Funny

I feel like a lot of people who say this don't realize how difficult this actually is for many people who live in different circumstances to them.

If you, like many, live in some urban sprawl ass area, Amazon has become the "weird part/replacement/too unique for physical stores but costs 5 times the amount shipping it in from somewhere else" central.

It's also often more convenient than some other options while being ethically just about on par.

Its like, I can buy this thing from the walmart family, the loblaws family or jeff bezos.

They all have their evil, and it rotates from time to time who is taking the cake.

Like it's certainly a consideration, like I'll sometimes pick a slower option just to not buy from amazon, but then its like.... its from Bestbuy. How much better is Bestbuy to Amazon? or Newegg?

I mean, tbh the whole inauguration has certainly knocked Amazon down a few pegs for sure, so I guess this is sort of a pre that bias.

My point is, there is a shit ton of things any one person can be doing, and different things are more or less important to different people, so do what you can, and don't expect perfection of yourself, because there will be things you do (if you're a person that tries) that the person barking at you for not being perfect in some other aspect will be doing and won't even be aware of what else you do.

Of course. Just give me an alternative that

1. gives me a definitive delivery date without excessive extra cost
2. handles returns and warranty claims at least half as smoothly
3. takes responsibility for missing deliveries

People often say to vote with your wallet, but really if you want meaningful change it has to be backed by legislation so you must vote with your vote.

there is still hope

On the contrary, you should expect them to put more effort into using that stuff in ways that don't benefit you than in ways that do.

Let's go with one example. There's this United Payments Interface (UPI) app called Google Pay.

• They let you add a comment when paying.

  • go to Google Checkout and download previous years payment data to help with accounting and you don't get the comments along with it. You have to go into the app and open each entry, one-by-one to see what was what.

• They keep the timing information of when you pay.

  • They also know which tower you were connected to at what time
  • They also have location data from Maps being open at the same time
  • This would tell that they have the ability to let you check the exact position at which you paid
    • But will they let you? No. Even the timeline feature doesn't give accurate history.
      • Because somehow they believe we will think that their database is that inaccurate and we are somehow safe (despite having the driving navigation on at the time)

• They started removing handy features to access timeline features from desktop.

  • somehow acting like it is making stuff more secure, when all it is doing, is reducing our ability to access our own data, while their "partners" can still do so.

Remember when they had a button you could push and it would just order individual items for you? Presumably with no further authentication?

Well, I just learned that while they are discontinued, you can apparently buy an instructional audiobook on them. Possibly I'm being obtuse, but from that listing it seems like it also includes a set of the buttons as well.

Relevant xkcd

Alternately: the mechanism to soft-close the lid fails after a few years.

If I lived by myself, it wouldn't be an issue since I have no trouble gently lowering the lid. But alas, I do not live alone and am thus stuck resorting to mechanical fixes rather than behavioral ones.

All products are consumable products if the quality is bad enough.

I wish there was a dummy on that toilet... then I could make an explosive diarrhea joke.

it's like they use Youtube's algorithm. Sure, the last 15 minute planetary astronomy video was cool, I'll watch another.

Doesn't work as well with material goods.

I love the concept of Lemmy and fediverse, but God I'm getting exhausted with the constantly sanctimonious people.

I'm not really seeing any toxicity. Maybe my blocklist is better curated?

nah, targeted advertisements were like that for a long time. check the date, its 2018

Amazon is demonstrably proficient at driving sales through targeted advertising. They practically invented it. One anecdotal counter-example doesnt outweigh that.