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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.”
https://qz.com/1666429/amazon-prime-day-2019-sees-workers-st...
As a rebuttal:
> We are not anti-union, but we are not neutral either.
Of course they're gonna say that. All of the other countries listed in that article didn't, so quite a cherry pick you got there.
> AWS is kinda unavoidable, but the rest is not.
Even AWS is avoidable. The cloud hosting market is competitive if you'd only look around.
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.
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).
I mean that's all well and good but I can't switch over my company's infrastructure to GCE for the next two days.
Does it help them?
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.
>AWS is kinda unavoidable
And that shows the strength of one's resolve.
and the (lack of) resilience of one's mono-cultuture architecture!
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.
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.
The other side of this is people paying a premium to subsidize other unsafe drivers.
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).
Prisoners dilemma also works with appropriately sized losses, which is what this is.
This go around, "Hey, it's not like it's a total body scan."
Next year, "I did a total body scan at the Amazon Outlet and Care Center and got a free year of Amazon Prime."
Next next year, "The Amazon chip implant was totally painless and I got an account credit of 100 Bezos Bucks."
Next decade, "Alabama is the only state I'm not allowed to marry Alexa."
"Bezos Bucks"
I find this hilarious and disturbingly real at the same time
We already got Zuck Bucks coming down the pipeline. It won't be long!
s/not allowed to marry/not allowed to not marry/
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.
Agreed.
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.
A one time $10 off of a $50 purchase by the beginning of August and through that application should be such a low price point we laugh at it.
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.
Data, especially personal data should not be a means in which anyone can make any sort of financial compensation from.
Why? That seems a pretty extreme position.
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!
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.
At least they're transparent about it and you're getting paid for your data.
Thats true but I still think it is ridiculous how loosely data is given
You get to choose, and they are actually offering to pay you...
I thought this is what we wanted people...
I still question the idea that "peoples data" is very valuable. I think Amazon is paying $10 for the opportunity to pop up "Hey, buy this on Amazon instead!" ads when you browse other sites.
What are the parameters around this? Can you install the assistant make your purchase and then uninstall it, or does it have to stay installed for some specified period of time?
Yes, you can uninstall it after you received your 10$ off.
But the average user will probably just leave it installed.
> 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.
What a sneaky wording.
> 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
would love to see Amazon push toward those goals
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 ;)