@mrzaius @uliwitness question: why is this bad? Some people I know would say this shows capitalism is compassionate. They’d argue that amazons motivation is irrelevant and the out come of the charity receiving anything is good.

So what’s bad here, other than just being judgy about why they’re doing it.

@jiva @mrzaius @uliwitness because their messaging is about being compassionate and actually giving of their own money when really what they're trying to do is use you to make money.

How about this: You have some items around your house that you really want to throw in the trash or take to goodwill or something but your friend says that they'll deal with it for you. What they actually do is sell them on craigslist and make a tidy profit, but they never share that information with you. So you keep giving them stuff thinking that they're just being altruistic and helping you get rid of things that you don't want anymore - And they are, but they are leaving out the whole minor detail that they're profiting off your stuff. Immoral? No. The sort of thing a friend would do? Definitely not.

@mav @mrzaius @uliwitness what it sounds like to me is this amazing hack. The developers came up with a way to trick Amazon into giving to charity by taking money from another company that invades our privacy. Sounds like some damn awesome grass roots doing good inside a generally unjust system. Good on them.

Like, you folks shouldn’t be mad at this. You should be laughing, along with the people who came up with it.