Submitted 3 weeks ago by along_the_road@beehaw.org to technology@beehaw.org
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/05/way-past-its-prime-how-did-amazon-get-so-rubbish
Really good article and worthwhile a read!
Let the implications of most-favoured nation settle in. If Amazon is taxing merchants 45-51 cents on every dollar they make, and if merchants are hiking their prices everywhere their goods are sold, then it follows you’re paying the Amazon tax no matter where you shop – even the corner mom-and-pop hardware store.
I haven’t shopped at Amazon for well over a decade now, but apparently even I am affected by their business model…
That is why I get tired about the "individual action" suggestion, that I alone could stop using Amazon and hurt their sales, I could de-Google my life and keep my privacy, or recycle plastic and save the ocean, or swear off AI to fuck with Nvidia.
But all that is a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of people who all readily handed over their lives to these companies and haven't left (or can't). And governments who abdicated regulatory authority to them, which have allowed them to run rampant.
They're still making it so these massive companies have force in my life. I alone can't do anything about that.
Maybe you should give the article a read then? It is saying exactly that, that individual actions and consumer activism don’t do shit and structural changes are needed. It even gives some examples for structural changes that could be helpful in the short-term.
I added this anecdote just because I was surprised at the scale that Amazon had an impact on the economy. And yes, it obviously didn’t do much when I took individual action and boycotted them (apart from giving me a feeling of some integrity).
That surprised me. I always try to buy from the manufacturer’s website or official reseller rather than Amazon to avoid such bullshit. Apparently that’s not enough.
If brands selling on Amazon are overprice, could favoring brands that do NOT sell on Amazon help find products with a fair price?
Interesting. Not selling your stuff on amazon could possibly be a selling point for a new business.
I mean, Amazon makes the majority of it’s money from AWS at this point and the store is small potatoes in comparison.
…which makes it so baffling. They could buy a lot of goodwill if they just made the store more consumer-focused, even if they earned less from it in the process. But no, they have to just commit whole hog to just being the worst.
If a corporation could profit nine zillions and fifty dollars, and instead it’s profiting only nine zillions, the shareholders are already screeching at the CEO "YOU INCOMPETENT FOOL, YOU’
stopped using Amazon when they switched to Bluetooth lockers that can ONLY be opened via their shitty amazon app. Prior to that? was easy and the lockers were great. either enter the code you get emailed or scan the barcode and boom locker opens. NOW you need to have the amazon app which tries to connect to the locker via bluetooth. It’s hit or miss. I don’t want to use your amazon app, I just want my stuff. The thing doesn’t even work most of the time. I remember once I was waiting in line to pick up my package and of the 5 people standing in line with me at the locker 3 of them couldn’t get the locker to open. Contact customer service? it’s a known issue…
that’s what we have at our apartment; you either scan in the barcode from the amazon app order page or you enter the code from your email
People consume prime so inelastically thinking they can’t get by without it.
I cancelled mine when Trump won and don’t miss it at all. Most places will ship for free nowadays and charge the same prices as Amazon. Two day shipping is the only perk of Prime and even that doesn’t always happen. If I need something that bad, I just go to a store, which again, charged the same prices as Amazon nowadays.
I canceled my Prime in 2023 to save money. They offer free months of it all the time. I swear we’ve gotten at least 8 out of 12 months free. I’d accept the offer then immediately cancel it and you still get the remainder of the time. Just pay attention to the offer because they do word it weirdly sometimes. Sometimes they’ll also offer 1.99 for 14 days. Accept and then go to Prime settings and cancel.
I was holding onto Prime for the unlimited automatic photos backup (I had 300+ GB backed up) but I finally cancelled a few months ago. I’ve ordered a couple of times since then when I couldn’t find what I needed elsewhere and instead of 2 days shipping is has consistently been 3 days delivery.
I cancelled prime quite a while back and I’ll use the free month they offer and immediately cancel and also get it for the month of November to make life a little easier, and again, I’ll cancel it immediately.
It just isn’t worth it!
Enshittification.
As soon as a company goes public, they are only concerned about generating money for shareholders.
Investment is not inherently a bad thing, but this is certainly the case. When the owners of the company care about increased profit instead of the employees and customers (which would be aligned in a perfect world but they are not necessarily so in this one) enshittification is inevitable.
As soon as it is more profitable to lobby for legal changes that make more money at the expense odds your customers or employees—or find other ways to use your money to the same ends, you’ve gone to the dark side. I wish it was illegal for organizations (other than non-profits) to be involved in politics, but as a practical matter you can either allow it or accept it will happen out of view and ability to influence, like drug use.
These issues are why I’m happy being a worker bee than a queen—there’s no solving people’s problems when the problems almost always turn out to be the ability/drive of some of us to adapt to any system for maximum personal gain at the expense of others.
The path to a better Amazon doesn’t lie through consumer activism, or appeals to the its conscience. Corporations, being artificial, immortal colony-organisms that use humans as their inconvenient gut flora, do not have consciences to appeal to.
A great argument for efficient regulation.
I came here to say obviously it’s enshitification, only to find that the article is actually written by the Corey Doctorow. Love that guy.
Greed
Providing good service and quality products used to be primary. That’s how economies prospered. Nowadays it’s all about subscriptions, trickery and collecting money. Bad service and little value for your buck seems to be the norm. We throw away unrepairable good products and replace them with new products, by design. Sell, sell, sell (not fight, fight, fight).
because they killed all the brick and morter stores
Meh, lots of them earned it.
Nothing like the experience of being hounded by a sales person.
Finding things is such a pain in the ass nowadays. You get a problem with something, say you need a spare part. None of the stores have it. It is on Amazon…but it won’t be here for a solid two weeks. It’s infuriating.
Something that should take less than an hour to fix is now a multi week wait, because of stupid online retailers. And it will be something super common, like a tool to tighten up loose spokes on a bike wheel.
I’ve always thought Amazon was trash. Even before they were called Amazon.
Why the hell did The Guardian include comment from an Amazon Spokesperson? ‘‘Nuh uh, that’s not true’’ no fucking duh that’s their response.
It's not the intended effect, but this just made me sad:
That really matters. Not because the internet is the most important issue facing us today. Far from it. Compared with the climate emergency, genocide, inequality, corruption, democratic backsliding, authoritarianism and sustained racist, homophobic, misogynist and transphobic attacks, the internet is just a sideshow. But the internet is the terrain upon which these fights will be waged. It is the communications medium we will use to organise to save our species and planet from their imminent eradication. We can’t win these fights without a free, fair and open internet.
It's become increasingly difficult to imagine the sort of wide-scale change needed to achieve that vision actually happening.
TheFermentalist@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Enshittification is a well documented and understood concept
flora_explora@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
Well yeah, because the author of this article has invented the term and has given insightful explanations like in this article ;)
HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth 3 weeks ago
Sure as shit, there he is, lol