xenophobic cruelty with a program of stealing babies from immigrant parents, dooming thousands of babies and children to never see their parents again.

ICE could use facial recognition as part of its illegal surveillance of medical facilities and houses of worship.

https://boingboing.net/2018/10/23/oppenheimers-ai.html

oh good:

Democrats rank Amazon as the institution they have the most confidence in https://t.co/OVGAajPsWD

— Matt Bruenig (@MattBruenig) October 24, 2018

ah being discussed elsewhere I see

Colleges and Universities at 2 seriously

most likely people thought "well I usually get my packages on time so I guess I trust Amazon"

what does "having confidence in" mean for a company like amazon anyway? I mean, they are very reliable, doesn't mean they aren't shitty in ways that don't affect customers

on the other hand google and facebook can sometimes be deceitful in a way that actually does affect their end users, so I'm not surprised they are lower (though google at #4 is higher that I would have thought)

Amazon’s algorithmic pricing and self-serving search results are pretty untrustworthy from a user perspective

wtf, Amazon is now considered "an institution"?

as of 2016 they controlled 31% of the global market in cloud computing infrastructure, and when they have problems it immediately creates many problems for many people. https://gizmodo.com/how-one-little-amazon-error-can-destroy-the-internet-1792828399

so yeah, i guess they are, now. whoooops!

We gotta fuck this shit up. https://t.co/BUZzgbrCMj

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) November 6, 2018

man I would've bet a lot of money on Boston

glad I didn't!

DC area is so obvious in retrospect, I feel dumb for not realizing that earlier

pretty happy it isn't boston

Arlington is my hometown and already has been through cycles of gentrification/development/displacement in my lifetime but efforts for denser development and affordable housing have been playing out with some success in the last 10 years so maybe it won't be an immediate disaster for housing affordability and the latinx communities living there and in Alexandria and Falls Church

Silby, Arlington has been pretty good about affordable housing, diversity,
density, and transit. I wish those things weren't luxury goods, but we do what we can here.

Crystal City has loads of vacant space; it would be cool to see it used rather than watch it crumble.

this is weird: Booksellers Protest Amazon Site’s Move to Drop Stores From Certain Countries

On Saturday night, in response to a query from a reporter, AbeBooks issued a statement saying it was dropping the countries because “our third-party payment service provider is closing at the end of the year.” It added that, “We regret that we cannot continue to serve all sellers.”

Asked how many booksellers and countries were affected, Richard Davies, an AbeBooks spokesman, said, “I am not adding anything else to that statement.”

Mr. Brown, one of the dealers organizing the protests, said that for many of the booksellers, AbeBooks’ actions underlined both Amazon’s power and its refusal to be accountable for it.

“The biggest e-commerce giant in the world apparently finds it too complicated to do business in Prague,” he said. “You have to wonder who’s next. We’re all vulnerable to Amazon’s capricious actions.”

The complete lack of information makes it hard to understand what’s going on here. It’s not clear whether they are withdrawing from specific markets or cannot service specific sellers. I don’t really understand how a change in payment provider or system would affect specific countries. I guess it’s possible that some seller systems may not report in a way compatible with the new software or platform. But they also seem to be citing unspecified complexities and expenses associated with named markets.

The complete lack of notice and public comms from Abebooks are both very poor.

r.i.p. jokes pic.twitter.com/aYgsPE5xN1

— Miriam Bale (@mimbale) November 13, 2018

idk what that was but: i hate amazon

amazon more like amazin(g)

Oh she deleted it for some reason, anyway someone listed a variety of "joke" demands for Amazon (e.g. keep worker fatalities under 40/year), then in a followup about an hour later it was announced that NY was paying out some ungodly sum to Amazon for the privilege (unclear if it was a literal payout or just tax incentives)

Might actually make sense to incentivize the Crystal City site, that office space has been emptying iirc

*this* is the thing they come together to do. https://t.co/1uNWiaMcIk

— Vinson Cunningham (@vcunningham) November 13, 2018

Can't they just build a barge for them in the Hudson River. All of this makes no sense. Amazon needs NYC more than NYC needs them. But sure give them shitloads of money to fuck up the infrastructure.

The inflatable rat industry is going to be popping.

the most humiliating thing i read recently was how Andrew Cuomo said "i'll change my name to Amazon Cuomo if they come to NY."

As a New Yorker, I am black. As a New Yorker, I am Jewish. As a New Yorker, I am an e-commerce monopolist.

Yeah, the councilpeople for Queens are already utilizing that stupid ass name because they didn't bother to go through the proper community review process.

Stupid ass Willie Wonka stunt.

The Atlantic weighs in.

looks like VA's deal is much better. 1/4 of the nominal dollar value is infrastructure spending, including on Metro. The per-job incentive is also half of what NY is offering. Obviously this is all very stupid though.

New York taxpayers will be forced to literally subsidize a HELIPAD for Jeff Bezos https://t.co/WuOBIHHU7M pic.twitter.com/UiYdq5gdjf

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) November 13, 2018

Bezos basically went from Kevin from The Office to Lex Luthor.

One last kicker

.@NYGovCuomo confirms that Amazon project will be approved through Empire State Development, which he controls, removing the need for a City Council vote to approve the zoning.

— Erin Durkin (@erinmdurkin) November 13, 2018

Christ, what an asshole

I voted for Nixon. Fuck Cuomo.

i voted for Nixon, and Howie Hawkins last week

de blasio just now: "One of the biggest companies on earth next to the biggest public housing development in the United States — the synergy is going to be extraordinary."

— Eliza Relman (@eliza_relman) November 13, 2018

and so say all of us: tap into america

I look fwd to BdB and his frenemy the Prince never being elected to anything ever again

Cuomo can’t respond to the genuine left critique: That cities should not offer incentives like this at all. In fact, he dismisses this as unrealistic:

Nothing in the Amazon transaction is new. The tax incentives we provide for single business transactions are usual and typical and have been operational for decades. They are long standing programs supported by both Democrats and Republicans in both the city and the state. Nor are tax incentive programs unique to New York. Every state offers incentives to attract businesses and we are in a constant competition with other states and nations to attract and keep good businesses. One could argue that in a perfect world no city or state would be legally allowed to offer incentives and there would be no competition for individuals or businesses. True. But this is not a perfect world. Our state is in an intense daily competition with other states and, indeed, other countries. Wisconsin lured Foxconn Technology with 13,000 jobs for a $3 billion incentive package. A locality in Texas lured Exxon Mobil with 400 jobs for a $1.2 billion subsidy. Louisiana attracted DXCTechnology and 2,000 jobs with a $115 million incentive. The list goes on.

Buddy, the fact that nothing in this “transaction” is new is the socialist critique. The fact that this is business as usual is the problem. The fact that both Democrats and Republicans support this is very fucking bad, not evidence that it’s good and fine. Also, a weird flex to bring up Wisconsin’s appalling Foxconn giveaway, which may cost the state as much as a million fucking dollars per job. But OK!

https://splinternews.com/everything-about-andrew-cuomos-big-defense-of-the-amazo-1830539740

the robot uprising has begun

Twenty-four employees at an Amazon warehouse in New Jersey were taken to hospital after a robot accidentally punctured a can of bear repellent.

The 255g can containing concentrated capsaicin, a compound in chilli peppers, was punctured by an automated machine after it fell off a shelf, according to local media.

The incident happened on Wednesday at a warehouse in Robbinsville, New Jersey, on the outskirts of Trenton.

Amazon said: “All of the impacted employees have been or are expected to be released from hospital within the next 24 hours. The safety of our employees is always our top priority and a full investigation is already under way.”

The employees were taken to hospital “as a precaution”, Amazon said earlier.

https://hyperallergic.com/482429/divisive-amazon-hq2-meeting-draws-hundreds-to-city-hall/

EXCLUSIVE: Amazon is thinking of pulling out of New York HQ2 deal, because of strong opposition from local politicians. Northern Virginia could get some or all of the jobs slated for NYC. https://t.co/hn6ImP5toF

— Robert McCartney (@McCartneyWP) February 8, 2019

Good.

of course it could just be a negotiating tactic/ruse

fine by everyone i know in queens.

GOOD

Northern Virginia makes much more sense anyway, they just wanted to go to New York for the glamor

God, is this gonna fuck it up even worse for those of us in the DC orbit? Thanks a lot, Nerd York.

smells like victory

I would maybe consider letting amazon move in if the surrounding co-op boards in LIC and Astoria interviewed them first.

they really ought to move to toledo or buffalo or something.

AMAZON CANCELS PLAN TO COME TO NEW YORK

"After much thought and deliberation, we’ve decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens" - Amazon spokeswoman Jodi Seth

— J. David Goodman (@jdavidgoodman) February 14, 2019

almost certainly the best thing for the city

Union leaders castigate Amazon for its workplace practices and resistance to unionization, but have said they would be more open to supporting the deal if the company made changes.
“I think that what they need to do is have a dialogue with us,” said Stuart Appelbaum, an outspoken opponent and the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. “If they’re receiving $3 billion in money, including from union members and workers, they shouldn’t then take that money and use it to fight their workers.”
George L. Miranda, the head of the Teamsters Local 210, said his union could get behind the deal if Amazon agreed to not actively resist unionization at its offices and warehouses in New York.
“Remain neutral. That’s all we’re asking,” said Mr. Miranda, whose union has rallied with opponents. “It would say that they want to be good, responsible corporate leaders here in New York City.”

For Amazon, the commitment to build a new headquarters requires positive, collaborative relationships with state and local elected officials who will be supportive over the long-term. While polls show that 70% of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project we and many others envisioned in Long Island City.

As someone who owns land in Arlington, Virginia, I, um, approve?

Amazon is not a hip new york company at all anyway, they are far more suited to being a stodgy Northern Virginia company

and yeah should make my childhood home more valuable, as if my parents weren't already completely comfortable in their retirement

well acc to that statement they're not committing to building anything in N Va or anywhere else beyond what they already announced

Amazon is not a hip new york company at all anyway, they are far more suited to being a stodgy Northern Virginia company

― Norm’s Superego (silby), Thursday, February 14, 2019 2:28 PM (forty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they sure are: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/31/amazon-defense-cloud-computing-pentagon-jeff-bezos

indeed

Amazon will pay $0 in federal income taxes on $11.2 billion in profit. https://t.co/Kmfv6TMzJV

— FORTUNE (@FortuneMagazine) February 14, 2019

He should be taxed for dick picks.

Didn't a bunch of Amazon people buy real estate on HQ2 insider info?

One factor that concerned Amazon executives was how activists in New York City broadened their attacks from the specifics of the deal to the company’s practices far beyond the five boroughs, on unions and working with ICE, per two people familiar with Amazon's decision.

— J. David Goodman (@jdavidgoodman) February 14, 2019

NJ's Gov Murphy and Newark officials heavily romancing Amazon for HQ2

Welp, there goes Newark's Ironbound if these jerks move in. Goodbye blue collar, hello blue agave turmeric smoothies!

Never mind just the Ironbound; the whole area's so densely populated, rents are gonna spike across three counties.

"Worst day for nyc since 9-11, except this time the terrorists were elected." David Lichtenstein of @LightstoneGroup on #AmazonHQ2

— Amir Korangy (@mrkorangy) February 15, 2019

Little Orphan Andy and fellow bootlickers are beggin' to be adopted

https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/28/18245302/amazon-hq2-new-york-long-island-city-letter-politicians-ceos

gross.

last June, Seattle city council passed a head tax on businesses to fund solutions for the homeless crisis (caused in large part by economic imbalance from the city's third extended tech boom) [nb: WA has no income tax]

the newly-elected corporate-boosting mayor reacted to pressure from Amazon threatening to dump a downtown office space lease, by illegally colluding with councillors to cancel the tax days later

today: Amazon dumped that lease without ever moving in

https://www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/836421/managing-editor-news

"The Managing Editor, News will work on an exciting new opportunity within Ring to manage a team of news editors who deliver breaking crime news alerts to our neighbors."

in my ongoing effort to disentangle myself from Big Data i have resolved not to buy anything from Amazon and it's.... really easy? this is how i do it:

- look it up on amazon, skim the reviews, follow the algorithm, everything
- when it comes time to buy it go to the actual manufacturer/source whatever

it is often cheaper! for instance Winstanley, the 1975 film about the proto-communist Digger. available new on Amazon for £14.97. i ordered it direct from BFI for £9.99. thanks for the tech, Jeff!

F Amazon

I canceled prime finally; my reason for avoiding buying from Amazon at this point is less out of civic duty and more because the noise about counterfeit goods and fraudulent sellers got to be loud enough that I decided I would cease rolling the dice. Books I've been buying almost exclusively from my local bookstore for years, it turns out I get paid enough I don't need a discount on books.

Prime is such a scam. “Pay to shop!”

The counterfeit goods problem is getting real. I bought my kid some jeans on Amazon and supposedly the same jeans earlier on Jet. The ones from Amazon we’re shoddily constructed and seemed awfully likely to be fake.

i got fake dry shampoo from there a year and change ago and it was the worst

I never, ever complain in restaurants or stores or write bad reviews etc. but I make amazon refund or reimburse me for every mistake they make.

me too

I do the same thing - the other day I got an email saying a delivery was attempted and I know the driver didn't even ring the doorbell because I was sitting directly overhead, with the window open, and heard nothing. I called customer service instantly. It was delivered the next day plus I got a $10 credit.

Yeah they always mess up their delivery promises. I've had them reimburse me fully for stuff that came days late (that they said to just keep).

What's pissing me off lately is if I order something delivered to my house, it comes 2-3 days earlier than if I ask them to send it to my PO box, even using Prime. Why the fuck do they think I have a PO box? So shit won't come to my house where someone can steal it!

i'm guessing it takes longer because it has to be routed through the post office (or wherever your po box is).

I wish I could think of a better thread for this as this isn't just about Amazon by any means, but this article about people who drive around the country buying stuff from big-box stores to sell for profit on Amazon is incredible: https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20687434/amazon-sellers-nomad-merchants-products-malls-walmart

Anderson is an Amazon nomad, part of a small group of merchants who travel the backroads of America searching clearance aisles and dying chains for goods to sell on Amazon. Some live out of RVs and vans, moving from town to town, only stopping long enough to pick the stores clean and ship their wares to Amazon’s fulfillment centers.

When you spend weeks on end traveling the strip malls and big-box stores of America, you start to appreciate small differences in what can seem like archipelagos of sameness: the way the Targets get cleaner as you approach corporate headquarters in Minneapolis; the novelty of an unusually small Walmart in Indiana; the McDonald’s in Pomeroy, Ohio, that served pizza, the remainder of an abandoned experiment in the ‘80s.

How was the McPizza?

“Bad!” Anderson says exuberantly. “But that’s not the point.”

Discontinued nail polish, Pop-Tarts, hair curling products: Anderson has chased them all when the scanner has shown them fetching multiples of their normal price. He once hunted a particular brand of discontinued dental floss across the Big Lots of America, buying six-packs for 99 cents and selling them on Amazon for over $100 apiece.

He has no idea why someone would pay so much for such things, but the scanner tells him people do. His best guesses are melancholy ones. Discontinued cat food is a big seller, which he didn’t understand until his mom’s cat grew old and senile and refused to eat any of the new flavors. He once saw a post from a parent whose son was autistic and drank from the same plastic cup every day for 20 years. The cup eventually disintegrated, and he didn’t want to drink from any other vessel.

“I’ve always wondered if it’s something like that,” Anderson says. “But it can’t be that common. Plus, I don’t see how you get that attached to it. I can see a cup, but I don’t get a dryer bar.” In any case, demand exists. Someone bought a $300 dryer bar last month.

this is my shit.

great article

I think one reason this hit me so hard is that I just finished reading Anna Tsing's The Mushroom at the End of the World the other day, and this struck me as a weird, grimmer companion piece to that book.

Great article!

Also,

Often, sellers will invent destinations to give their travels a direction. Anderson likes to follow bands. He recently followed The Mountain Goats across four states and is planning to do the same this summer when Tool goes on tour.

Maybe he's an ILXor?

I want a 70’s-era Wim Wenders movie of this article.

Kings of the Resell.

Anderson In The Closing Toys R Us.

Big Lots In The Cities

Paris, Texas

lol

Two sides to every story: an Amazon sortation center associate provided their perspective about the recent coverage of our working conditions on @Quillette. https://t.co/e1L6ODOAbs

— Amazon News (@amazonnews) July 24, 2019

Hello fellow proles

Ok now that I read the full piece, I am wondering if that’s possibly extremely dry satire

fucking quillette lol

alas, tweet deleted

lol what is happening (scroll up for full thread)

i feel like im talking to the borg

— Diana Wilde (@rulesObeyer) August 15, 2019

Amazing.

absolutely nightmarish

just a horde of glassy-eyed zealots queuing up to bleat platitudes about their entirely unsinister corporate masters

wow

at the same time though, they do seem to have some good amazon experiences and just want to make sure the good stories are also heard!!!

And at up to $17 as a Tier 1 entry-level stower, it's not that hard to save up for college, is all I'm saying!!

What’s even going on here? I have my doubts about this Rafael character.

It must be that one I agree, but these overtimes are voluntarily taken on our day offs. Impromptu ones happen during holiday and peak which is also nice for extra cash in our pockets. 💸

— Rafael - Amazon FC Ambassador 📦 (@AmazonFCRafael) August 14, 2019

(needs to be seen in context)

From what I remember from my Amazon internment, "ambassadors" are basically mouthpieces for the company. They tend to be the kind of people who have stayed there long enough to advance beyond warehouse drone status. Lunatics, in other words.

The idea of actually making one of thosr places your long term career is mind-boggling to me in retrospect.

Andy Partridge of XTC: And I've got one, two, three, four, five, senses working overtime, trying to taste the difference between lemon and lime

Brandy - Amazon FC Ambassador #: And the entire voluntary overtime offered by Amazon is helping to pay for me to take my daughter on vacation to Florida

entirely

Love carol’s little anti-union riposte there yikes

Poor Rafael, when he started at Amazon he was a white woman named Michelle, had grandkids that called him Nana. Now he's a young filipino.

there's your replacement theory proof

I don't understand why they must recycle twitter accounts like that.

We are happy to work at the glory hole of capitalism.

— Žižek - Amazon FC Ambassador 📦 (@SvetaPinto) August 15, 2019

Is the FC First Class or Football Club?

It's what they call their warehouses, "fulfilment centres".

a friend of a friend's last day at amazon corporate, after 7 years, is friday. no one has said anything and she's thinking she'll have to organize her own goodbye lunch

i am certain amazon will end its contract with the postal service in the near future. maybe the usps shouldnt have staked its survival on a single private company. https://t.co/e46PubyME4

— Terry (Real Lady) - Amazon FC Ambassador (@itsbreadtimebch) August 15, 2019

Personally, I think it's kinda cool that Amazon uses thispersondoesnotexist.com as their staffing source for FC Ambassadors.

I suffer from depression too, and at one point I wanted to quit Amazon. But I realized it was my fault for the problems I was dealing with, and not Amazon's. I'm allowed to talk to people, but sometimes I don't want to. Now I have some great coworkers to pass the nights with.

— Hannah - Amazon FC Ambassador 📦 (@AmazonFCHannah) August 15, 2019

real human hours

Bit late but, Hello I'm Ciera. I work at JAX2 as a Decanter/Problem Solver. Help Launch the building back in Aug 2017 as a Stower.
I have 2 Dogs and I love playing the Sims in my spare time. pic.twitter.com/mxqpdn5yXy

— Hannah - Amazon FC Ambassador 📦 (@AmazonFCHannah) March 26, 2019

Once I realized that suppresive small local businesses were the source of all my body thetans, I shot up to FC VIII in no time.

totally normal picture of a person at work without showing their face

totally normal picture of a person at work without showing their face, who has a different name, head size & hair from the name & photo on my account

My name is Leo, I’m an Amazon Ambassador and rebin at JAX2. Any questions about the FC just ask! I’m also into riding motorcycles, the beach and/or pool. I’m Retired Public Service (Newark NJ), CR7, support Portugal National Soccer Club and Sporting Futbol Club. pic.twitter.com/0edDglLEFM

— Hannah - Amazon FC Ambassador 📦 (@AmazonFCHannah) August 21, 2018

the great thing about this program is it was absolutely the brainstorm of some midlevel PR manager who needed to find something to do to justify their next promotion

Like how do they not vet their bots to ensure that the name in the text of the tweet matches the name on the account. How. This is a very large corporation. How does this happen.

I suffer from depression too, and at one point I wanted to quit Amazon. But I realized it was my fault for the problems I was dealing with, and not Amazon's

she’s not sad, she was just programmed that way

Mental Illness is no light subject. As a person who suffers from Depression, I am happy to know i have resources thru my job to help me if I need it. #youarenotalone This job can be tough, it isn't for everyone: but just like puzzle pieces we fit into different pieces. 💙💙💙💙💙

— Hannah - Amazon FC Ambassador 📦 (@AmazonFCHannah) March 13, 2019

xposts, ha An AI's depression is presumably self-generated?

'Just like puzzle pieces we fit into different pieces' - Bob Marley

On the more posi tip I have to say that neural network-generated utterances are becoming more convincing with each passing day. You could almost swear these were real people.

Thread is delivering legit horripilations today tbrr

https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/23/what-is-this-weird-twitter-army-of-amazon-drones-cheerfully-defending-warehouse-work/

there does not appear to be a single actual human deceived by this

this is not a real amazon bot but even still this is pretty funny

Hi Gavin, that is a photo of my twin brother, Tad. He's a model in Canada. We look very similar, I can understand the confusion (my left ear is slightly longer). Thanks!

— Billy - Amazon FC Ambassador 📦 (@AmazonFCBilly) August 15, 2019

thank you to amazon for employing 19 year old grandma Rafael, who is 100% real pic.twitter.com/yDJds0VXcD

— pierre menard (@PierreMenard) August 15, 2019

No one is gonna tell Rafael what he can't do, be it in his capacity as a grandmother or his existence as a being whose ever-shuffling identity and apparent control of the space-time continuum allow him to simultaneously work and tweet without ever missing a beat or failing to be hyper-effusive about his Amazon-endowed good fortune.

At Amazon, we are family. We drink of the same chalice and, through the blood, we are reborn to the life everlasting. While you grow withered and hoary with age, we, the brides and bridegrooms of the Master, are untouched by the centuries. We are as gods. You are food to us. pic.twitter.com/pp1YG8Jtdq

— Adrian - Amazon FC Ambassador (@blagojevism) August 15, 2019

fuck anyone still buying anything from these scum

World’s richest man cuts health benefits for 1,900 Whole Foods workers

on Friday i removed all my "payment methods" and this week I'm deleting my account

https://www.aboutamazon.com/our-company/our-positions

"we support the federal government requiring us to do things people keep insisting we should do voluntarily, so that we retain our competitive advantage over other operators in the meantime"

same shit different day basically

I got whiplash reading that

As part of their HQ2 bid, Indiana absolved Amazon of responsibility for a worker's death:

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/investigations/2019/11/25/amazon-indiana-governor-eric-holcomb-warehouse-accident-hq-2/4282653002/

"A year after Terry’s death, Indiana officials quietly signed an agreement with Amazon to delete all the safety citations and fines."

indiana does that sort of shit even if there's no chance of getting any money from it

£1000 isn't a lot to cover up a death

Saw that Amazon is hiring 100,000 workers to keep up with demand. I can only assume they will use this crisis as an opportunity to consolidate power. When we come out the other side, whenever that is, other businesses will likely be in a weaker, possibly precarious position, but Amazon will be stronger than ever.

https://www.thereelbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/plancomes.gif

Yeah, I was thinking this is going to really accelerate the move to online retail.

Exclusive: Leader of today's Amazon warehouse coronavirus-related strike was just fired. He says it was retaliation. Amazon says it was enforcing safety rules by terminating him. https://t.co/YfuQBfJz86

— Josh Eidelson (@josheidelson) March 30, 2020

Mayor BdB is having the firing investigated.

click on the video for this toaster
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B085C89SHK/
wtf. is this ai music or something?

it's like the burial of toaster PR videos

thanks, i'm now obsessed with videos for this toaster

the customer ones are haunting

but re first one yes there is something beautifully bathetic about this yearning AI-Weeknd song soundtracking a real-time up-popping of toast

*toast pops up, lightly crisped*

♪ ♫
toasting you
couldn't be alone, couldn't be alone, couldn't be alone
loving you
couldn't be alone, couldn't be alone, couldn't be alone
tasting you
♫ ♩

i found it because i bought this toaster!

"and the rahrahs will survive / through our tears and our fears" made me need this toaster

when i make my toast at 3am, i want a machine that can provide a soundtrack to the gritty, waterlogged alley where i prepare my breakfast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwaRoCCwzxk

Amazon is now running several anti-union ads on Twitch to combat the organizing efforts by their workers in Alabama. pretty shameful stuff from both Amazon and Twitch! pic.twitter.com/08VLvZS0Ir

— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) February 25, 2021

gfy

1/3 I welcome @SenSanders to Birmingham and appreciate his push for a progressive workplace. I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that’s not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace https://t.co/Fq8D6vyuh9

— Dave Clark (@davehclark) March 24, 2021

The guillotine isn’t cruel enough.

doesn't seem destined for a bezos length turn does he

1/2 You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one.

— Amazon News (@amazonnews) March 25, 2021

...and Eurasia has always been at war with Eastasia.

last my memory hole said, these wages are great

amazon workers, face toward the...(what is the competitor to amazon? wal-mart? what??) walton family and scream for 2 minutes

Absolutely not seething with resentment

All we want to know is why the Sen is one of the most powerful pols in VT for 30+ yrs and their min wage is STILL only $11.75.AMZN’s min wage is $15 + great health care from Day 1.The Sen should save his finger wagging lecture until after he actually delivers in his own backyard. https://t.co/dRo2Tv1xDQ

— Dave Clark (@davehclark) March 25, 2021

1/2 You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one.

— Amazon News (@amazonnews) March 25, 2021

Really something how bullish anon corporate bluetick accounts are getting.

I like it when it's Ben & Jerry attacking UK government policy tho

In a weird way, I take this recent counterattack stuff as kind of a good sign. It shows that they are finally starting to feel some pressure, since in the past they just buried their heads in the sand and pretended none of this even existed. The fact that they've had to crank up the counterattack may just be a sign that the tide might be starting to turn for the workers.

The sourcing for the peeing-in-bottles story is a bit thin — basically an undercover reporter found one bottle of urine while working at a warehouse, and there are reports of delivery drivers peeing in bottles on the road. (Drivers peeing in bottles is a long-established thing that far predates Amazon, fwiw.)

It is not hard to believe both that the stress and working conditions inside the warehouses is very bad, and also that people actually peeing in bottles is an extremely rare occurrence. Probably not a rhetorical hill to die on.

I agree that bathroom breaks aren't the only issue, but there's no need to downplay it imo.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse-jobs-worker-conditions-bathroom-breaks

Bloodworth’s findings are in line with first-hand accounts collected in the survey by worker rights platform Organise, which reported that 74 percent of workers avoid using the toilet for fear of being warned they had missed their target numbers.

I agree with jon though, the company getting publicly defensive and trying to gaslight Bernie Sanders on twitter looks much weaker than blithely ignoring this stuff because you know it won't stick. This is also a sign of something: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-24/facebook-amazon-edge-out-other-corporate-giants-in-lobby-spend

just tbc: it was the classic abuser's rhetorical strategy of "if they didn't like being exploited, they would leave" that I was struck by in that tweet, not really the substance of the bottle anecdote

Oh yeah, the company's tweets are all bad and are deservedly blowing up in its face. And people feeling pressured not to take bathroom breaks is much better supported by reporting than the pee bottle thing specifically — which of course is why the tweet singled that out rather than addressing the actual problem of working people so hard they're afraid to go to the bathroom.

^^ both of the last two posts otm

The sourcing for the peeing-in-bottles story is a bit thin — basically an undercover reporter found one bottle of urine while working at a warehouse, and there are reports of delivery drivers peeing in bottles on the road. (Drivers peeing in bottles is a long-established thing that far predates Amazon, fwiw.)

Sure it's a pre-established thing but it is also a sign of a predatory business model, especially when we're not talking about truckers driving enormous distances but amazon drivers doing their rounds within a single city.

Owen Jones interviewed an Amazon driver here in the UK who brought up peeing in bottles, totally independent of this thing. A business putting so much strain on its drivers that they don't have time for bathroom breaks seems a fine hill to die on, imo.

Amazon management knows its workers urinate in bottles and even defecate in bags in order to save time, internal company documents leaked to me reveal:https://t.co/m6SK8QlRtF

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) March 25, 2021

wow that was fast. hopefully they keep tweeting dumbass lies

oh, they will

irl lol

Ok, not so thinly sourced!

ken k going ftw. grate graphic too.

I'm beginning to worry that there's a problem with UTIs across the country, given how frequently many of you need a bathroom break?

You really should see doctors about that.

Which you can do if you work full time at an Amazon FC, since we get comprehensive health benefits!

— Lulu at CMH1 📦 (@AmazonFCLulu) March 29, 2021

Waiting for somebody to reveal they got a turd bag accidentally packed in beside their Big Bang Theory BluRays.

Imagine feeling good about tweeting that out, assuming that's not a deep level of parody.

personally I think this new branding strategy is a winner

what brand doesn't want to be immediately associated with piss?

I believe that one's a parody in response to Amazon firing up a bunch of their totally not being held hostage Amazon ambassador accounts to combat the piss bottle stories and union drive.

Okay, yeah, now that I've scrolled further down that timeline, definitely leaning towards parody. Or else her amazon overlords might wanna have her back down a little.

ah ok yeah that's a parody. This one though? https://twitter.com/AmazonFCDarla

How are they so fucking bad at this

The... parodists?

Well, Amazon has been so consistently bad at spin & PR of late that it's a bit difficult to discern even the most ott parodists from the real deal.

If they're not on Sprinklr, it's likely they're not real.

tbc sic I'm 99% sure the one I posted is legit

lol, 5 tweets, 1 of which is apologising for the previous one

I mean "legit" isn't really the right word for this sort of thing, but I don't think this account was made by someone to mock amazon's own-brand fake workers

If you think $30 is all a union will charge us you're crazy! I've heard stories from management about plants where unions come in, make everyone interview for their own jobs again, and in the end they make the same amount but shell out hundreds a year. I'm not that gullible!

— Darla at GYR1 📦 (@AmazonFCDarla) March 29, 2021

🔎

actually never mind, I don't think the ambassador tweeter program exists anymore

Can someone please explain the turtle thing? People keep asking me about turtles, is this a movie reference I'm missing?

— Darla at GYR1 📦 (@AmazonFCDarla) March 29, 2021

🔎🔎🔎

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49372809

The Amazon ambassadors were posting things just as embarrassing as the parody (and possible parody of Darla) even before the company became one big piss-up.

thank you to amazon for employing 19 year old grandma Rafael, who is 100% real pic.twitter.com/yDJds0VXcD

— pierre menard (@PierreMenard) August 15, 2019

not quite "in defense" of amazon but pissing in bottles is common for people who work deliveries for DHL/UPS ime (having know a few guys who do this for a living)

it's the fulfillment center workers who have to piss in bottles, the drivers are the ones shitting in bags

oh yeah

terrible working conditions without even bathroom breaks are more widespread than just amazon is my point i guess

Absolutely. And anyone spending their work day in a vehicle is going to face this problem. I read a bit about this w/r/t women who drove for uber/lyft sharing tips online about safe bathrooms

It's like Xerox or Kleenox, their brand is tied (for some/many) to terrible workplaces that don't have to be, as Wal-Mart was in the '90s and '00s.

It's easier for people to yell at one name (that keeps shitting itself publicly - Wal-Mart didn't have twitter to deal with) than all of capitalism.

A few years ago I had a Lyft driver who was eight months pregnant and really needed to pee, so she asked if it was okay if she went a few blocks off route to stop at a gas station she trusted and she kept being like super, super apologetic. I was like, "seriously, it's absolutely fine, I don't want you to have to drive around in pain".

I would have thought one of the perks of being an Amazon driver would be getting to piss in a bottle and then pour it out the window on passing motorcyclists or convertibles.

buddy only bezos get to pour his piss bottle on america

The recent official “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you?” tweets were so aggressive that engineers filed internal reports assuming the account had been hacked and were being sabotaged.

^that and this making me feel better about being so confused yesterday: https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dpnb5/twitter-is-banning-amazon-ambassadors-and-its-a-total-mess

More from the Beeb: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56581266

it feels wrong to keep this video to myself pic.twitter.com/uQjqHElIr7

— Alex Press (@alexnpress) March 30, 2021

who?

Chet Haze, fresh from heralding a White Boy Summer

Amazon’s Twitter Army Was Handpicked for “Great Sense of Humor,” Leaked Document Reveals

obviously the solution to all this is a new startup called toiletr where everyone rents out their bathrooms

airpee'n'poo

I've long thought that it was downright criminal that well-maintained public restrooms aren't just a basic part of every mid-to-large city's governmental function.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/06/opinion/sunday/public-toilets-united-states.html

It is downright criminal. Nothing worse than having to end a pleasant walk somewhere early and return home because, god forbid, we provide a place for the general public to use a bathroom.

But, America. People are so freaked out by the possible bad things that someone might do in a public restroom that they'd prefer to just revoke it for everyone.

it's not just an American problem tbf. I had to stop chaining my volunteer deliveries for this reason!

I guess I just assumed it was more of an American thing.

Anytime people are visiting from out of town, I have to maintain a mental map of where they can comfortably use a restroom in any part of the city.

America has plenty of public toilets. Like this one:

https://i.imgur.com/0O0Bf9s.png

Thought that was going to be Ronald Reagan’s grave tbh

Warren:

Some of the biggest, most profitable corporations in America (I’m looking at you, Amazon) have paid $0 in federal corporate income taxes. I’ve pushed for a tax on the book profits of these giant corporations, and the Biden-Harris #AmericanJobsPlan includes a version of this.

Biden's former comms director, Obama's WHPS:

With great respect, Senator @ewarren, this isn’t correct about Amazon’s tax payments. But changing the law is certainly more productive than faulting companies for following it-and far better than threatening to break up American companies so they can't criticize elected leaders.

A comment:

Amazon’s line they’re simply “following the law” by paying no taxes ignores the obvious fact that in 2017 Amazon had 64 different tax lobbyists pushing for the Trump tax cuts. They’re not passive aw shucks “taxpayers”, they’re the second biggest spender on lobbying in Washington!

Jay Carney
@JayCarney
[....]eternal GBV fan (@_GuidedByVoices)

Can we get Pollard in on this?

union vote not going so hot for the union, for some reason

extremely dispiriting, especially in light of how much awful shit has come out recently, and Amazon’s creepy and bungled social media response. I honestly thought this would be a corner turned, but nope.

And I’ve been mostly unplugged but has Amazon’s grossness been covered anywhere except Twitter/ Ken Klippenstein?

was disappointed in how Nomadland skated past the awfulness of Amazon's treatment of RV-dwelling seniors, but then again it wasn't really what the movie was about per se (the book definitely focuses on this more)

Yeah, I also sort of hoped this might be some sort of turning point, perhaps naively.

Has anyone gone back to replace all of the B'n'L logos in Wall-E with the Amazon logo yet?

the shitposting was far from their only form of fuckery

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-pushed-usps-to-install-mailboxes-outside-warehouse-report-2021-4

I've ordered a couple things from eBay recently that showed up in Amazon bags.. such a bummer.

not to dunk on Nomadland (film) but it does seem odd how two of the primary cUlTuRaL mArXiSt bogeyman of conservative fever dreams (Hollywood & “”the media””) have been suspiciously silent on class and labor issues in the last few decades. examples are out there obv, but they are very much the exception.

I suppose Hollywood doesn’t really have an obligation per se, but The Media has been exceedingly negligent

I've ordered a couple things from eBay recently that showed up in Amazon bags.. such a bummer.

me too! they even have amazon fulfilment packing slips inside. i’m like ... wha

union vote not going so hot for the union, for some reason

i'm thinking this might have some connection to the facility being in Alabama

xpost yeah merchants sell stuff on both sites but have amazon logistics handle the storage & shipping

was disappointed in how Nomadland skated past the awfulness of Amazon's treatment of RV-dwelling seniors, but then again it wasn't really what the movie was about per se (the book definitely focuses on this more)

― mark e. smith-moon (f. hazel), Friday, April 9, 2021 1:07 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Would Amazon have let Zhao film in the fulfillment center if the script had made more of that? I'm assuming not.

I await what happens when Nomadland finishes its theatrical run and the awards season--will it ever stream on Amazon Prime? And just what does it mean for the film industry that Amazon is both a content provider AND a major outlet for its own and other producers' titles. The Paramount Decree has been overturned, but this looks to me like a remake of the vertical integration the original antitrust case wanted to abolish.

will it ever stream on Amazon Prime?

It's on Hulu. Once that window expires (if it ever does), they might pick it up as a paid rental, though.

good time to remind everyone that Jeff Bezos sexts like a computer that's pretending to have a human body https://t.co/D2lDQmWQkk pic.twitter.com/Nta156WfkD

— Cari Hernandez (@eatinginmycar) May 11, 2021

bring me death pic.twitter.com/IwKkNPNl3P

— Luke Bailey (@imbadatlife) June 2, 2021

jesus christ I'm sure doing social for Amazon pays a lot better than the warehouse but imagine the stress of managing twenty different accounts "talking" to each other like that

yeesh

How authentically english to brew a cuppa when you're expecting big news

companies are starting to cut out the risky, unreliable part of social media, people, and instead are talking to themselves.

why are they doing this? because asking yourself questions and then answering them is a classic political move. you have to remember to imply that you're asking the questions the audience wants to hear, even though you're not.

^otm

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7begd/amazon-furniture-assembly-service-adds-new-chaos-to-delivery-workers-lives

the unstoppable DaVinci-swallowing pseudo-dictator that is BEZOS
https://www.change.org/p/reddit-we-want-jeff-bezos-to-buy-and-eat-the-mona-lisa

would rather see the mona lisa eat jeff bezos tbrr

Bleak

🤮 pic.twitter.com/gHSVSsR03k

— Edward Ongweso Jr (@bigblackjacobin) November 10, 2021

They're opening a big giant new warehouse in Oakland, as soon as this month... ggrrrrrreatt

comically bleak

Jeff Bezos’ new superyacht is so tall that it can’t fit under a landmark Dutch bridge.

So the bridge is going to be dismantled. https://t.co/oa8stnlMyA

— Jodi Kantor (@jodikantor) February 3, 2022

amazing or are we in boring dystopia territory

Amazon dropping its telehealth service Amazon Care.

jokes that write themselves