This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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.
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.
Did it work?
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’ve been able to successfully degoogle, and recently came to terms that I need to deamazon too. It’s going to take quite a while. I’m a prime subscriber and use AWS.
I’m looking into Barnes and Nobel for future book purchases. I recently did a larger purchase online directly from the vendor instead of purchasing through Amazon. I plan to do more of that.
What’s been frustrating has been the small things. I needed a pill splitter, so I stopped at Walmart on the way home from work, dealt with some crowd and retraced my steps around the pharmacy a few times before I found it, then had to deal with self checkout. This would have been quicker and wasted less of my time to use Amazon. That’s going to be the hardest kind of benefit to give up.
AWS I’ll probably start migrating this summer. I’m planning to switch to Backblaze for cloud storage. I still need to look into an alternative registrar, and ideally very cheap static web hosting. I also need to find providers that have good ansible support since I use that for all my local and remote configuration.
It took years for me to get off Google. I worry it’s going to take even longer to give up Amazon, but yeah it’s time.
Amazon bought Barnes&Noble ages ago; buying from them at all is still benefiting Amazon — but there are lots of great alternatives online for books (physical and ebook formats), as well as visiting your local used book stores. I use Amazon for keyword searches basically just so I can maximize the number of results I get elsewhere. Getting off of major sites like Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc. also puts you back in touch with the actual internet rather than the retail echo chamber we’re accustomed to.
I get way better deals that way as well, and pay vendors directly rather than through a middleman like Amazon.
I appreciate your feedback. Moving more local is definitely a goal. I buy a lot of specialized books which I can’t find at small bookshops so I tend to gravitate to larger companies.
All that being said, I’m going to downvote your comment because I can find no credible sources that supports your claim that Amazon owns Barnes & Nobel. I’d be happy to change my mind if you provide sources, but I dislike misinformation.
Totally valid tbh — I just looked it up and it looks like I conflated being outperformed with being acquired so that’s on me lol — I’d delete my comment but I like the other responses to it so I’ll just eat being wrong in public hahaha
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.
Lol, this is the first one that I'm mildly inconvenienced by participating in. Wheel of Time S3 comes out somewhere in there doesn't it?
I can wait.
Just pirate it.
Boo
There are things only sold on Amazon because that's where the global mass market is. Even though Amazon does not have a site for every individual country, which other shopping website deliveries to almost every single country? If you want to replace Amazon, spend $5 billion to develop a competitor.
Be nice if these sort of things linked to a committee that actually proposed a strategy.
