@mrzaius @uliwitness question: why is this bad? Some people I know would say this shows capitalism is compassionate. Theyâd argue that amazons motivation is irrelevant and the out come of the charity receiving anything is good.
So whatâs bad here, other than just being judgy about why theyâre doing it.
@jiva @mrzaius @uliwitness I am with you on this.
If this program benefitted small charities that do not possess large donation machinery and that would have otherwise received less if not for AmazonSmile, I am pleased to hear it.
I think the truth of the program's origin should be known, but I can see the positive side here - even if Amazon did it ultimately for cynical reasons.
@msw @jiva @mrzaius @uliwitness It seems to me that if those Reddit posts are accurate, Amazon created this program purely out of self-interest.
Perhaps a word choice that is too harsh on my part?
I am open to that.
I suppose that, at the end of the day, it does not matter much how it is defined.
If small charities got paid, I am not going to knock Amazon for that.
Sad to see AmazonSmile go then, I guess... as those charities may not receive what they did before.
@adamjcook @jiva @mrzaius @uliwitness ah, I see. I'm not used to seeing "cynical" as the contrast against "altruism".
I am skeptical that altruism exists in humanity (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism/), and it's _definitely_ not how corporations operating in a capitalist system tend to operate.
I think that "enlightened self-interest" is generally more reliable behavior to expect than altruism.
But I wouldn't call that cynicism. Just reality (based on my personal, biased, flawed perspective).
@msw @jiva @mrzaius @uliwitness Gotcha! đ
I can get onboard with that.
@msw
I got tons of time for this philosophy, but I do think it's only tangentially related exactly what motivations are deep in our hearts.
Practically speaking, there are plenty of companies who, whether or not it's a "cynical calculation" on some level, have departments dedicated to giving back in a way that actually costs the company.
There is an important difference.
@adamjcook @jiva @mrzaius @uliwitness
@adamjcook @msw @jiva @mrzaius @uliwitness
The problem is that the motivation limits the program strongly.
Amazon is using the possibility of getting a tiny amount of money to some charity to shape user behaviour (use inferior Amazon internal search. Google might not be much better, but specialized search engines are).
Now as the employees say the charities are completely irrelevant to the program. So they should be for you when it comes to evaluating it.
@msw @adamjcook @jiva @mrzaius @uliwitness
Then read the reddit posts.
âbecause giving to charity isn't the point of the overall programâ
It's like patting yourself about buying a Tesla helping the COâ situation on the planet.
While Tesla selling their COâ credits to âmore traditional carmakersâ so they could continue to build gas guzzling SUVs for many years after these were politically forbidden. While making Tesla survive.
It's an unplanned for side effect, nothing more.
So what are you going to do with that knowledge? Shrug your shoulders and say "hey that's what the world is, why are you idiots bothering you call them out" and go about your day, secure in your grown-up knowledge that they're happily and freely burning the world and exploiting their fellow humans?
@msw @adamjcook @jiva @mrzaius @uliwitness because
⢠they get to pay less money to Google
⢠they get to pay fewer taxes
is being sold to the public as âsmileâ and âlook what weâre doing to help charitiesâ. Theyâre whitewashing a cost-saving measure (which perverts the law, to boot) as âgoodwillâ.
I think âcynicalâ is spot on. Is it the worst theyâve done? No, thereâs plenty more. But is it a good thing? No.
@chucker @msw @jiva @mrzaius @uliwitness Sure. To be clear, I am not ignoring the tradeoffs and the corporate tax issues.
I am just looking at it from an extremely simplistic perspective... small charitable organizations and non-profits received some money that they would not have otherwise.
I am happy for those organizations that benefited.
@cinja @jiva @mrzaius @uliwitness They complain it didn't have enough impact, but they didn't advertise it enough. Didn't keep reminding people the donations only happened if you used the "smile.amazon.com" domain.
And if their goal was to help small charities, I think they failed there, too. Probably most people picked a big charity they were familiar with rather than research smaller local ones.
@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 shouldnât be mad at this. You should be laughing, along with the people who came up with it.
@jiva @mrzaius @uliwitness You're not going to get it no matter how I explain it so why am I bothering.
Motivation matters, kindness matters, empathy matters, and to be deceived into thinking something kind was being done when instead I was just being deceived into generating more profit for Amazon pisses me the fuck off.
Anyway, perhaps consider empathy. You need some.
@jiva @mrzaius @uliwitness Amazon is a criminal corporation, predatory and monopolistic, profits over humanity and society.
This cynical greed-driven charity cost savings plan is just one more example of the negative impact of Amazon on human society, and the fact that #Amazon is cutting it out is further proof of that
@jiva @uliwitness Not all aspects of it are - Just interesting seeing the internal politics around it and the seeming lack of a real altruistic intent at its creation.
Edited to add: And where that trips them up from a UX angle, where users have to quite consciously edit URLs to make it all work.
@jiva Probably because there is no compassion in exploiting a government policy. The purpose here is not charity, it is just a side effect, and in the same moment the same capitalist system finds a more effective (profitable) tool which coincidentally doesn't involve charity, it will just adopt the new one. I see no morality, nor compassion, just very clever hacks
I'd recommend reading Winners Take All by Anand Giridhardas.
It highlights the very real harms that charity serves to cover up.
Additionally, charity models exist because of increased wealth inequality and lower taxes: we wouldn't need charities if governments were providing adequate social security.
Private charity systems mean lower public accountability for what the money is being used for.
@jiva
well that idea about compassion is exactly what these former employees dispel, comprehensively. Amazon uses their customers' compassion because it makes them money. If it made them money, they would also happily ruin those non-profits. Actually, mqybe they do, but they wouldn't talk about it, of course.
That's not compassion, that's pragmatism, leading to one positive externality, which they're milking for PR.
@mrzaius @uliwitness
so amazon smile supposedly started as a way to avoid paying google for search traffic
which sounds exactly like the kind of cold, soulless, mercenary thing amazon would do
except that google doesn't get paid for regular search results, they only get paid for ad clicks
and if amazon doesn't want to pay for ad clicks, then amazon could just stop running ads
and amazon is ending the program, but google still exists, so if avoiding google was the reason, then why stop the program?
sorry, this story doesn't add up
This was kind of common knowledge when smile launched(I think Amazon even said it publicly) so itâs a little surprising to see it being argued
Common flow is google search > Amazon ad > purchase. I imagine they tested not running those ads and found they missed out on a % of sales. Smile let them shift user behavior w/o missing any potential rev. Best guess is that shifting users to the app became more important and smile not beneficial there.
@ares @mrzaius @anildash Yeah, there's a bit of 2 + 2 = 5 happening in this story. The stuff about paying Google is weird, but the basic outline is right.
If you're amazon, the problem is being reliant on Google for your traffic. What happens if tomorrow Google decides to house your results?
A lot of online vendors have this problem, but Amazon is big enough to do something about it. Encouraging more users to start their shopping at amazon.com is a win all by itself.
@tob @ares @mrzaius @anildash Ironically, I don't remember coming to Amazon via Google until relatively recently, when Amazon's search started to get so bad that I'd fail to find something there, then do a web search and discover that they actually do sell it.
Fixing that seems like it would be a better way to ensure people come in through the front door.
only way amazon pays google is if amazon intentionally bought ads
google doesn't just send unsolicited invoices to companies
if amazon doesn't want to pay google, they don't need a charity scheme, they can just, you know, stop buying ads?
and @tob, you're probably on to something here, it's not about paying google at all, it's about training shoppers to start their search on amazon
that way shoppers don't ever even see alternatives from competitors
that aligns much better with the facts
@mrzaius I mean, I'm not surprised that it wasn't fundamentally about doing good. I'm just surprised that it wasn't about doing something awful, either!
(Cost neutral is curious. I wonder why they didn't want it to be profitable?)
@mbbroberg @Quinnypig I canât actually get upset at this? Amazon figuring out a way to direct ad money away from Google and towards charities is clearly a win for humanity, whatever the motivation.
That theyâre now killing it, on the other handâŚ
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