@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 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 @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.
“because giving to charity isn't the point of the overall program”
It's like patting yourself about buying a Tesla helping the COâ‚‚ situation on the planet.
While Tesla selling their CO₂ credits to “more traditional carmakers” 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.