Submitted 9 months ago by juergen@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world
https://mstdn.social/@Remittancegirl/114115831840378327
I’ll just continue never using Amazon like I always have.
These kinds of boycotts seem so silly and performative while doing absolutely nothing for the cause you’re trying to promote.
Like sure I get maybe you’re trying to get people interested in boycotts as a starter but if they can’t even not use Amazon for longer than 7 days, I don’t see much hope for that kind of person doing any other kind of meaningful boycott.
Americans really dont know how to protest…
My hope would be that some people realize they don’t need it after all and cancel their subscriptions and such.
“Vote with your wallets” is a common expression among Americans after all.
Amazon breaking new records after the “protest”
I wonder if Amazon is pushing these “protests” to drown out the real ones.
hey, come on, this is a good start. It should be replaced with a complete boycott, but both americans with impulse control will propably boycott amazon. For the rest, it’s a great start and you can bet it will not be the last.
Do you guys really rely on Amazon so much that one week without feels like a protest? Seriously?
I’ve genuinely never used amazon to shop, not even once, but only because it’s always been the more expensive option compared to smaller shops. Right now seeing 5070ti tuf goes for 1400 on amazon, 1300 at my local store.
It’s so bad and cyclical while just being unavoidable in some areas. On the map, you’ll notice how heavily populated northern europe is compared to a lot of sparse areas which have less options. I’m in a relatively normal size town and there is one big box choice and maybe one defunct “local” store that’s barely getting by.
I had to beg a guy in a corner shopping center “repair shop” for a small syringe of thermal paste when I ran out (I’m not fucking kidding, there’s just no electronics store anywhere nearby, losing Radioshack was fucking hard). Dude at the shop was the only reason I didn’t have to go online and wait a week (he wasn’t selling it, just had spare for his own use). My trades and hobbies make this a common occurrence throughout the week. Most places now are forced to sell on Amazon to remain competitive (Amazon dominates with shipping cost reduction alone for large items), finding a local or even nationally based company through search algorithms becomes harder and harder as they can’t pay to keep up with SEO bullshit. You can try to keep it all legit but with competitive monopolies everywhere you just eventually find out your favorite company no longer really exists.
There are some suppliers I could shop with but each one is an hour drive in different directions and 80% of the time they’re ordering the same shit through the same companies I would be using if I went online. It works sometimes, but takes so much effort it becomes it’s own full-time job that no one has the ability to keep up with.
Guys I’m going to take a picture of myself holding up a sign saying that Amazon are racist oligarchs and I’m going to post it online
I will admit it’s been super convenient if I need shampoo or toner or drinks or dozens of other things to just take 60 seconds to order it from Amazon and it’s here in a couple days. Well it used to be. Now things often take many days to ship. I canceled Prime about 6 months ago.
You just listed things that you can pick up at any number of local stores. That stupid convenience of ordering crap instead of just adding it to the shopping list is why people think going a week without using Amazon will “disrupt the system.” This is exactly the problem.
Here’s the thing. If I could shop somewhere else I would. Do you know what sets Amazon apart from other places? It’s their delivery, pure and simple. I ordered 3 TV’s from Best Buy. It took them a week to ship them. I had to pay for shipping on top of the $600 I spent. On the day I was supposed to receive them I was home all day. I got a notification they were an hour out. So I went outside and waited for them to arrive. They never arrived, but i got an email telling me they had stopped by but I wasn’t home.
So I had to go down to their depot to pick them up. I am stuck using public transit so Imagine trying to get 3 40 inch TV’s home on a bus. I ended up having to get a cab half way home with money I couldn’t afford to spend just to get it all home.
So for me, That is the main reason I buy from Amazon. Although lately I’ve been shopping with Uber from Walmart.
And Fuck Purolator.
I haven’t bought a single TV in my whole life and I haven’t missed anything important. Whenever I am somewhere where there’s a TV and I’ve got nothing better to do or I’m just curious I zap through the channels whithout finding anything remotely interesting or entertaining 99% of the time. I really wonder what people want with these ad-infestes, annoying trashcans. Aren’t you dumb enough, yet? Try heavy drinking. Preferrably methanol or break fluid…
LOL, I’m boycotting Amazon since 2007, at least. Good luck!
Me too, 2010ish though. I wish I could figure out how to boycott AWS. As an aged developer with a little bit of influence, I’ve steered plenty of clients, employers, peers, and juniors away, but I still use the internet. There’s no detaching from that.
This is off topic, but as a new developer (about to graduate) I’m having a tough time envisioning places to work. Ideally once I get enough experience I can be more choosy (non profit work is my goal) in the meantime I need experience.
Based on what you can infer about me from being on Lemmy in this thread, do you have any advice for a new developer in regards to fun or ethical work?
Or how about you just stop buying from that cancerous blight on our society altogether?
Haven’t bought almost anything from Amazon in decades. I think Jeff Bezos got like 13 $ from me. Ever. Period.
There have always been better or just as good deals elsewhere (i.e. eBay). And I think that people do not realize that more than 50% of offered stuff can be obtained CHEAPER when bought directly from the seller/producer.
Just write an eMail and… off you go.
Dude, same. It’s been about ten years since my wife and I stopped buying from amazon. Never have I had a problem finding the things I need on eBay or Craigslist or straight from the seller.
Just order some new headphones directly from Lenovo that were the exact price as on amazon and even had free two day shipping and don’t require me to have an account. Great, no issues.
For other things, people for the love of god please buy used and local as much as you can. I live in a smaller town and can find soooooo much shit locally. Not everything but I’d say most everyday things!
One thing Amazon is better at (at least here in Germany) is free shipping. But seeing how that is a least partially responsible for creating a cutthroat delivery market, where companies contract out delivery work to barely self-employed drivers for barely any money, paying for shipping doesn’t seem like a bad idea (even though I know the drivers won’t really see any of that money in the end)
I mostly shop on eBay now. Way better anyway.
I really liked ebay like 20 years ago. Now at least here, it’s just for people dropshipping stuff or sell stuff super overpriced. Like more expensive than new. It’s such a weird place.
LOL Totally not a scumbag Omidyar company
I avoid them as much as possible purely because their in-house logistics company recently started doing their deliveries here instead of DHL, and they are absolutely terrible. Delivery times range from 7 AM to 9 PM and they just leave the package in front of your door without even ringing the doorbell
as much as possible
Americans are great at mental gymnastics and making excuses to get out of things when it becomes slightly inconvenient or requires effort.
That’s why you lose and keep losing.
Would be better to plan this a little farther out but I am already on a permanent boycott so I support this obviously.
A boycott or strike with an end date is seldom effective.
See for instance Reddit
Not necessarily. The employees of airlines have been quite impactful with partial, random strikes in a method called CHOAS. Not everyone will strike at the same time and their strikes only last a few hours- enough to cause problems for the flight they’ve been scheduled on. This hurts the company without harming too many customers and has been effective in the past and has been effective as a strike strategy.
Think of a partial strike as a warning that more could follow if demands aren’t meet.
Difference here: Amazon being owned by a man worth fucking $200 BILLION, any temporary disruption will hardly register on the grande scale of his wealth.
A warning? Wtf
Reddit is fucking dead, nowadays. You can’t seriously call that “living”. Ok, braindead at least
Is this a joke? Like 2k people on fedi don’t buy anything from Amazon for a week?
These "economic blackout"s are completely futile. Especially if they only target a single service, or if they target a service as big as Amazon. If this blackout is for everything Amazon operates, you can’t use Twitch, or Fire TV, or Prime Video, or Fire devices, or Kindles, or any website that is run with AWS. You think normies are going to sacrifice all of that ease of use for a week, and even if in some alternate dimension they have any self control over their consumption, they’ll just go back to using Amazon.
Amazon will survive for 7 days. What about people all around the world that quite frankly don’t give a fuck about uspol? What about subscriptions? Invincible 3x8 comes out in this time period? Nobody will watch it? People will stop using a third of the Internet, their streaming slop devices, their e-celeb propaganda outlets? It simply won’t happen.
These blackouts are an immature way to “break the system, man”. They completely ignore the reasons why normies go to the slop mill in the first place. The general population has 0 self control over their spending. They will consume, and consume, and consume, until they die.
What got me is the upcoming one week Nestle and one week General Mills boycotts… Do the people who came up with these boycotts not realize that the stores that carry those products, already paid for those products? And the rebuttal to any skepticism is that it’ll at least get people used to not buying these products or shopping at these places. Do people really need to take baby steps? Is that how much we, as a society, are addicted to buying things? Pat yourself on the back America! Fascism may be quickly on the rise, but good work, you didn’t buy Cheerios for a whole week!
Wellp, at least we can torrent the new Invincible season
Shit’s great
If these measures are not enough; please suggest some more for us to take.
Don’t let “perfect” be the enemy of “good”.
To be frank,
Constructive criticism has not been well received by anyone lately as apparently everyone just sees it as flat criticism and with the rise of internet echo chambers for every group, criticism in any form immediately points you as an other to be ignored.
People of all walks only want to hear what is convenient and self confirming.
And also, people are not ubermensch and do not just have a working plan that perfectly replaces this one the same way this one is ineffective. It will take conversation and community to figure out what works. No one can plan or act alone.
Honestly its just too easy to entirely cut them out of your life, coming from a heavy user previously. Alexas are gone. Prime canceled. Chase card closed. It was tough for one day, but now I feel great knowing I am not contributing to my own disenfranchisement. Also, saving lots of money after killing my consumption addiction.
I highly recommend it!
…killing my consumption addiction…
This is the key right here. Do more with less. Keep that phone a year or two longer. Don’t spend money into the pockets of the billionaires lining up for Trump’s new fascist country. A 7 day boycott can show you you CAN go longer than a day without buying from Amazon. And if you can stay away for a week from them, maybe you can do without the unnecessary stuff they’re throwing down your throat.
I week long boycott will do nothing. If that is the most you are prepared to inconvenience yourself to send a message, then just give up now.
Sounds like an excuse to not get started.
It sounds like a call to avoid symbolic action and take meaningful action instead, to me.
Hard disagree. If you ask people to make a temporary change that still feels achievable, they’re more likely to at least give it a shot, and many of those people will spend some time considering alternatives. Once the week is up, some people may even choose to continue boycotting Amazon, or at least reduce their spending there.
Agreed. Better to make it a month or two. This gives you time to find replacement companies and then hopefully never return to Amazon.
Or just stop using them entirely, right now, because the only service they have an uncontested lead in is, ironically, audiobooks.
I know, I know. You might have to physically go to a store. The HORROR.
If these measures are not enough; please suggest some more for us to take.
Don’t let “perfect” be the enemy of “good”.
This is great and all, but here’s a bonus challenge: don’t use Amazon ever fucking again!
Do it and you’re cool!! Even though I haven’t used it in awhile, I have the app downloaded. I’m going to uninstall it as soon as I post this comment.
Or use it as a product search engine, then go to the supplier or an alternate online store to buy the one you want. I don’t have it on my phone but do go to it in browser occasionally for that.
Yeah that’s basically all I used it for over the last year anyway. Any product on Amazon that isn’t junk probably has it’s own site in my experience
Amazon has the masses enthralled
But if I pay $20 a month I don’t have to spend $15 on shipping!
Also tell them why you’re boycotting them. That’s an important step.
Those fuckers stole my digital comics library. I already stopped using Twitch and I havent bought their shitty and useless Chinese made electronics in years. Fuck Nazis, fuck Amazon, fuck Google, Fuck Trump, Fuck Musk, Fuck America! (the last part I take away when you vote the Orange Fuck Face away!)
That’s not a boycott. That’s waiting until payday to shop.
There needs to be a succinct way to say “Never shop Amazon again if possible. If you absolutely have no other option, don’t do it March 7-14.”
Just delete your account already.
sounds easy considering I haven’t bought anything from Amazon in years
I boycott Amazon years ago already, when a warehouse of people died because employees were told that the government’s tornado warning was just hyperbole.
Amazon is an evil company that treats its workers like garbage, and practices some of the most vile anti-union practices.
I cancelled my Amazon Prime account and never bought a single item through Amazon anymore. I don’t buy anything from Temu either, by the way.
Boycotts like this do nothing because the people most willing to “participate” are people who already don’t purchase from Amazon. Even if you were able to get a critical mass of people to participate for even 3 months. So what? Amazon will post 1 bad quarter and then things go back to business as usual. Nothing happens. They don’t even really lose any money. At least none out of pocket, of which they have plenty for things such as this.
Amazon is a subscription model. You want to hurt them, then hurt their subscriptions. Don’t boycott them, cancel Prime.
That’s so stupid. Boycott only works if it’s indefinite, because you want the company to try to win you back.
If you say that you are coming back, what exactly are you expecting to happen? They’ll change nothing because you already said that you are coming back
You guys buy from Amazon?
The problem of boycotting Amazon for over a year now is that I can’t participate in collective actions like this one.
Amazon boycott March 7th through forever. There’s no need to give them an end date. Our action is completely toothless when we literally spell out for them exactly when we’ll come crawling back start giving them money again.
Ooooooh 7 whole days??? That’ll teach 'em. What is this, Whale Wars?
Haven’t used Amazon for 1.5 years already
Wouldn’t it be easier to disrupt the system by—I don’t know—something old & boring like ask everyone to clean out/close their bank accounts at the same time, and cause a run on banks? Where do people come up with these ideas?
I’ve already been “boycotting amazon” for a while because everything on there is complete dogshit or overpriced and I just don’t feel a need to buy anything from them.
Also their website doesn’t fucking work on my phone.
I deleted all my amazon accounts a few weeks ago, and have no plans to go back. When I order things now, I’ll just order through the vendor instead of Amazon, I can live with it taking longer or costing a bit more.
I have been boycotting them for the last 7 years. I’ll gladly participate with this one for: indefinitely
Can’t remember the last time I bought something from there.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 9 months ago
A whole 7 days??? Gosh gee willakers!!! You think people can uphold a boycott a whole 7 days???
Look. Boycotts are effective, but you gotta be stubborn. It’s gotta be “boycott from now on” with no end date.
Otherwise, it’ll just look like normal fluctuations in their business.
“Oh, this week was slightly down…ah, but then it stopped. We’re good!”
But if you boycott forever, then their numbers continuously go down. And if you get other people boycotting, those numbers go down faster.
THAT’S how you make an impact.
null@slrpnk.net 9 months ago
How do you get people who can’t see themselves boycotting indefinitely? You get them used to it by getting them on board to boycott for a fixed length of time. Ideally, as they warm up to the idea, you get them to boycott for longer.
thejml@lemm.ee 9 months ago
True, but 7 days isn’t enough time for that. I’ve gone weeks between purchasing the kinds of things Amazon delivers, so it’d just be normal. 2+ months is probably better. Especially if those months are Nov & Dec.
crabigno@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
I have ordered from them line 5 or 6 times, subscribed for a year because I wanted to watch a series by terry Pratchett, and never again interacted with it in the past 8 years or so. You are not boycotting food or water or oxygen.
marv99@feddit.org 9 months ago
In 1995 we boycotted Shell for environmental reasons and it worked: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Spar
So it needed few days more than week of concerted action to bring big business into trouble.
villainy@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That boycott had a demand attached, to prevent the sinking of the Brent Spar buoy. Effectively “unlimited” boycott until Shell gave into the demand.
This and the last no shop Friday thing seem mostly pointless. I mean fuck Amazon for sure but shouldn’t there be some goal? “Boycott Amazon until X, Y, and Z” not “No buy from Amazon for a week but then we’ll be back so no worries!”
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Boycott action, and a smidge of arson.
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Okay, so start boycotting Amazon now and don’t stop.
rotmulaaginskyrim@programming.dev 9 months ago
This is how strikes are organized generally. You do limited time events too minimize the hurt on both sides, and bring them both to the table.